A thoroughly good sort of Chap

Michael “Atters” Attree esq. is a true eccentric. He doesn’t like the term because, in his own words, “it has connotations of people excreting in ladies handbags and eating candles.” But an eccentric he is. The best sort.

Atters is a stallholder at the magical ‘Snoopers Paradise‘ market in Brighton. His stall – or Emporium as he calls it – sells old stuff. Pre-Victorian if possible. “It’s a way of being like a museum curator and I can hoard all sorts of junk,” he says, “I do the real dead people’s stuff. Fossils and, yes, dead people. That’s what I specialise in.”

As well as running his Emporium Atters is Editor of Roguishness for The Chap, a satirical magazine which laments modern day values and calls for a revolution of panache. A publication that I urge anyone with a sense of humour to seek out.

Because of Atters’s charming affectations and my new-found love of the magazine I am seriously considering becoming a Chappette. Life could be a lot more fun with an injection of manners, tweed and cucumber sandwiches. And, as a worshipper at the alter of Hendricks Gin, I think I’m a prime candidate.

Kim Hollamby and the online audience

Are we all lazy, disloyal and impatient? Kim Hollamby thinks so. Crudely put, that is his opinion of online audiences. And, as Digital Development Director of magazine publishers IPC media he should know a thing or two about them.
It’s a bit of a worry. If we, as bloggers and web editors, are ever lucky enough to get an audience we can’t rest on our laurels as they’re likely to jump ship at the slightest sign of inactivity. My blog stats (something I used to check daily, and now happen across every so often) would tend to agree.

Additionaly Hollamby mooted the idea of the 1:10:100 rule of online journalism saying that one person writes something, ten interact with it, and a further 89 passively read it. (Of course, strictly speaking, that’s the 1:10:89 rule…) It’s a rather heartening thought for anyone with a blog. Spending hours honing a blog post only to have one paltry comment, a month later (from your mum), is less pitiable if you can convince yourself it means 10 other people read it.

STOP EATING SHIT AND DO SOME EXERCISE.

Come January, year-round shows like ‘Diet Doctors’ are joined by ads aimed at the slightly podgy and even much loved magazines such as the Times Style push ‘New Health Tips for the New Year’.

First channel five’s Diet Doctors: For anyone who’s not a halfwit it’s fairly obvious that bad food and no exercise means bad health and (for those of us without super-quick metabolisms) excess fat. Why then do otherwise sensible people strip down to their white M&S bra and pants and reveal their flabby, stretch-marked bodies to a nationwide audience in order to be diagnosed? What does it matter which part of your inactive, junk-food-guzzling lifestyle is resulting in fungal infections and broken veins? As qualified as I’m sure the two oh-so-concerned presenters are, their expertise is really quite superfluous. They lay out a week’s worth of the terrible ‘food’ and say “this is what you’re putting in your body EVERY WEEK,” at which their subject gasps/cries/wonders aloud just how it could have happened and I find myself screaming “it’s just the contents of your shopping trolley unwrapped,” at the television. Without fail everyone is told to eat fruit and vegetables and do some exercise. Duh.

Next, the magazines: It’s one thing when 60p rags like Take a Break, Closer and Pick Me Up scream that you can ‘Lose a Stone in Three Weeks Eating Only Doughnuts’ but QUITE another when the beloved Times Style magazine hops down from its pedestal and joins in. This week clever, witty (but sadly right-wing) India Knight says you can ‘Eat Yourself Slim’, she suggests cutting down on carbs and sugar but all the time stresses that you can still eat AS MUCH AS YOU LIKE. If she’s not careful she’ll end up on Diet Doctors with a load of side-effects of iron and protein deficiency. Some better ideas off the top of my head: run yourself thin, cycle yourself thin, or swim yourself thin.

Worst though are the adverts. Particularly the one telling us we can lose weight by replacing two meals a day with a bowl of Special K. Of course we can, because losing weight is all about consuming less energy than we use, and if we dramatically cut our calorie intake then we’ll probably do that. Eating nothing is another way that weight loss can be achieved. Unfortunately our poor old bodies need nutrients n that to survive. Annoying, eh?