The irresistible lure of classified ads

The great thing about classified ads is that they have not usually been created by an agency — so what you get is the advertiser’s own best efforts to announce themselves, and what they have to offer, in just 20 words or so.

You can glean a lot from what they say, and not always in the way intended. Take this particularly telling example from the Spectator personal ads a couple of years ago: ‘Looking to meet woman on HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy).’ That he added (and paid for) the last three words tells you more than he could ever understand.

Others are far more engaging — like the ‘charismatic ageing French rock star’ who, via a regular ad in the London Review of Books, offers to write bespoke songs for any occasion including birthdays, anniversaries etc. The self-deprecation betrays a firm grasp of English humour. Can he really be French?

Thanks to the internet, there are far fewer printed classifieds these days — but those that remain are often deliciously idiosyncratic. Another intriguing LRB regular is the lady who offers to paint your portrait without having seen you. She apparently divines your looks via voice energy over the phone, and in this she is doing something similar to what we all do when we read the classifieds: we imagine the people behind them and even construct little lives for them in our heads.

When I come to the latter pages of The Spectator, for example, I find it almost impossible not to glance down and check that Mr ‘Relax! I’ll write it for you!’ is still plying his speech-writing trade. When, a few years ago, the ad changed to ‘We’ll write it’ I was quite perturbed. Who was this Johnny–come-lately interloper? But wait! Maybe he had found love — a lady writer to share his life and work? The ad has occasionally reverted from ‘We’ to ‘I’ and caused me no end of anxiety on his behalf.