Richard Littlejohn: even worse than I remember

I generally avoid the Daily Mail as much as possible, especially Richard Littlejohn's column. Today was the first time for a very long time I actually read one, and I really wish that I hadn't. I was drawn in by the headline: "Titter ye not, it's an Inconvenient Sooth." When I say I was drawn in, what I actually mean was that I noticed a piss-poor climate change pun and forced myself to read the idiocy that follows.

After a long time not reading one of Littlejohn's column I had began to find that I was feeling a lot happier, my laptop screen was strangely intact and I even began to start to tolerate the Daily Mail. Well, I reasoned to myself, I haven't read anything particularly objectionable there recently. I even began to wonder whether Littlejohn was that bad, my hazy recollection was that he was generally wrong, but I began to forget the rage that the merest sight of his fat sneering face above one of his outpourings of sub-par comedy 'polemicism' brought me to.

Then I read this latest offering... no sooner had I got through the first paragraph...

"According to the historian Edward Gibbon, the decline and fall of the Roman Empire was brought about largely by the ­decadence and arrogance of the ruling elite. Now a new theory has been put forward by modern scientists. They blame, wait for it, ­climate change."


... and the rage had returned. The first few lines are fine, but you soon see the set up for his brilliant last line... wait for it, the crazy boffins think that climate change could have done it. Oh, the wit is legendary, the comic timing, the set up then the 'you couldn't make it up' moment. Dick Littlejohn sits at his desk, happily cracking one off because he thinks he's come up with another comic gem.

I read the rest of the shit, but I'm sorry, I'm not re-reading all and making witty remarks about it, I'll just pick out a few select quotes such as...

"I have been sent here from ­Pompeii with my master, Silvius Berlusconus, who is attending a Symposium on climatus changus — what we used to call in Rome ‘the weather’."


Conclusion: All Latin words are English words with the suffix 'us' added. Letus meus addus, Littljohnus cockus. Comprendere?

Anyway, we had to get out of ­Pompeii sharpish, owing to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which covered the city in volcanic ash and grounded every ox-cart from here to Icelandus. Typical, isn’t it? One ­volcano and the whole of the Roman Empire comes to a standstill.

Littlejohn gets topical, comparing one volcano to... another volcano. Genius.

The Senate had just been to see a new play at the Colosseum, An Inconvenient Sooth, by Senator Al Gorus, which ended with a polar bear being sacrificed on a block of ice.


Normally they sacrifice a few vestal virgins, but my master Silvius Berlusconus said he had a better use for them. No, listen. ­Titter ye not!


Oh, just fuck it, I just punched the screen.