I’ve been an extremely bad friend and not yet written anything about Venn That Tune, by Andrew (who long-term readers will know as Salvadore, who guest-edited here for a while).

Andrew’s the reason why this journal started in an indirect sort of fashion, in that we both wrote comedy together for a while before he left the partnership to become successful. I went on to Village-based material, whereas he started exploring the potential of maths, and came up with the song graph idea that lots of people seem to think ‘just happened’ on the internet.

Anyway, the book’s very funny, especially the footnotes section. I’ve bought it for Christmas for my cousin who was in a pre-Genesis Phil Collins band, and if you have any relatives or friends with similar early prog-rock connections, I strongly advise you to do the same. Or just anyone who likes music.

Andrew’s done a bit of press, but was unfortunately hit by the Daily Telegraph, who inflicted a ‘hejoked’ on him – no doubt to maintain the balance between jealous and threatened so-called MSM media and a mere blogger who has written a book. A ‘hejoked’ is a common device that any comic or humorist dreads – it is a phrase frequently used by writers with no sense of humour whatsoever, and is often accompanied by an unwanted exclamation mark.

Essentially, the concept behind a ”hejoked’ is that you can report the funniest, wittiest, pithiest, cleverest, most killer comic line ever, and utterly destroy it by using the phrase ‘he joked’ as a suffix.

“I’ll have an empty arm,” he joked.

“Infamy! Infamy! They’ve all got it in for me!” he joked.

“I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me,” he joked.

I have never really seen a ‘hejoked’ in action before and it was terrible to behold. But despite that, the book’s doing well, and I do urge you to ‘check it out’, as they say on the Internet.

Pants situation: down to two pairs once more.