CAITLIN MORAN SPECIAL! The woman is IRONIC! Longstanding doubts finally laid to rest with the publication of a new, searingly honest, but hilarious, yet thought-provoking must-see set of pictures! And you thought she was just a smug cow you wouldn’t pay in washers! Well! Meanwhile, Lloyds tries to persuade us they aren’t complete crooks, but regular guys after all: they like puppies!

Readers of this ’ere blog who return every so often and are aware of my ‘oeuvre’ (French for ‘bollocks’) will be aware of my irritation of one Caitlin Moran and her schtick.

This morning the Guardian has a piece by her headed and sub-headed ‘Caitlin Moran: my sex quest years’ and ‘Caitlin Moran’s parents never told her about the birds and the bees. So at 17 she went on a mission’. There follow several hundred words of the usual drivel which, I don’t doubt, will delight Moran’s fans, but in truth is utterly indistinguishable from many similar several hundred words written by previous incarnations of Moran down the years. It’s the kind of piece the Daily Mail would plug as ‘hilarious’ given that most of its readers are so po-faced they actually do need to be told when they should be laughing or not. (Another Mail favourite is ‘searingly honest’.)

In the past I have been struck — and irritated — by Moran’s one and only expression which says: ‘Look at me, I might be kooky, but I’m also intelligent enough to be bravely self-aware and irony is never lost on me’. I spilled some bile on the matter in a previous entry. Here is the piccy with which the Guardian is illustrating Moran’s latest confession — note the identical ironically quizzical look. I suspect that the only time she doesn’t wear that look is when she’s having sex, or perhaps even then.

Should anyone doubt that this is apparently the only expression Moran has in her kitbag, here are several more piccies.

What, me ironic? You really think so? Bless!

Look at this: I can make irony almost look like smugness. But
then I am quite lucky to be Caitlin Moran if you really want to know

And you think looking this stupid at the drop of a hat is easy? That’s what separates the professionals from you amateurs, darling!

What? The Guardian has agreed to pay me loads of dosh for writing the same old drivel? Again? Get out of here!

What, some people don’t think I'm the funniest writer on Earth? Are your sure? I mean really, really, really sure? I mean, could there be some kind of mistake?

And then he says: ‘Put on that ironic look, it makes me  really hard’. The things we women do for love, eh! Will, this do?

. . .

Until very, very recently Lloyds Bank carried the following pic on it’s website: all together now — aaaah!

We’ve all heard of the feelgood factor and how winning over customers in subtle ways will help you do the biz, and smacking the picture above on its website was surely intended to do just that. But ask yourselves this one simple question: would you really decide to entrust one bank rather than another with your money just because they liked puppies?

Given that you had a few doubts and were wavering on going for another bank rather than Lloyds, would a pic of cute little puppies in silly hats really persuade you to throw in your lot with Lloyds rather than one of its rivals?

If the answer is ‘yes’, you are, of course, a complete and total idiot and deserve whatever financial misfortunes might come your way and then some. In fact, you don’t even deserve to be allowed to use money. But as far as Lloyds is concerned that would seem to be most of us.

The word obviously went out to PR firms up and down the land from Lloyds Towers in Central London: ‘How do we win back our customers now that most of the country thinks we are complete crooks after they found out we’d diddled loads of our customers out of several hundred pounds by selling them bullshit insurance and rigged the interests rates to boot?’

And answer came back: ‘Stick a photo of cute puppies on your website. They are bound to fall for that! If they were stupid enough to fall for the bullshit insurance scam, they are certainly stupid enough to think we have turned over a new leaf because we like cute puppies.’

So it was, though when I checked a few minutes ago to download the pic from the Lloyds website, it was no longer there (but I was still able to retrieve it via Google images.)

Here’s a picture I have tracked down on the net which I hope will win you over to my side and persuade you to read this blog rather than any other.

Actually, I’m sure it has already occurred to some of the smarter ones among you that by portraying myself as a deadly scorpion I being just as smug and self-regarding as anything la Moran is capable of. Well, gold stars all round.

And I’m sure it has already occurred to the even smarter ones among you that by admitting what I have just admitted to, I am actually just attempting to get myself off the hook and trying to persuade you that I, too, am self-aware. If that’s you, have another gold star, then piss off.

And . . . but, no, we could be here all bloody day.