As the person on whose shoulders the heavy burden of bedding this post falls I would like to share with you just a small example of this onerous load, and perhaps you may empathise with me in my plight.
Some little while ago Ira Maine reported on his defenestration. C & P’s chief illustrator, Sir Bertram Postule, presented sketches to accompany this piece just a few days ago.
Mr Maine, whose likeness appears here, took some slight umbrage at these illustrations and the resultant correspondence is reprinted in full below.
On 26/03/2013, at 5:48 PM, Mr Ira Maine wrote
My dear Wossname,
My text mentions clearing the overgrown Banksia. I wouldn’t use a hammer, would I? Shears, secateurs perhaps more appropriate?
The blog’s IRA has a moustache and straight hair whereas this chap seems to have shaved and to have curly hair! Maybe it all happened to somebody else?
Try and pull yourself together, there’s a good chap.
Regards
IRA
On 27 March 2013 07:08, Sir Bertram Postule answered:
Dear Sir,
as ex editor of esquire magazine I can assure you that we on the editorial staff go to great lengths to establish both authenticity and identification of nascent trends in popular culture………..in close consultation with both our stylist, publicity and advertising department (whom are currently engaged with the manufacturers of Old Spice and Pimms No 3)… it is deemed expedient to develop in this instance the rustic character of the narrator into a more manly and identifiable type. Although not strictly a portrayal of Ira, we felt nonetheless that this more tousled character would be more readily identified, (post hospitalisation) with the sophisticated character indicated in the portrait sketch as a consequence of liberal applications of Old Spice, and restorative quaffing of Pimms…. I’m sure you’ll agree that this considered strategy will have an enormous impact upon our readership, and encourage within the acceptable bounds of artistic license, the emergence, nay the transformation of the celebrated Ira Maine as a man of culture and learning…
You must understand in light of the overwhelming flood of interest from “reader wives” we feel that this strategy will bring enormous benefits to both the readers and the long term establishment of Ira, as colloquial short-hand for ” rustic version of Sean Connery’, though, (and you must understand this), our sponsors are unable at present to exchange your Holden Kingswood sedan for a 1965 Aston Martin DB5….
Yours in complicity
Sir Bertram Pustule….. ( sub illustrator)
To which Ira Maine responded
Dearest Bertie,
How pithily you present things! With what stunning elan you present your refined point of view. So modest, nay, understated as to summon a catch in the throat as one reads your illuminating ruminations. (Back in ’89 I had my own ruminations illuminated but they found nothing)
I am, as you are no doubt aware, fully seized of your concern as to my ‘private and personal’ well being. and am aware that perhaps your Publicity Dept. would wish to present me in a more dashing, devil-may-care way.
In the light of this dare I suggest a cross between a bookish Norm Gunston and a drug-crazed Sherlock Holmes?
Or, with a barely clad buxom beauty draped over my arm, and I with my fangs extended towards her pink and trembling bosom-
A cross between Woody Allen and Old Mother Hubbard?
I leave these thoughts, suggestions, what you will, to your exquisite discretion.
Your servant, Sir,
Peregrine Luff-Handel
The Laurels,
Kingdom-Under-Fire,
Much Wreckage,
Dunbommen.
THIS CORRESPONDENCE IS NOW CLOSED.
