Everyone needs a role-model, though for us Grumpy Old Sods it's hard to find anyone we can admire because the world is so full of witless jobsworths, prating know-alls and brain-dead oiks.
Nevertheless, The GOS has to admit that his own tip for the top is A.A.Gill. Not only is this man a world-class Grump with a soul totally embalmed in vicious bile, but he has a spiteful way with words that leaves one quite breathless.
Here he is in the Sunday Times this week, writing about one of The GOS's favourite programmes, The X Factor …
"… I watched last Sunday and, oh giddy good grief, the blubbing … I can't resist mentioning the tears, the relentless, snotty, dribbling, witless self-pity of it. Everybody sobs all the time. They gurn with incontinent faces. Some of them can't even get through a naff karaoke power ballad without coming over all lumpy and wrung out.
"And each of them has a back story of mawkish, Dickensian calamity - dead mums, dads, kids, wives, kittens - which they refer to like pitiful limericks at the beginning and end of their acts, begging for a sympathy vote.
"It's all howls and hugs, a study in solipsism. My pain is the world's pain. My tears entitle me to success. I am owed a Christmas single because I've been unhappy.
"The emotion is such a formless whiteout, so operatically disproportionate, that at first it makes you smile shyly and then giggle and finally howl with helpless laughter. It's the funniest programme on television, and I laugh till I cry."
The GOS says: Come on, A.A.Gill, don't hold back. Tell us what you really think.
I think in my next life, if I can't be Simon Cowell, I'd like to be A.A.Gill. He must have such fun.
either on this site or on the World Wide Web.
Copyright © 2008 The GOS
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