Boring Writer Declares Less Boring Writer "Boring" Shock

In the days before Sordel suffered the misfortune of subscribing to a newspaper, I admonished a friend for writing a vituperative series of blogs about columnists. "Set your gaze upon a target lofty enough for your critical muse," I encouraged him.

Yet it comes to this.

Richard Brooks, the "veteran arts reporter" of The Sunday Times, writes what is intended to be a bitchy gossip column by the name of Biteback. This week he turned his attention, inter alia, to Tony Blair, and this (in full) is what he had to say:

"Tony Blair has selected nine of his favourite books for a new literary magazine, We Love This Book. I'm gobsmacked he has actually read nine. Even so, three are religious tracts - no surprises there. At least he remembered to list the boring Ivanhoe, by Walter Scott. After all, it was the one he chose on Desert Island Discs 15 years ago."

Really, Richard? You are gobsmacked that Tony Blair has read nine books? You really are very susceptible to surprise; I would have thought that Tony Blair is exactly the sort of person who would have read nine books.

In any case, it's the sort of line that would be pretty thin if used of Wayne Rooney, but it would need some dressing up for him. Something like: "Wayne Rooney has selected nine of his favourite books for a new literary magazine: I'm surprised his colouring pencils held out that long." (It's not comedy gold, Ladies and Gentlemen, but at least there is a genre of Rooney stupidity jokes.)

With Blair, the jokes are all to do with how much of a liar he is, or how superficial. "Tony Blair has given us a list of his favourite books, which only leaves us to wonder which of them he didn't enjoy and which of them he hasn't read."

Such a missed opportunity.

I'm not convinced by the other jokes, either. I'm sure that many people find Blair boring, but it isn't exactly a satirical staple. Is the joke that Blair is boring and therefore likes boring books? Or is the joke that Walter Scott is boring? If the former, a better joke would be to say that he is too exciting by half. If the latter, well, Scott entertained a lot more people than Brooks ever will and his books are scarcely the dust standard of literary dullness.

Oh, and those "religious tracts"? A look at the Bookseller reassures us that there are no religious tracts in Blair's list. The books are Jesus Was A Jew, The Crusades Through Arab Eyes and Martin Lings's biography of Muhammad. These are not exactly the books that one would choose if you were seeking to characterise Blair as a joyless Catholic.

Then again, perhaps Brooks was counting The Lord of the Rings as a religious tract. When it comes to titanic battles of Good and Evil, Blair may have been more Tolkienesque than was entirely to the interest of the rest of us.