Writing To Tharg

[Buttonman]

Please confirm your name and town mogzilla in order that your claims may be verified.We get a lot of braggers 'round here and we need to maintain standards.

[House of Usher]

Bump.

[Proudhuff]

Alert! Letters in prog!!

[Buttonman]

*Sob* Don't have mine! Any combine harverters sighted? Cos I pished the cash away on TPO.

[Dark Jimbo]

Your groats are safe, Button. A lovely six letters for you to get your teeth into, one of them, funnily enough (from the board's own Grant Groggans) bemoaning the lack of an input page!

[I, Cosh]

The Holmes to your Moriarty, Steve Frame of Caithness, also makes an appearance...

[Buttonman]

I'm Holmes! Dull Frame of snooker is Mrs Hudson at best.

Actually I'm Watson, but that would only confuse an already weak analogy. That Mycroft Kermode would doubtlessly get something worked out and printed by his boyfriend Tharg.

[Grant Goggans]

Yay!  I've got another Heroclix coming!

[Buttonman]

Yeah yeah Lestrade Goggins, don't forget that I got blackballed so the likes of you can glory in your Heroclix triumphs!

[Grant Goggans]

I'll have to protest the "Lestrade" label.  Surely as the only semi-regular American in the letters page, I could be Jim Rockford or Columbo or Philip Marlowe or somebody from California.

What do you mean you got blackballed, though?

[Buttonman]

Well if my great letters didn't see print it's the only explanation I can come up with.

[Grant Goggans]

Now I feel kind of bad since my incredibly silly "please give us back our Input page, Mr. Tharg" actually made it in...

I've still got my fingers crossed on the combine harvester front for next week's issue though.

[Buttonman]

[Buttonman]

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Well weâ??re back, and of that there is no doubt. After a letters shortage of biblical proportions Tharg has listened to the common man and unleashed a sextet of scribbles on a hungry nation. Itâ??s always welcome to have the letters on the inside back page, and the selection is varied catering  for both those with short attention spans and those who like to have the arse bored from under them.

The reason for the letter page return is quickly realised in a sickening opening salvo from letters cherry popper Jules Phillips. Itâ??s not his fault; heâ??s twelve and wants a toy but what rankles is the top spot being awarded for a blatant piece of product placement by Tharg. â??Oh by happy chance they are in the shops tomorrowâ?? - we paraphrase but you get the idea.

Of course cynical readers have long spotted the easy publishing route of looking for something that they know that Tharg is pimping and then ask for it. Whether a 12 year old should be reading a magazine that has the word â??shitâ?? and the acronym â??F.U.C.Kâ?? in it is another matter. Still well done Jules and I will strike down with great vengeance and furious anger any who besmirch your achievement.

Simpson eh? New Man? No. Gary Simpson is a 4 letter veteran, all having appeared in the prog. He first appeared on the radar in prog1416 in 2006 and previously appeared in a star letter outing in prog 1486.

Gary says he loves all things zombie, and so he should - he comes from Newcastle! His letter is a pretty dull rundown of his thoughts on various stories with no real insights offered. His final paragraph starts with â??Ohâ?? which to us says he didnâ??t plan the thing from the off (We suggest Letters2000 package) or he had a brain wave late in the day and couldnâ??t be arsed rewriting his memo. Sloppy stuff and we can only hope that Thargâ??s letter title â??Dead Goodâ?? is used in an ironic sense.

Next up is boy from the bogs Brian McTighe who laments the hijacking of Irish culture from his base in County, er, Cheltenham. We quite like the cut of Brianâ??s jib as he goes the well worn route of feigning outrage before a bit of self deprecation. Thargâ??s answer about the Irish having already been lampooned doesnâ??t make a lick of sense as the correspondent was querying the use of the name, a point that goes sadly unanswered.

Brian is the second of todayâ??s new boys  but he does have a McTighe compadre in the form of Richard who debuted in prog 2000. Richard is the real deal coming from the staunch Irish peat fields of, er, Thornton Heath.

Dull old Steve (watching paint dry on a window) Frame is up next  with a four line funny. Itâ??s OK stuff but heâ??s basically just regurgitating the script from the Dredd heâ??s writing about. That said we always like the word â??keechâ?? (shit) being bandied about, so some points there.

This make Steveâ??s  total an unfeasibly high six, although it does dilute his star letter ratio to 50:50. He has one cohort in Caithness, a D.Reay who also has a 50:50 score having achieved the double in 2004. No one in Caithness has ever had a megazine letter printed - still it is almost three quid!

Largest letter of the week award goes to Chris Askham, and if we had to Askham something itâ??d be along the lines of â??where did you get all this mince?â??. Chris takes us down his own personal memory lane and talks some cobblers about â??thrill power exposureâ??. The big girl admits to weeping over Origins - Câ??mon tearful it wasnâ??t that bad - and likes Bob Byrne. A doting billet doux for Tharg but a sick bag for the rest of us.

Chrisâ?? letter is his second, the first having blighted prog 1483 in 2006. He has yet to shed his star letter cherry, like Linton Porteous.

Last up and rightly so is our very own Hipster Dad, Grant Goggans. Grant recently likened himself to the star of â??The Rockford Filesâ?? - surely Wagon Train would be a more appropriate show for him, as band waggoning is clearly his forte. His grovelling plea for a letters page clearly sprung form a long running campaign being waged on the interweb and if he had any sense of decency a Heroclix would be towards Paisley as we speak.

Actually we bear no grudges, and having burned our bridges we are happy to see some cynical git picking up the baton and running with it - right to the Heroclix bank!

Conrats to Grant for being only the fourth Earthlet ever to chalk up 20 letters in a period spanning 1998-2007. Heâ??s only missed out  on years 2000 and 2001 - serving a deuce for plagiarism Hispser?! His lead over Kavanaugh (17) and Crouch (16) increases by one.

All in all an enjoyable letters page but no inroads made in the quest to see a COMBINE HARVESTER roam all over the Nerve Centre. We have also yet to test the drawings beast as no letter writer of recent times can claim a doodle in the dim and distant past. Must try harder!

See you next week. (Unlikely)

[Bolt-01]

Gary Simpson is also one of the contributors back in the day for Class of '79 and I've got a rather nifty Johnny Alpha on horseback that will appear as soon as appropriate in Dogbreath.

Chris Askham is, of course THE Chris Askham of Solar Wind and FutureQuake fame. He is also going to be in the next Dogbreath with a strip featuring the Strontium bitch herself.

Bolt-01