Training | 2009.08.26
Esther Addley's diary
Will you be Dried-fish Woman or Herbivore Man? Your suggestions, please, for a ballot box
Hurry up, autumn! Hasten in the frantic, embittered months of the coming general election campaign – I for one can\'t wait. How we\'ve missed the door knockers and the dog whistlers and the dodgy advertising campaigns! The big question, of course, is into which box pollsters will put us this time – after Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman, what could be next? Inspiration, perhaps, comes from South Korea, where two key demographics have been identified: Herbivore Man and, deliciously, Dried-fish Woman. The first, clearly a Notting Hill Tory, is a "dandy metrosexual with an abhorrence of the martial arts". The second, says the Financial Times, is impeccably dressed, but after work "just wants to lounge on the sofa in a tracksuit, watch television and munch on dried squid". Come on, we can\'t let Korea have better crude political stereotypes than us! Your suggestions, please, for the archetypes the politicians will be wooing this autumn. Either that or your thoughts on the superpowers Dried-fish Woman possesses if, as we suspect, she is a comic-book hero who has lost her way.
Talking of elections, it may just be time for today\'s snippet from the Diary Book of the Week, True Blue, a naughty glimpse up the skirt of the party that, with a year, would be our masters. Our scene is Richmond, south-west London, during the election campaign of 2005, when the book\'s undercover authors were canvassing for the local Tory candidate against the Lib Dems\' Susan Kramer. Given a telephone cold-calling script, they were puzzled to find instructions to tell voters that Kramer was an "outsider" and, perplexingly, Hungarian (Kramer was born and raised in London). Why? "She\'s a Jewess," said a party activist, "but we aren\'t allowed to say that. We get told off if we say that. So all we can say is that she got off the train from Hungary." Kramer won the seat .
We can\'t be the only ones to have noticed what a busy month it\'s been for those whose hobby is joke shop produce employed in the service of evil. First came the £40m diamond heist in which the thieves wore rubber noses to conceal their identities. Then, this week, the conclusion of the rugby fake blood scandal , which saw heavy sanctions after a player slipped a capsule of red ink – detect that , Hercule Poirot! – from his sock during a match. It is a journalistic truth, of course, that with just one more example, this would be a phenomenon. I\'m talking G2 cover stories, the lot. So keep your eyes peeled. Itching powder down a passing bobby\'s neck? Whoopee cushions as makeshift silencers? Let us know and we\'ll alert Inspector Gadget.
Unless you\'ve been living under a rock (and perhaps even if you have, those rocks don\'t block out the white noise like they used to) you will know of philosophising slaphead Alain de Botton \'s week-long stint as "writer in residence" at Heathrow Terminal 5, this thanks to the many interviews and articles in which the writer has found time to participate during his frantic few days airside. The 20,000-word book that will result from his adventure, commissioned by BAA, which runs the airport, will publish on 28 September (yes, it\'s not very far away, but there are going to be pictures, so don\'t worry). It turns out that de Botton has made some headway already, and we\'re grateful to BAA\'s PR company Mischief for forwarding us the following freshly-laid extract, still warm. "Maya had been anticipating [her reunion] for the previous twelve hours. She had had butterflies since the coast of Ireland. From nine thousand metres up, she had anticipated Gianfranco\'s touch. But now, after eight minutes of sustained embraces, they had [no] alternative but to go to the car park." Well, we think that is very good indeed. And no, our opinion is entirely unrelated to de Botton\'s famously lively relationship with negative book reviewers, such as when he told a New York Times critic in June: "I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make." Nope, unrelated. An exceptionally good read.
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/aug/19/diary-bigbrother-jordan-tory
