Craig Brown and AN Wilson lose to Jasper Gerard

I'm sorry to hear that Craig Brown and AN Wilson have been dropped by the Daily Telegraph. And just before Christmas. Well, I say sorry but really I only read the paper for Mandrake goss: Brown's parodies remain very funny in the Eye; Wilson I sometimes used to read when he had an eccentric column in the Evening Standard; otherwise his books and sensibility mean as much to me as Paul Gascoigne's ear wax.

The good news however is that Jasper Gerard continues to flog his prose tropes at the Telegraph. I understand he writes a sports column; not something I would read. His last restaurant review, of The Pass Restaurant in Horsham, West Sussex, cost the paper £96.93 for a four courser. I assume he paid at least a 10% tip on top: one can only suppose that an outlay of this sort, to patronise an honest business with a lot of homespun burble, must have been borne by the likes of Brown and Wilson.

I notice that Gerard "slurps" his soup, that he calls people "folk" and potatoes "spuds". The common touch, he's got it. I wonder how his terrorist comedy novel is coming along.