Letter to Loaded (2005)

I was going through all of the old documents stored on my laptop looking for more content to cannibalise – because my brain isn’t in the zone for creating original content today – and found this. The following is a letter I sent to Loaded in 2005, pleading with them for a job. I know it’s jokey in tone, but it wasn’t a piss-take. I rather naively and pathetically assumed that if I could make the powers-that-be at Loaded laugh then they’d think to themselves, ‘I know this guy’s had no experience of writing whatsoever, but I snorted air out of my left nostril at one of his jokes, so I think we should put him straight onto the staff of our national magazine.’ Needless to say, it didn’t work. Oh, and I genuinely sent them a bag of plant cuttings.

————————————————————————————————————————————

Jamie Andrew

(address edited out to reduce chances of an horrific murder happening)

Ms Lisa Wallis

Loaded, IPC Media Ltd

London, SE1 9LS

22nd of September 2005

Dear Lisa

Application for the position of Staff Writer

Allow me to introduce you to some Glasgow vernacular: Go on, hen, geez a joab.

I have always wanted to write for a living. I penned my first major work whilst still ensconced in my mother’s womb. Perhaps ‘penned’ is a slightly inaccurate description. I actually scrawled my first novel in the placenta with my finger. Sold for a paltry £1 to publishing giant ‘FANTASTIC FOETALS’, it was simply entitled: ‘Gargumphaaagag.’ Certainly it was far ahead of its time.

A handsome young child, I was described by many as ‘a young Brad Pitt’. This was long before I knew what the phrase ‘Cockney rhyming slang’ meant.

Unperturbed by the taunts of others I embraced my calling as a writer. My first journalistic scoop came when I exposed my uncle’s infidelity in the May 1985 edition of ‘The Local Church Gazette.’ Even then I was aware of sinister and powerful forces at work. There was a cover-up of the scandal and in the dead of one night two masked intruders broke into my room and destroyed all of my crayons and wrote ‘Bastard’ across every sheet of paper they could find. Apparently my uncle was at it with the entire congregation, the organist (we always wondered why she played James Brown’s “Sex Machine” of a Sunday service), the cleaners, the caterers and even the minister and his dog.

My new career looked set to end before it had even began; but the call of the truth was too loud for me to ignore.

Since the age of twelve I have published no less than eighty-seven novels, ten-thousand short stories (some of them only a sentence long), brought down communist regimes across the globe armed only with my sharp tongue and acid pen (and acid-proof paper), won the Pulitzer prize (well, I stole it) and dressed as a sexy woman every night for the last ten years (which has nothing to do with writing, but I’m especially proud of it all the same).

So, I repeat: geez a joab.

Especially since I assume that I am the only applicant for this position eagle-eyed enough to have spotted the loopholes in your Guardian advertisement. You state that I need to have two years’ experience. Well, I do. I have two years’ experience of having experienced the passing of two years. And as for the cuttings: in absence of more clarification my assumptions have led me to enclose the best bag of cuttings I could find at this time of the year. I do hope they blossom well for you. Please consider these my gift to you in hope of a permanent position; or even just the kind of hot, steamy sex I enjoyed viewing (so many times) in Monsters’ Ball.

I enclose for your entertainment and delight my five feature ideas.

I love you.

Yours sincerely

Jamie Andrew