{"id":101,"date":"2012-05-11T15:53:00","date_gmt":"2012-05-11T15:53:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theblankscreen.co.uk\/selfdistract\/2012\/05\/11\/cover-me\/"},"modified":"2012-05-11T15:53:00","modified_gmt":"2012-05-11T15:53:00","slug":"cover-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/2012\/05\/11\/cover-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Cover me"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This is a complicated thing to explain to you just to stand up the image there, but follow.<\/p>\n

I am a freelance writer. However, through a budget requirement and\/or a clerical error years ago, I went on staff for a couple of days a week at at Radio Times. I shrugged: what difference did it make?<\/p>\n

It made a lot of difference to my accountant who had to periodically phone me up to ask why this bit of work was staff and taxed but this bit wasn’t.<\/p>\n

He’s happier now because I am back to being entirely freelance. But this time, I didn’t shrug. Instead, I crossed my fingers.<\/p>\n

Because I’ve been there long enough to know that some people, some times, get a remarkable gift when they come off the books at Radio Times.<\/p>\n

You’re looking at it. I mean, they gave me a terrific send off in every way but the bit I want to tell you about, the bit I really hoped would happen, is this cover.<\/p>\n

I can’t tell you that it’s a Radio Times tradition, because I don’t think it is. Not everyone gets it or the art department wouldn’t have time to do the real magazine cover. I really don’t know how they had time to do this one.<\/p>\n

I feel honoured. Seriously: this is Radio Times, the only magazine I know whose covers are so famous that they get republished in books, that have had art exhibitions devoted to them, and which each year are the excuse for the all-star celebrity Radio Times Covers party.<\/p>\n

But I don’t think these fake covers are well known outside the magazine so I wanted to tell you about it. And to boast, frankly to preen a bit here as there is no measure to how big my head is today, but also just to tell you.<\/p>\n

If you can’t guess and you don’t happen to have an instant-recall memory of every Radio Times cover, what happens is that they take a genuine old cover, Photoshop you into it and then rewrite all the cover lines to chide\/mock\/belittle\/kid* you (*delete as applicable).<\/p>\n

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You’ve got three questions now, I can tell. The answer to the first is yes, I’m getting this framed for my office. The second is that, go on then, here’s the original version of that cover.<\/p>\n

It’s from 2008’s cover for the Doctor Who special, The Next Doctor, starring David Tennant and me. I mean, David Morrissey.<\/p>\n

As to your third question, well, I don’t know, it’s a very good point. A very good question. Hard to say. Very hard to say.<\/p>\n

But I wondered too. Does this mean I’ll be invited to next year’s Covers Party?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is a complicated thing to explain to you just to stand up the image there, but follow. I am … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4chyI-1D","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/williamgallagher.com\/selfdistract\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}