Just thought I'd let you know I have some strong opinions

By Keith Waterhouse for the Daily Mail
Updated: 05:03 EST, 21 May 2009

In his 23 years on the Mail, Keith penned over 2,000 columns. As a reminder of his exquisite touch, we reprint the very first of them

Who, me? I'm a columnist, actually. And what do you do? Really? That's fascinating.

It must be very interesting, being a Daily Mail reader.

Was it always an ambition of yours, then, or was it something you kind of drifted into?

What - so you just walked into a newsagent's one morning and the whole thing took off from there? That's amazing. So luck was on your side, really. I mean, if they'd chanced to have run out of the Mail on that particular day, who knows where you might have finished up? You could have been on the scrapheap at 40, doing Sun bingo.

And did you need any special training to become a Daily Mail reader or did you just pick it up as you went along?

That's fantastic. You must have a talent for it.

Oh well, if your father's always started the day on Peanuts and Nigel Dempster, that explains it. It runs in the family. It's an inherited gift, like playing the piano.

Even so, it must have been difficult at first. I expect you started with the Quick Crossword and worked your way up to the leader page. No? So you just sort of plunged in. Best way, I suppose, like throwing the kids in at the deep end when they're learning to swim.

You know, I've often toyed with the idea of becoming a Daily Mail reader myself. I think I've got the knack for it. I have a cousin who's one and he says I should definitely take it up.

Is there a course I could go on, do you know? And is it easy to get taken on these days, or do you have to know someone?

Look - I don't suppose you'd like to put in a word for me, would you?

Off the rational

Now for my credentials. I have had a clean column licence for 16 years with no endorsements for reckless writing, driving home and argument without lights or failing to signal when turning on the left.

I call myself a tinroof tabernacle radical with a leaning, these days, towards political agnosticism and an economic realism amounting to studied gloom. I have seen the future and it was made in Japan.

You will not find this column cluttered up with statistics. They gather dust and are so little to be trusted that they are not worth the shelf-room.

Nor does it have any truck with high technology. What we have is a hand-stitched column. I realise that my clattering Olympia portable is to the sullenly humming computer what my mother's old mangle was to the tumble-drier but I remain unbudged in my conviction that the word processor is doing for the English language what mono-sodium glutamate has done for cookery.

I wake up with views the way some people wake up with hangovers. (Sometimes I wake up with both, when the confederation of clowns presiding over our destinies had better tread carefully.)

I have strong opinions, at the moment of writing, on apostrophes, British Telecom, the Common Market, education, feminists, ghetto blasters, health freaks, inner cities, junk foodies, killjoys, leisure centres, militants, pubs, street theatre, town planners, vandalism, xenophobia, yellow lines and zealots - and doubtless by the time I've devoured the morning's headlines along with the toast and marmalade I shall have taken on board enough rancorous nourishment to fill in the remaining blanks in today's alphabet of spleen.

Contrary to what you may have heard I do not write exclusively about trams and cigarette cards but I do not believe the past should have been towed away like a clapped-out Cortina. The big end may have gone on our heritage but there is some mileage in it yet.

You will find me, I hope, an irrational cove to deal with. That is not so much a quirk as a policy. You have heard of rationalisation? This column stands for derationalisation.

To my mind, 90 per cent of the unpleasant things that happen to us are in the name of rationalisation. Counties lose their names, trains love their livery, ginger snaps lose their flavour and mint humbugs their sharp corners, small shops close down, the village bus run is knocked off and there is no room service - all in the interest of rationalisation.

Under my derationalisation programme, Yorkshire would get back its Ridings, the red telephone box would be a preserved species, there would be Pullman cars called Edna, a teashop in every High Street and a proper card index in the public library.

This is not pure nostalgia or even nostalgia with rose-coloured additives. Derationalisation works. Ask any manufacturer who has reverted to his old-fashioned labels and unstreamlined logo and he will tell you how profits have soared.

I also wanted to have a word in favour of district nurses and cruelty inspectors in peaked caps replacing social workers, but I see that my time is up before we have even uncovered the tip of the volcano.

I shall return on Thursday. Watch this space and if it begins to hiss and bubble in my absence, just switch it off at the mains.