Paper Monitor: In with the old
It's time for a tardy spring clean here at Monitor Towers, and yours truly has been busily rolling back the dust sheets and emptying the vacuum cleaner bags in preparation.
That is, until, on stopping for tea, biscuits and a perusal of the morning's publications - the Daily Mirror informs us of the possible demise of the office vacuum cleaner under a newly proposed EU directive to save energy.
"EU suckers!", intones the paper, while hinting at a future countrywide decline in hygiene.
Paper Monitor is not averse to saving the planet. But your humble correspondent is rather horrified to read in the Daily Express of the attendant health risks of an inefficient vacuum.
Sighing, one replaces the modern suction machine that keeps Monitor Towers dust-free with Caption Challenge's vintage carpet sweeper (a gift from Great Auntie Betty). Sometimes one must abandon new technologies in favour of traditional methods.
An octogenarian who shares this view is veteran entertainer Sir Bruce Forsyth, who has written a lengthy complaint in the Daily Mail about the prevalence of children performers on the Britain's Got Talent show, along with other grumbles about the nature of modern celebrity.
(One looks wistfully to the carpet sweeper. Surely he must have used one as a pretend microphone stand or dance partner as a boy dreaming of bright lights and greasepaint.)
Children should have their own show, says Sir Bruce in the Mail, and Simon Cowell should stop making them cry while he's at it. It used to be so different in his younger days, tap-dancing, ukulele-playing, applause…
Cowell in any case seems unmoved by the criticism, having branded Sir Bruce "Mr Grumpy". While left wondering who is the pantomime villain in this particular performance, Paper Monitor pauses mid-deep clean to tut and peer outside, favouring the world with an old-fashioned look and nibbling a Rich Tea biscuit.