ABSTRACT
Being a columnist is not hugely unlike playing God. In exchange for hitting your deadline and filling the space, you get to play judge, jury and bailiff. You may decide that wit, whimsy and cynicism are your strongest suits and sharpest weapons. You may prefer confrontation and provocation: standing on your soapbox, eschewing all pretence at balance and aiming directly for the jugular, a stance expertly adopted by the likes of John Sadler of the Sun and Peter Wilson of the Daily Mirror (and perhaps best described – in reluctant homage to contemporary British journalism’s Rottweiler-in-chief – as Littlejohnesque). You might even opt, unfashionably, for the wise-as-a-monastery-owl approach, as practised so admirably by Hugh McIlvanney, Paul Hayward and Richard Williams, for whom substance is all. The danger lies in the fact that you are also being granted – as the Beastie Boys so eloquently put it – ‘licence to ill’.
