Come and have a go

It is on offer particularly to the internet critics who, by the sound of their rantings, have a lot to say.

All you have to do is write 650 to 700 words a week - any subject - in your own time, and meet the deadline (noon every Sunday, which is when I put this "drivel" together, in my own time).

No excuses for being late. You must deliver, even if you can't string two words together, or you can't get to your computer for beer cans and pizza boxes.

Oh, just one thing. There's no pay (because I don't get a penny extra for doing it), and you have to keep it up every week for at least six years (which I have, so far).

You also have to put your real name to it (with picture), and take the flak. It has to be legally sound (no racism, sexism or any -ism) and we do ask that you are at least a little literate.

Decent spelling and punctuation would help, but we don't expect miracles these days.

My column last week about getting in touch with my masculine side has attracted a few comments from sad sacks on the website. They were not very erudite, but some of them did manage two-word sentences.

My thanks to someone cowering behind the hopeful pseudonym, Cosmic Hero, who commented: "Yawn... men don't read it because it is drivel." And to the aptly-named Viper for his/her: "Drivel as well as sterotyping." (Viper's spelling, not mine.) Then there's "Jack". Ah, sad Jack. Such a bitter person, whose literary destruction of my column amounted to "also crap".

He - we presume it's a he', but who knows behind the coward's mask of anonymity - is the person whose busy life allows him to read the columns of virtually all my colleagues, and post comments like "You suck" or "piffle".

Sometimes he stretches his vocabulary to "your writing career is over", or "this article is entirely needless" in reviewing the work of my colleagues.

All very constructive criticism.

Trouble is, no one has yet managed to string a whole, meaningful sentence together.

And not one of these sourpuss surfers has yet had the courage to put their real name to their comments. Sorry, folks, it goes with the job.

It's a bit like the death threats that arrived from all around the world when I had the consummate gall to say tattoos did not look good on ageing bodies. When I politely replied - to an anonymous (naturally), venomous email - one American got friendly and said I should visit his son who was working in London and have a good time.

After all, he said, York was only just up the road from London.

That's the trouble with email. It is so instant and uncontrolled. In the good, old days of letter writing, there were so many filters, you could not send your message in a fit of pique when you had arrived home full of booze.

First you had to put pen to paper. Time to reflect while you put it in an envelope. And again, when you put a stamp on the envelope.

And on the walk to the post box, there was plenty of opportunity to ask: "Have I said the right thing?"

Also, anonymous letter writers never get anything published in newspapers.

With email, you can pour out torrents of abuse, and with one flick of a key send it irreversibly on its way.

Free speech is fine, but on website forums, for instance, vicious personal abuse and obscenities are spoiling it for the sensible majority.

The Press website forum was shut down once before for this reason. It can happen again.

So - out with the puerile (that means like a little boy) one-worders. Let me have examples of your work, and if they are good enough, we'll publish.

If you have a view, stand up and be counted - don't hide away in your computer garret behind a silly email pseudonym.

And if I haven't received a decent contender by noon on Sunday, there'll be a big blank nothing in this space next Tuesday.

"Hurrah, we don't have to put up with his drivel" - I thought I'd better get that in before my biggest fan, Jack.