Me and a Stapler of My Own

From The Listener

Let’s talk newspapers and magazines.

Many papers have long contained a kind of questionnaire feature, where the guest of the week will be quizzed on what book currently lies on their bedside table,¹ on who they’d like as an ideal dinner guest, what advice they wish they had been given when younger, and so forth. The Sunday Times Magazine had (and for all I know, still has) a back page feature called “A Life In The Day Of” – and most Sundays, weeklies and their supplements have similar regular pages or half pages that constitute what is essentially an interview without the bother of a full face-to-face profile or the impertinence of too many questions about sex and politics. Indeed, the victim-of-the-week can do the whole thing by email these days.