Did somebody say: "Get Stuffed?"

11/...		.../Deadly Scissors Squeeze
IN APN No 217 we carried a piece written by Paul Johnson and first published in the London Spectator, slugged "Is There Any Form of Human Life Quite so Low as a Journalist?" It was a pretty hard-hitting piece, in which Johnson talked of the problems he is picking up with nitpicking over his new book, A History of the American People. He ended: "It is the presence of such nasty people on the journalistic scene which make me want to quit it. The fact that I am 70 next year might provide a convenient excuse. I am coming to the end of my life. I am rich and I can tell anyone I choose to get stuffed." Unfortunately, the quotation marks were dropped.		I was mystified when letters began arriving, mainly from academics, congratulating me on being so unusually outspoken. I was even more mystified when a reader from Ladysmith, obviously extremely irked, upbraided me for being uncivil and concluded: "And bugger you, too." Light dawned when an American friend wrote, commenting on the piece. I went back to the issue and could see where things went wrong. May I just say that I have not written a book on the American people? I am not turning 70 next year. I am not rich. And I do not as a rule tell people, least of all my subscribers, to "get stuffed." Perhaps our friend from Ladysmith would like to phone Paul Johnson and tell him what he told me?
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