Now is the season for bad journalists to be commissioned to write pointless, cretinous pieces of crap simply so that they can buy some more christmas presents for little Jehosaphat, or whatever moniker their poor, abused progeny will spend its life labouring to escape. The mee-jah (note the self-regarding nature of the spelling) is simply awash with them.

I heard one this morning, on Radio Four, by a journalist who shall remain nameless to protect her identity and er, ‘reputation’. But let’s face it, Zoe Williams was rubbish back when she ‘wrote’ for the E’nin Stannit (sorry). This morning, on You and Yours, she contributed about five hours of solipsistic shite on how she gets a bit rude around christmas because it’s so stressful even though she knows it’s wrong and is neither big nor clever. This piece differed little from your average chav bus rant other than the fact that said CBR is usually punctuated with spots of wit and is delivered with passion, rather than wages-by-numbers smugness.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I actually think it’s a good thing that Ms Williams, with her casual sexism and oh-aren’t-I-clever-and-funny prose which, like her, is neither clever nor funny, is kept out of the way of any real job. I do, however, wonder why this means that we have to listen to her drivel.

There is, naturally, a pretty good reason. Like much of the mee-jah, Radio 4 is increasingly becoming a gentleperson’s club, populated with utter crap that just happens to be written by the producer’s friend/lover/husband/dog … a recent book of the week was a case in point. Utter shit. Badly written, smugly read by the author (more cash, see …), and so mind-crushingly cliched that I wanted to reach into the radio and put the poor book out of its misery.

At this point, you may be thinking that this is all one big bunch of sour grapes. Damn straight! It incenses me that these idiots get paid to write such turgid shit simply because they’re ‘in the club.’ Look. I can write turgid shit, too, and I’ll undercut the fuckers to boot.

Money for old rope it is, but if you think that giving them enough rope will lead them to hang themselves (metaphorically, naturally … its only shit journalism, not really life and death stuff), then you’re going to be sadly disappointed. It’ll happen every Christmas, when the agents and their clients make sure the cheques come in at the same time as the bills. Dammit, I used to do it myself, but … but …

Here’s my solution. Let’s have a dedicated Radio channel which plays all this crap, and these pitiful, odious fuckwits can listen to themselves all day. Maybe in a special home. They can listen to themselves all day (that was the repeat). So that we don’t have to.

Then they truly will be providing a service to mankind.