Reading the Observer yesterday evening brought my attention to a certain Max Gogarty, 19. From north London, this middle class lad is embarking on a gap year trip taking in India and Thailand. Nothing extraordinary there. But his journey across south-east Asia would be documented on The Guardian’s popular travel blog. Is this the new Charlie Brooker if he’s landed such a prime outlet to document his sojourn? Initially Gogarty’s inane, talentless prose describing his iminent jolly had office workers venting their disgust that he merit his own blog. Then one poster googled him and it became apparent that his father is sometime Guardian travel writer Paul Gogarty. Wikipedia’s article on nepotism featured him, though I believe that amendment has now been withdrawn. Once the link to the other Gogarty had been established, his blog was panned in a mostly witty fashion, making for hilarious reading. Commenters admitted they didn’t get much work done on Thursday for their want of refreshing the page every 2 minutes to see who else had pummelled Gogarty Jnr, in an online hammering that’s known as ‘going viral’. Comparisons were drawn between Gogarty’s and Mike Read’s classic 1000+ comments piece, in which the DJ explained why he wasn’t running for Mayor of London but would be lending his support to the Tory contender Boris Johnson. In an allusion to that blog, one poster suggested the most pertinent question was ‘who is Max Gogarty supporting in the mayoral contest?’ With virtually every post taking the form of a verbal attack on Max and the commissioning editors at the Grauniad, Gogarty’s father weighed in saying it was an example of classism and plain jealousy. With no sign of a let up, the picture link (in which the author unfortunately sported aviator shades) to the blog from the Guardian mainpage was hastily removed. His son, presumably upon the advice of his father and Guardian editors but probably on his own accord after reading the tirade he had foolishly initiated, pulled the blog and comments were closed. What of the writing itself? Well, Gogarty does write stuff for the C4 teen drama ‘Skins’ so we’re expecting something of higher calibre than the dross of Peaches Geldof on Guardian pages a year or so back. If only. His tone is incredibly smug and self-indulgent and we’re left hoping he doesn’t get laid by one of those beautiful girls he’s daydreaming about and when he does the where’s-the-gag-bag ’finding myself’ thing, he realises what a twat he comes off as. The good thing as I’ve mentioned is that the blog was pulled - think of all the thousands of young aspiring journalists who apply to write pieces for the Guardian but who don’t have fathers who already write for the paper. And the debate on nepotism within journalism is getting a good hearing.
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Just blogged on the fact that the Guardian also sent out its Fiver email on Friday referrring to its own readers and commenters as self righteous and sanctimonious. The Guardian and Emily Bell’s behaviour on this has been shocking - increasingly it appears that they really don’t like their readers very much.