Kangaroo Caught

Oh dear - there's trouble at St Rupert's College. I've just seen the Head Boy on the BBC. A wicked colonial student hid in the dorm and saw matron in bed with one of the local police constables. Then he conspired with the editor of the college magazine (a younger but related colonial), and blabbed the story in the campus organ "The Bare Rupert". Now, much of this will make no sense to my American readers. Watching from France, British politics seems even more upper class. The story is that the most famous British tabloid newspaper "The News of the World" is to shut down almost immediately. Journalists have been hacking phones and paying police for juicy stories. Outrage and disgust sputter from every righteous quarter as the scandal rocks .....well, actually what does it rock? This is a wicked and grubby old world and the people who lead it should be the least surprised. For every spotlight triumph, there is a grim backstage, for every tame tiger there is a cage and whip. Deep beneath it all there is an unspoken issue. Murdoch (who owns the newspaper and a lot of outer space) is a damn Australian. I think they're gonna have to ban him from the tuck shop. Oh huff puff - just be grateful that we've solved world poverty, war and disease otherwise we wouldn't have the time for this stuff. We bred and fed a bright generation of self seeking shallow thrustoids to tear at one another in pursuit of gain at any moral cost. They did all we expected of them.


All this leads me to starting where I meant to start. Books about romantic novelists who fall in love with super hunks while researching a book where a romantic novelist .....blah blah, do exist. As yet I haven't written any. When the media becomes the news it has much the same effect on me. The story is a serious one, but it just should not be a surprise to anybody. Let me fill you guys in a little. My book "Knockout" has a police theme. OK - it's a romance but all the police politics, cynicism and attitudes are authentic. I know this because after my first marriage, I took up with a Scotland Yard cop, who introduced me to Wagner and many aspects of horns and helmets. What I learned was that much of what we see of gloss and celeb glitzywitzy is contrived. I also learned that outside the middle class comfort zone there are many worlds of despair and survival. That filthy guy drunk in the littered doorway has a story but it's probably too dangerous to ask for it.


Oh - let me be quite honest about the vile, degrading, gutter dredging, over-sexed "News of the World" which is about to die. It was a fantastic paper and provided me with my earliest tingles of sexual pleasure and awareness with its utter filth and and disgusting titivation. I was appalled over and over again every single Sunday.


Emma thinx: Be outraged - it's the in rage.


Knockout! Available at Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Amazon.com/australia