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"You must be an absolute knob."
This was the flash-judgement of a complete stranger I met a few months ago whilst swallowing a few sharpeners in a London bar.
It's true, there certainly are penis-like qualities to me - but there was no way this partly-pissed young man could have known that.
Because we'd only just grasped hands and all he'd been told was that my name was Joe and I worked for the Daily Star....A TABLOID AAAARRRRRGGGHHHH!!!
Yes - of course I was tempted to make his girlfriend blush with desire just to teach him a lesson - but I resisted. I am a retired swordsman and anyway, she was quite rude and looked a bit like Tin Tin. You know who you are.
Let's widen it beyond me, though (only for a moment, then back to ME).
A friend at The Sun was recently abused at great volume in a well-known member's club over the paper's infamous and admittedly disgraceful Hillsborough coverage.
My chum explained to his verbal assailant that he was nine at the time, but it made no difference. The torrent continued like, well, you know what torrents are like - they're torrential.
Not a week goes by without some other hack getting a kicking from the professionally disgusted of Twitter, spurred on by a small army of would-be writers, transparently jealous of their chosen target's success.
I'll give these collective abusers the name Keith, because so many blokes called Keith seem to talk from their hole.
It's very likely you agree with Keith. But do you know why you agree with him? I mean, have you really thought about it?
Let me take a guess at a few of your reasons.
1: We hack people's phones and pry into their personal lives.
2: Our jobs are without merit.
3: We are scum. We just are.
All such simplistic explanations that anyone with a modicum of intelligence must know they're not good enough.
The general loathing of red-top writers has grown steadily over the years and came to a natural, pus-filled head, with the News Of The World phone-hacking scandal and subsequent closure.
The spot burst, the crater is closing up but the scar will, I fear, remain for many moons.
However the fact is almost none of us are phone hackers.
No, I haven't and no, I don't know how to. The image so many have of tabloid hacks just isn't accurate.
The sneaking, greasy man in a dirty, shiny-arsed suit, sifting through people's rubbish and generally being a nasty piece of work, doesn't exist.
After more than a decade in Tabloidland, I am well-placed to tell you that most of us are ordinary, decent people who graft at a skilled job which brings both entertainment and knowledge to many.
I've worked with alcoholics, drug addicts, sexual deviants and first-rate tools. I even have a colleague with a spaniel and another who is a keen cyclist. But who hasn't?
Tabloids represent their readers. It's our job to ask the questions they want answered. When I was doing an interview, I didn't just speak for myself or my paper, I spoke for every single reader who would have KILLED to be quizzing Jennifer Lopez (or whoever).
Like it or not - and I actually don't - we live in a celebrity-obsessed world and so our most popular newspapers reflect that.
We regularly write about absolute trivia, I agree. Often laughable, rarely laudable and certainly deserving of sneering, here's my nose my arse is following-style, scorn.
But we are not monsters. They've been caught now.
We don't deserve hysterical abuse and we keep a LOT more secrets than we reveal.
When you find out Bill's been bashing Beryl after a bit of blow, I know - I KNOW - you talk about it with everyone who knows the unhappy couple. It does the rounds.
I don't. I keep it to myself.
Trust me, I know many things about many celebrities that could massively damage their careers.
But my lips are sealed when it comes to the stuff that really matters.
As are those of most of my good friends in the profession, all of whom have equal-sized mental dossiers of dirt to mine.
So leave off will you Keith?
You're starting to sound like an absolute knob.
Follow Joe Mott on Twitter: www.twitter.com/thejoemott
Jim
Don't talk about what you don't understand (unless prefacing it with a declaration of ignorance) is a pretty good rule of thumb, don't you think?
I did not get that you were referring only to media-wannabe Keiths. Thought most would be fed up bloggers like me who want to see those who took the easy dollars, and are responsible for our low quality public discourse, taken to task; you killed a few of our innocent trees in the process too.
All I'm suggesting is accurate and deserved criticism, rather than sweeping generalisations and low level abuse which is, after all, what tabloids are so often lambasted for themselves.
Not only was that the best article I think I've ever read in a newspaper, I think it was the best use of the written word I've ever seen.
Now, as you can probably tell using your awesome tabloid writers’ intellect, I’m been slightly sarcastic, as you don’t seem to understand why people hate the star so much.
I don’t hate or have contempt for people who write about celebrities for a living. I have no emotion for these people. I honestly couldn’t care less. I view them the same way I view people who spot trains; someone has to do it.
I can’t stand the tabloid press because they regularly make up baseless lies about Muslims, which end up getting repeated by far right groups like the EDL.
That’s why I hate the Star, you see, and I mean the newspaper itself rather than the cleaners or the payroll admin staff. Coincidently, though, you seem like a tireless prick.
Hugs and kisses
Keith.
On numerous occasions I wrote pieces that were staunchly anti-EDL and attempted to - simplistically as I don't profess to be deep thinker - try and tackle the difficult topic of racism and prejudice in our country.
But not a single soul - NONE - of the people who hate the Star and think I am a (insert profanity here) ever see those articles.
Nor do they stop to think that if indeed the paper DOES target readers who may have right-wing leanings, what a good thing it was to have a tireless - but certainly left-leaning - prick like me writing in it.
Hopefully you now care a little more about the people who work at such places.
Love ya Keith.