My Piece About Blogging, Written Last Week When I Was Moody And Thinking Too Much About Carrots

I have to ask you to indulge me with the following post. I scribbled it last week in a blatant attempt to pen myself out of a bad mood brought about by an unpleasant incident in Manchester whereby I was reduced to tears by a lactose intolerant leisure consultant and the work of proto-impressionist painter Adolphe Valette. You will find me, at the beginning of last week, doubting the value of blogging, though by Wednesday, I had moved on to doubt the value of dogging. By Friday, I was taking pot shots at logging and then the whole timber industry. Happily, I can now report that I’ve now changed my mind about all these things, except dogging, which still seems like a reasonable way to make new friends but I’m not so sure that it’s the most fuel efficient way of having a good time up a country lane late at night.

Change the sheets and polish that porcelain! I’ve decided that old Madeley is coming to stay with you.

But I don’t want you to worry or prepare anything special. I’ll only be with you for two weeks and I expect you to work me until I collapse. You want a pool digging? Just tell me how deep. Want the house repainting? A man hasn’t been born that can beat me around a Dulux colour chart. Work me hard, pay me nothing: that’ s how I like to be treated. It will feel just like being back at Channel 4. Damn their devious, back-stabbing, ‘O’Grady is more popular among the post-menopausal demographic than you’ hides.

But by now, you’re probably wondered if I’ve finally lost it. I too sometimes suspect that I’m walking east when my sanity is going west. Only, in this case, I don’t really think that I'm losing it is in the sense of walking though crowded markets whilst combing the hair of a heavily rouged coconut I like to call Molly. I just mean: how much longer can I go on like this?

Browsing the web, I stumbled across a group of my fellow bloggers talking about their monthly hits. Now, I know that you think you know what I’m about to say before I say it: that I’m about to wail on about how some other blog has forty times the hits that I have and that the most interesting thing they’ve ever written is the word ‘chiaroscuro’. And if you thought that’s what I was going to say, then you just take a merit badge and go stand at the front of the class. Bless the inordinate amount of soft fibrous fluff on your lovely cottony socks, for you are indeed right.

Blogging is an activity that most of us take up for purely narcissistic reasons. Those of us that don’t work professionally as journalists, will probably be writing in the vague hope that we can find work as journalists or writers or cartoonists or porn magnates. (I originally wrote ‘porn magnets’ but Judy won’t allow me to keep them on the fridge door. [Originally, I typed ‘porn midgets’ but that’s a story I’ve promised to keep under my hat. (I originally wrote ‘under my cat’ but that’s where I’m hiding the gloriously ribald account of my affair with a one-eyed Bulgarian vegetable seller called Molly who also happened to sell coconuts)]).

Anyway, to get back to my point: there can’t be many people who don’t open up their first Blogger account without thinking that they’re going to make a difference. The truth is that very few of us make a difference. There are ways to blog successfully and I consistently refuse to take those routes. I won’t post any videos of tap dancing dogs. I shirk porn (I originally typed ‘shake porn’ but... Oh, never mind...) I also won’t repost gags ripped from 'The Onion'. This blog is all me and is undoubtedly weaker for that. And, in a sense, every blog is about ‘me’. And ‘me’ isn’t very interesting. Have you read Iain Dale this week? Me, me, me, me, me. And Tories. Shudder, as Fry would say. Shudder.

The unhappy truth is that blogging is the poor relative to other social networking schemes that require far less effort and bring far more in terms of reward. Blogging also requires effort when a service like Twitter asks that you only write 120 characters a post. Facebook doesn’t even require that you write at all. You just send your friends vampiric bites to acknowledge their existence. ‘Dick Madeley has poked you with a carrot. Do you want to poke him back? Choose you vegetable of choice...’ Hardly the best advertisement for 'user created content'. After all: who likes being poked with a carrot? Not me. Not even Bill Oddie and I should know. I've poked him with plenty of carrots in my time.

