Peter Bromhead: Old dog picks up new tricks

Peter has been advised to ignore the rules of grammar. Illustration / Peter Bromhead

Having expected my life-support switch to be discreetly turned off, I was surprised to wake and discover I still have a faint pulse as a columnist.

Clearly, we're living in evolving times, so as part of my business plan I thought I should consult a visionary mentor - one of those new breed of consultants who bandy around terms like "leverage", "optimise" and "dynamic resourcing".

"You're clearly going to have to lift your game, old-timer," I was informed after completing an evaluation test paper full of tricky Catch-22 baloney questions.

"Tomorrow's media is going to require more pizzazz and rely less on old-fashioned values, like you're still practising," my mentor suggested.

"You mean I'm spending too much time bothering about grammatical niceties?"

"Exactly!" my adviser continued. "In an age of speed reading, nobody's got time for grammatical correctness any more. Let's be brutal!

"Who's the top dog columnist these days, a brilliant all-rounder who can adroitly switch from one media outlet to another and displays the smooth confidence of someone convinced they can do no wrong?"

"You mean ... " I started to mumble, with the name dying on my tongue.

"Exactly!" my mentor beamed, adding, "we're talking serious media omnipresence, someone who's oozing with pizzazz with everything he touches in the media."

"I have noticed," I replied defensively, "that he doesn't bother with grammatical niceties in his columns. What's particularly pizzazz about that?"

My mentor ignored the question and instead asked pointedly: "Who drives a luxury Ferrari sports car - and who drives a shopping basket Fiat Panda?"

"They're both Italian," I replied weakly. "Surely, that gives me a pinch of pizzazz?"

"And who dresses smartly and wears beautiful hand-stitched shoes in patent blue suede leather?" my mentor continued, staring hard at my size 15 feet, encased in tired old silver Nikes resembling something more like a couple of half-inflated Zeppelin dirigibles than normal footwear.

"And whose columnist job is on the line and who, on the other hand, enjoys front page billing most weeks?

"It's all about pizzazz! You've either got it or you haven't," my mentor concluded.

"Ah well," I resignedly murmured. "I guess I'll just have to stick to old-fashioned grammatical niceties in my work until somebody finally pulls the life-support plug and puts me out of my misery."