The Christmas Letters - anyone else think Simon Hoggart is a sarcastic b*gger and keeps missing the point?

[Kathyate6mincepies]

Am switching between laughing like a drain at this book and wanting to throw it across the room!

The showy offy ones about children or foreign travel are fair targets, but IMO he just comes over as snide when he sneers at the couple who give a detailed account of their day and then say 'Are we in a rut? Yes I suppose we are but it's a lovely rut.' Anyone else think 'awww bless!' at this point?

He seems to think no-one except himself is capable of irony - surely when someone says the most exciting thing that happened to them recently is that their winter fuel payment was paid into their bank account, they are actually commenting gently on the dullness of their own life and how hard it is to make ends meet as an old person?

And as for the farmers who mention in their letter that supermarkets import beef at 98p/kilo but they need 220p/kilo to be profitable, well, presumably that is the key figure that is affecting their livelihood and future that year. So why shouldn't they put it in their letter? And, you know, maybe the letter wasn't originally meant for Guardian media types?

Grr!

The quality of mass-produced letters has improved in recent years, probably thanks to people like Hoggart for pointing out how NOT to do them, although they can still end up quite bland. The best use of them is when you have a fairly momentous piece of news you want all your friends & relations to know such as divorce, death, accident etc, without having to write it out 100 times. But if you just want to say that life has carried on much as before, a couple of handwritten lines in a card is much better, imo.

Simon Hoggart shagged Blunkett's woman? I thought that was Boris Johnson.

Elastic - my mum used to do exactly that thing of boasting about your children, and then insulting them.
Eg 'Kathy is doing a PhD at Cambridge, we wish she would get a proper job like everyone else.' Ha bloody ha

He used to present the News Quiz, cod (before Sandi T)

He has a weekly general column in the Sat Guardian as well as the political ones - he is actually a v funny writer, eg this one (mind you with that material we could all be hilarious )

Completely agree Kathy. I started reading the book and tittering away happily but became more and more uncomfortable at sneering at people's achievements or lack of them . Yes, some of the letters are pooterish in the extreme, but there is a sneering nastiness underlying the commentary - a kind of world-weary boredom with them which I found much more tiresome than the silly boasts or depressing catalogues of misfortune. Didn't finish it in the end and felt rather cross that I had filled Hoggart's coffers.

Does he get all the money? I sort of assumed that, as so much of the content of the books was donated to him, that he would then donate an equivalent amount of the royalties on to a charity. Anybody know?

If not, what a twat

I don't think we have any reason to think he is giving away the royalties. I don't think most writers would feel obliged to do that (even well paid ones).

Yes, Pooter is viewed affectionately by the authors of Diary of a Nobody, more so than Hoggart feels about the authors of these letters I think.

Yes, he has that smug middle class snobbery thing going on and am I the only one to notice, he shamelessly plugs his book in his column EVERY saturday.

We've had a flow-diagram one again this year, from a couple of who always send one. It's quite nice - looks handwritten (although obviously colour-photocopied) and is actually informative without being vaunting. And it's different!