EDITORIAL

THE POLITICS OF GRUB STREET AND THE GRUB

STREET OF POLITICS

That Rees-Mogg! You’ve gotta feel sorry for the poor bloke. He blagged a £25,000 advance for his book on the Victorians and then pulled his tripes out working 300 hours – for what? The worst history book ever written by all accounts. Eighty three pounds an hour might sound attractive to a Tesco shelf stacker or call centre clerk but it’d be peanuts to a multi-millionaire like Moggsie. So why did he do it? It seems all aspirant politicos write books –even the top dogs like Hitler, Stalin, Mao. Perhaps they know their statues will be trashed but hope their books will be safe in some obscure deposit library (say like the one at Alexandria but with a sprinkler system). Even Mogg’s mate Cameron got £800,000 and his book isn’t even out yet. His gypsy caravan (his writer’s den) cost more that Moggsie’s advance. So what does this tell us about the state of publishing? And in the light of this - what should the humble oik do to get known? 

But that’s the wrong way round. You rarely get known by publishing (unless you’re JK Rowling or Agatha Christie) – you’re more likely to get published because you’re known already. Celebrity is what it’s all about. The money grubbing book business seeks sensation – serial killers, pop stars, football players. If the Yorkshire ripper had written a novel it would have shot up the best-seller list.  

Moggs’s sales were around 700 in the first few weeks. This may sound pathetic to the likes of Boris Johnson but it’s not a bad start. Nothing in our own list at Penniless Press Publications gets out of the low hundreds. So to get round that spectacularly bad launch Moggs needs more than a fancy waistcoat or an oddly named nipper. When it comes to writing you just can’t fake it – even the Eton and Oxford tag cuts no ice. His degree was in History, which must say something about Eton and Oxford. Yep, he’s a proven boring old fart and the book is a disaster. Now if he’d been pictured fucking a pig and maintained that William Gladstone also did this he might have got some traction, if not in the TLS then certainly the Mail or Telegraph. 

But to get back to the anonymous oik. Technology has come to the rescue. You can get your masterpiece ISBNed, listed on Amazon etc and even lodged in the British Library at Boston Spa… for ever. You want immortality? You’ve got it. But why would you want that? You’d be dead. Better surely to write just what you want, right now; to entertain a few friends (the Happy Few in Stendhal’s phrase). Evelyn Waugh was asked if he ever re-read his earlier stuff. Yes, he said, often, and it still makes me laugh. There’s reason enough – all the rest is vanity. 

Nevertheless, learning how to self-publish isn’t hard and Jeff Bezos will be happy to list your book along with about three million others. Can’t be arsed? Not even for immortality? Do computers make your brain hurt? Well there’s people out there will do it all for you. Just send in your manuscript. They’re called vanity publishers. When Tom Kilcourse, an early Oik contributor, approached one such they were enthusiastic. Great stuff Tom! We’re keen to do it! If you can assist this expensive project with a £2000 contribution we’re all set to go. When I wrote about this in a Crazy Oik blog I got a solicitor’s letter insisting they weren’t vanity publishers and if I didn’t remove the offending libel they’d sue my arse. 

Ken Clay July 2019

JEFF BELL

Wrestling With Tarquin's Dream

So wrestling is being dropped as an Olympic Sport,
and now as golf gets itself ready to enter the gladiators
arena, I can hear future discussion at the International
Olympic Committee meeting. Baroness Leafy Suburb
Hedgerow speaks, "My son Tarquin, is desperate to win
a gold medal at the Olympics but refuses point blank
to be manhandled and put into a head lock by those
Eastern European ruffians! So he and I think it would be
a good idea, to have the egg and spoon race included as
a new Olympic sport, instead of wrestling. But using quails
eggs to limit the weight being carried, and the use of large
spoons. Tarquin said once he gets used to running and
balancing an egg, he is prepared to use a smaller spoon,
but for now, say until 2024, let's use large soup spoons!
And by 2028 I truly believe my son Tarquin, will do the UK
proud and be one of the greatest egg and spoon racers
the world has ever seen!"

Olympics 2012: Third of Team GB medallists came from private schools, yet only 7% of children go to private schools.

(Wrestling has since been reinstated as an Olympic sport for the 2020 and 2024 Games after being voted in ahead of baseball/softball and squash, Sept 2013.)