The strength of Coffee House lies in the quality of the arguments which follow our posts. Journalism today is about starting a conversation with readers, something we at The Spectator firmly believe in.
So on Wednesday, we invited 250 subscribers around for a cup of tea. We have a wonderful garden here at 22 Old Queen St, overlooking St James’ Park. We served up sandwiches and tea (courtesy of the East India Company) and listened to our readers’ likes, loves and dislikes. A few questions kept recurring. Is Dear Mary a real person? Yes, Mary Killen is very real – as is her mailbag. She even organises writers’ trips in exotic places now and again: when I grow up, I aspire to join her. When Jeremy Clarke opens his Low Life column describing waking up drunk on the pavement in Leicester Square, is he using artistic license? Nope. Jeremy is the real thing, and when he was at our summer party his guest was a bottle of Absinthe, which he shared with Taki. It’s Jeremy’s honesty and clarity which make his columns so compelling, and why many people – from Oxford dons to Hugh Grant – think he’s the best writer in Britain. And his is not a column you’re likely to read in a newspaper.
But censorship was raised, perhaps more than any other topic. Where do we draw the line? Compared to newspapers we can be more risqué, and sometimes more brutal. In this week’s edition, for example, we have a debate about the limits of describing gay sex in literature (subscribers click here) – in which Sir Peregrine Worsthorne describes his, ahem, misadventures at Stowe. Few, if any, newspapers would print his uncensored article. And rightly so: newspapers cater for millions of readers. The Spectator readership is a smaller bunch – about 70,000 – who tolerate almost anything except the banal. Mary Wakefield wrote a brilliant, powerful story about abortion in the magazine the week before last. Newspapers tend to avoid the subject, because it deters and upsets readers. We received more complaints about Mark Mason’s piece trashing Waitrose.
Our test is not whether readers would find something gratuitous. Instead, we ask if the reader will find it funny. Take this week, for example. Could we really let Rod Liddle refer to George Osborne “sitting with a black whore on his lap and three kilos of gak up his left nostril”? Could we let Taki describe the engagement of Mary, our deputy editor (pictured below), as “the worst news since the surrender at Stalingrad”?
The most important thing is to give our writers the freedom to phrase things however they like, and if this pushes the boundaries now and again then so be it. A smaller readership means more latitude. By and large, people don’t write for us for money. Our pay is notorious. They write because they love the magazine, and cherish its integrity. And because they want to talk to our readers: the best-humoured, best-read cohort in the world of publishing. It really was a privilege to meet so many of them on Wednesday.
You can subscribe to the Spectator from just £1 an issue, but the tea’s free.
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