Saturday, December 10, 2005

Celebrity Columnists

I'm not sure if Tim Harford counts as a celebrity columnist or not.... but the sudden recollection that his two excellent columns would be in the FT magazine was sufficient for me to put down my copy of the Guardian and pick up the Financial Times in Tesco just now.

Sorry Alan.... I hope I didn't miss anything interesting in today's issue...

Of course, I was probably being completely irrational since most of Tim's content is online anyway but, still.... I've never experienced this before. It's rare that I'll buy a different newspaper because of the promise of one column.

Incidentally, my friend Polly is also a fan. This gives me confidence that my decision was correct as her taste is far superior to mine.

[Update 101205 1529] D'oh! Looks like I was right.... one of his two pieces is online.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Don't tell me you are now a Guardian reader? I though it was only secondary teachers that read the Guardian? I blame your parents!!

Richard Brown said...

Hehe... :-)

Well - I find that I agree with its political perspective decreasingly often these days but I do like things like "The Guide".

Unfortunately for my parents, the more I study economics, the more I realise that free-market liberalism has won the argument.

Anonymous said...

Oh Richard! I'm flattered, though you have to remember I do like Busted, and VERY STRANGE men.

You don't seem to have been sufficiently insulting to Tim Harford, or perhaps he's devoting the weekend to his family.

Incidentally, John Lloyd wrote in the FT Weekend magazine saying that The Guardian is now Britain's best candidate for an establishment paper, meaning in this instance one free from bias towards or against social workers, teachers and nurses, at least in its reporting section. You can read the article here. Presumably he couldn't propose the Financial Times as an establishment paper as it is not mainstream enough. (On this occasion I can't be bothered to look up the ABC figures.)

I read an aphorism in Nietzsche's Human, All Too Human which I thought you might find comforting if you feel your brilliance is insufficiently recognised. I was going to put it in blog entry entitled Comfort for Richard G Brown but then I found it was a bit too long, and I'd rather clog up your blog with boring crap than mine. So here it is:

The age of arrogance The true period of arrogance for talented men comes between their twenty-sixth and thirtieth year...Older, experienced men smile about it, and remember this beautiful time in life, in which one is angry at his lot of having to be so much and seem so little.

Richard Brown said...

Thank you for the Nietzsche quote. Of course, I'm not sure how it applies to me, though. Are you implying I look 26-30? I'm not sure whether to be flattered or offended :-p

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the links to celebrity sites:)