Oh good… it’s not just me, then…

I have a great admiration for MK but, seriously, does he think we’ll believe that?

Dee

I agree the 'Binky' factor must play a strong part in all walks of life. I think that if 'Binky' submits unto 'Binky', and submits a marketable product, then 'Binky' will choose 'Binky' over any of us.

Not invariably, but enough to be statistically significant.

I remember a few years back, there was a column in the Guardian, a diary of a teenager type of thing - and it was obvious it was fictional - but there was a big fuss made in certain quarters (the writer wasn't a 'Binky', you see) that it was written in bad faith, was an imposter, 'passing off' as the genuine thing. The next thing was, a teenager, and daughter of a publishing/journalism big-wig, had a gig with the paper. Didn't last as I recall, so perhaps quality will 'out' at last. (Yeh, and the moon is made of green cheese.)

The teenage daughter is now out of a prestigious University (slightly younger than Bologna) and swimming content in a warm sea of Binkys.

Jim

I don't know about all that, Jim - some of it I can't even follow - but I do wonder about columns like that written by Michele Hanson in The Guardian. For yonks she wittered on about being at the mercy of her senile mother in the attic and her goodtime daughter, usually out on the town. Now the mother has died and the daughter has gone off on a gap year so she has to witter about the woman she walks her dog with on Hampstead Heath. I read with increasing incredulity. Some Binky!

Sheila

Well Sheila, I was trying to avoid libel!

Michelle Hanson - could you ever work out what her relationship was with a) her husband (divorced I think, but still torturing him) b) Fielding c) Gardner?

Shame about her mother, but she'd had a good innings and the end was merciful - for the readers at any rate. One of those columns I enjoy in a car-crash sort of way.

But not a Binky, no. Too low on the totem pole.

Jim

Haha! Yes, it certainly was merciful. No, I didn't work out the relationships and didn't try. I keep meaning to stop reading the Guardian. My Journalism tutor, to whom I complained that the irritation factor far outweighed the entertainment value said the column 'must speak to univeral concerns'. It was the wrong person to ask, though - she asked me what 'liquor' was in a piece I'd written about a pie and mash shop. She'd lived in London all her life, and there's me having to explain.

Oh, I remember what the current concern is - selling up the big house in Hampstead to buy a flat. Take the monetary constraints most people face out of the equation and it's not a problem, but she's really milking it. Have these newspapers no shame? In the same newspaper, or one very similar nearby, a younger couple are househunting, too, but they are looking in the half-million price-bracket. I really must stop reading it. I only bought it yesterday for 'Wicker Man'

I still don't get 'Binky'. When I looked it up on Google it seemed to have some connection with children, but it can't be that.Ah-didn't Bertie Wooster have a pal called Binky Beaumont - does it mean someone with a title or a member of the aristocracy? That makes much more sense.

This has almost drifted off-topic, I think.

Sheila

Sheila - "drifted off-topic" - yes, and I don't care!

'Binky' is probably derived from Wodehouse and used in conversation by me for a number of years. Not that I suffer from class-envy or anything (I know my place).

The £0.5mK flathunters made me laugh. They could get a really excellent early Edwardian 4 bedroom house in Highams Parkfor less than that - with a beautiful lake, and Epping Forest nearby. 23 minutes to Liverpool Street by fast electric train (if the system works as it should). Only drawback is the ---- family of Beverley Road (so don't move there), but with a bit of luck social workers will turn them into potash any day soon.

And the ignorance of 'liquor' made me laugh even more. Strewth.

I didn't cotton on that Ms Hanson lived in Hampstead. I always imagined her in Kentish Town somehow (not far from Hampstead, admittedly).

Jim