Ten years ago I was working closely with a very bright young guy called Neil. He and his equally bright girlfriend Camilla had started a weekly gossip newsletter called Popbitch which they used to do evenings and weekends. Its subscriber numbers grew very quickly. Very occasionally it got into trouble with lawyers but since they weren't making any money from it I wasn't aware of anyone taking them to court. A few years later they split up. Neil moved to the USA and started a family, leaving Camilla to carry on with Popbitch.
Yesterday she appeared in front of the Leveson Inquiry to answer questions about where the internet fits into this whole privacy/decency/shemozzle. If, ten years ago, you'd have suggested to either of them that:
1. Popbitch would still be going in 2012
2. The News Of The World wouldn't.
3. Camilla would be called upon to explain to a judge how the media worked.
Well, it would be understating the case to say they would have laughed, that's all.
You can judge the value of something by how much you miss it when it's not there. I always feel a tinge of disappointment when I check my email inbox on Thursday and, for whatever reason, the joyful celebration of the absurdity of modern existence that is the Popbtich newsletter has failed to arrive. Reading through it is one of those weekly rituals that makes life a tiny bit better -
ReplyDeleteWhether it's the field reports on the proportions of celebrity genitalia, the ongoing obsession with otters, or the sincere attempt to revolve the Baboon vs Badger debate by canvassing the opinions of the stars of studio, stage and screen.
My favourite section invited subscribers to write in and publicly apologize to celebrities who they had wronged in the past. The one that sticks in the mind is the man who misinterpreted a yellow hanky in Marc Almond's back pocket as a sign that the ex-Soft Cell frontman wanted to be pissed on.