‘Andy Blatherer’ was not his name. That, however, is all that I’ve changed. His other properties are as I observed them.
He worked in the media – a word that, as Graham Greene observed over 40 years ago, signifies nothing other than bad journalism. Greene might have added ‘and pointless meetings’. Andy loved meetings. He justified his existence by attending numberless mind-numbing boredom fests. He also loved blathering (the sound of his own voice was the sweetest music he had ever heard), duplicity, owning several mobiles to blather into, jobbery, sycophancy (to those above him in the hierarchical, we’re-all-on-given-names-terms structure of the media), belittlement (of those below him), inventing expenses, something for nothing, uncontrolled greed, sloth. He had what is called a healthy appetite – which means nothing of the sort, it means the opposite. His capacity for lunch was boundless. He would leave a lunch meeting to waddle to a lunch meeting. He was always up for elevenses and high tea and, yes, a snack or two in between. He weighed 20 stone, was constantly short of breath, popped Prozac, smoked heavily and looked about a decade and a half older than he was.
