reverb books
reverb: getting writers read

Sport Radio Monk

My old showbiz pal Billy invented Defo in 2001. But I don't think he got it quite right.

"Defo" he said "Is the art of combating the coming information sickness. The art of taming information."

"Right," I said, as Billy continued: "A practitioner of Defo can go Stone Age, banishing all information other than the amount which an average Palaeolithic being would be subjected to - a few grunts about plans to eat, the odd myth, and a dozen or so local perversions. Or a Defo practitioner can go Early Twentieth, allowing toddles to the lending library, a few mags and papers, and a twiddle on the wireless."

"Or a Defo practitioner could go Elizabethan," I joined in, "enjoying the scribings nailed up by a propagandist on a privy door, laying out for chapbooks and topping that up with odd theatre visits."

"Right" said Billy. "That's right."

Billy was enthused and he produced many different Defo levels. He grew replete with them. But the level which appealed to Billy most, the one he set his heart on, was the Medieval Monk. It seemed perfect. Assuming the monk lived in a decently-stocked Abbey, the level would access a library of, say, 200 hefty treatises on high-minded subjects. Toss in the odd Papal Bull, smuggled Lutheran thesis, or Edict of Worms for a smattering of current affairs, and that was your lot. The Medieval Monk Defo level was gorgeous to Billy.

But then he remembered sport. "I can't go Medieval," he said, "I couldn't listen to the radio."

So Billy contrived his most niche Defo level yet; Sport Radio Monk.

Billy seemed happy with that and he went off to email his wives.

Next reverbreview, Ed Lark will be in Suffolk, wheezing round the Framlingham Midsummer Madness half marathon.
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