Slight Tangent?
Now that the board is knuckles-deep in tales of furtively-glimpsed hedgerow smut and gleeful anecdotes about finding your best mate’s dad’s hastily concealed cache of gentleman’s relaxation pamphlets while playing hide and seek in the loft, I don’t feel the need to add any more. So instead I’ll tell the story of my mate’s first (and, sing hosannas, only) experience of appearing in pawnography.

Some years ago, my mate X (not his real name), was studying for a journalism degree at a historic and widely-respected English university, during which time he made a contact at an equally historic and widely-respected British newspaper. I won’t name & shame, but it’s an anagram of Sudnay Sprot. Said contact promised to fix him up with a summer work placement (which is pretty-much gold dust for any green, keen undergraduate) in return for the odd ‘favour’. The placement itself never materialized of course, leaving X reeling from tabloid-journalist-tells-porky-pies shock, but not before the ‘favour’ was called in.

The journo in question was ‘investigating’ a story about alcohol-and-drug-fuelled swinger parties in university halls of residence. You know, the kind of crap that would appeal to the average slack-jawed simpleton obsessed with the idea that the daughters of the privileged are engaging in acts of Satanic debauchery in their ivory towers, when anyone who’s actually been inside university accommodation will tell you it’s mostly instant noodles, lax personal hygiene and the occasional semi-skilled, neurotic fumble.

Our journo had his story, but no pictures to go with it, largely because he’d made it up that morning, so he calls X and asks if he could borrow his flat for the afternoon. Lo & behold he turns up with a photographer, a slab of beer and two glamour models who couldn’t look less like university students if they’d worn commemorative ‘Not University Student’ baseball caps. Photographer then proceeds to take several hundred shots of X and his housemate in their boxers, swigging from cans of Stella and throwing extravagant poses next to, behind or under the two models (both, by this point, dressed exactly as nature intended).

Long story short, journo promised to blank out their faces. He didn’t. When the story appeared on page 5 that Sunday, there they were in all their easily recognizable glory. Luckily none of X’s family or course tutors were in the habit of buying such an esteemed publication, and he and his housemate were awarded instant Gods-among-men status by their mates. But if he ever gets married, the episode may well form part of a staggeringly entertaining Best Man’s speech.
(Monkey Tennis isn't Spartacus, Wed 31 Jan 2007, 12:13, Reply)