Which brings all the way back to my offer. I’ve worked out the figures and I’ve calculated that the effort it takes me to do all my blogging is as profitable as if I came to work for each of you, my regular readers, for a fortnight every year. So long as you’ll pay my travel expenses, I won’t be out of pocket. For that, you’ll get at least forty hours of work out of me. Laying paths, decorating, fixing computer problems, teaching, or general administration: I can do the lot, possibly concurrently. And yes, if you want to, I’ll even let you poke me with a carrot.

Which reminds me of this story I keep under my cat...

Why Do Russians Love Stephen Fry? It Doesn't Make Sense...

As much as I think the man is the answer to every catastrophe that can befall this country, Stephen Fry sometimes casts an unwelcome shadow over this blog. I noticed this when I examined the week’s statistics. Apart from the usual range of interesting questions that bring people here via Google (such as ‘can I get a suntan over [sic] by beard’) I noticed that I'm being visited by a discerning reader in Russia who comes to this blog having obviously bookmarked:

http://richardmadeley.blogspot.com/search/label/stephen%20fry

For the non-technical of you out there, this means that they only get to see posts that area about Stephen. Bill Oddie won't do it for them. Nor will Clarkson or Gill. It even means that if they visit me every day, this visitor will never get to see the other wonderful things I post, vis-à-vis things about me. They want Fry and nothing but Fry. It’s hard to live with that sort of rejection. I'm considering the hemlock...

So look here, dear Russian reader and friend of this blog: can I urge you to try the larger Richard Madeley experience? Visit me as http:///richardmadeley.blogspot.com where you will discover that on occasions that I too can wear tweed and sound condescending. Deary me! Indeed, I can, though i don’t want you to worry yourself about it. Though I might not be as witty as Stephen, there's a damn sight better muscle on my carriage. Lord, were I a less handsome man, they would merely call me stunning. I shower at least twice a month and always carry a pebble or two in my pocket to throw at ‘normal’ people. It’s fun being me but it would be more fun if I had you along for the journey.

Toodle pip.

Richard’s Poem To The Googlebot Spider

Dear Googlebot, my friend, my one true reader,
How did you find your way, from whence did you wonder?
Where are you going now that you’ve seen my little jape,
About Bill Oddie’s onions and Stephen Fry’s cape?
And now you know all about little Judith Charmers,
That she’s psychic, four foot two, and recommends the Bahamas.
Googie, I think that there’s only you and I
And by writing this piece, I’m wasting my time.
You are but a robot, a piece of electronic kit
And have no idea of succulent English wit.
Yet you are quite welcome, I’m so glad you’re here
More than bloody exiled Brits from Tunisia.

© Richard Madeley, 2007

Richard Madeley's Poem To His Blog's Latest Visitor, Mr. Stephen Fry

The Ode Best Left Untravelled

I saw you, you bugger, thinking you’d be
Just an anonymous surfer from across the sea.
But my blog has few hits, Mr. Stephen Fry,
So you could hardly pass by this eager old eye.
But I’m glad that you came, for now you may see
A person unlocked by your book on poetry.
I followed your rules and on page ninety three,
Learned diddly dum and diddly dee,
Metrical whatsits, iambs, and meter,
Which I’m using here. Block storage heater…
Have you guessed I haven’t worked out the rhymes,
What to stress or even when to enjamb my lines?
I should really have chosen to write this in free
Verse. Oh, now this line’s running awkwardly.
Goddamn it! A pure rhyme. It’s getting no better,
And now I need something random like ‘red setter’.
That’s just lousy, I’m like the new Colly Cibber,
The poetic equivalent of poor old Fred Dibnah.
Mr. Fry, you were a fine blog statistic,
Then you weren’t, I’d missed you, it’s bleeding sadistic.
You’re a swine, a rotter, a cowardly cad,
You wonder how I know? I’m nearly as bad.
Or perhaps you smiled and reached for the phone,
And intend to sue me as soon as you’re home.
Don’t try, please not until I’ve told you the tale,
Of when I was viciously fondled by Alexi Sayle.
So, like a part-nibbled herring, here I shall wait,
For you to come finish what’s left on your plate.
You were here, for a while, but now you are gone.
How do I end? With bugger! And diddly dum.

© Richard Madeley, 2007