The Cult of Bob...

I've spent most of the morning trying to work out whether or not I can start referring to myself as being a cult figure. It has a nice ring to it, don't you think? "Cult blogger, Bob Swipe today admitted to possession of a small quantity of cannabis resin..." Or " We spoke to Robert Swipe, the cult blogger and alternative lifestyle guru, currently residing in his hideaway in Afghanistan with Ukrainian sex-bomb and former Mrs. Andrei Shevchenko...." But how do you know you've made it to being a cult figure? And is it really something to be proud of. Surely "Robert Swipe, media mogul and polymorphous sex toy of the novelist Lionel Shriver, today announced his decision to renounce his honorary Peerage in protest at a proposed new windfarm near his idyllic holiday home in...." has a bit more oomph about it. Am I aiming too low??

Anyway, I thought I'd try to be empirical about this (whatever that means) and try to back up the theory with a few facts and figures and that sort of mumbo-jumbo. So, I started off counting up the people you could reasonably call 'regular' readers:

Blind Flaneur (although, come to think of it, s/he hasn't been around much lately), Brian, Tim, Ceri, Dickley, Richard, Freds (x2 - although you need a password to get into theirs now - what's that all about??), Lucien (currently AWOL...), Mike (who's stopped leaving comments so is either bored or spending all his time gawping at Goth girls with fek blood dripping from every orifice on myspace...), Mollster, Hannah (although I think the overuse of the Cunt word might have frightened her off, poor thing...), Billy, Ro-Mo, Sid Smith (I think he still looks in occasionally...), Janey (although I think I've probably hacked her off too...), The Lovely Sonia, Spinny!!, Blog Toddney (although he's as silly as arseholes, so I'm not sure if I should count him...) UN Security Council (although I think they may have given up on me...) Say Underpants (ditto...)

I make that 21 regular readers. Then there are those who troll without blogging their own dull and dismal lives for the rest of us to have a good old laugh at (you know who you are A. Radiographer, Broken Stiletto and Woody Goldstein...) Then there are the ones who've started coming up re-directed here from google picture searches for things like Zoe+Telford+bladder+close up or Kate+silverton+bunny-girl+fanny+shot or Tanya+Beckett+Stocking+clitswap...etc. Should I count them?

OK, let's round it up to a cosy 25 readers. Definitely a cult (although, now they know that they are cult members, that'll probably do for about half that lot....) So we're down to about a dozen. That's not a cult - it's a sub-cult. Or a coven!! Oh well, better than nothing I guess....

Two further points that this research throws up:

Firstly, if I spent as much time writing properly and sending off MSs as I do staring bleakly at my site meter, I'd probably have been published by now.

Secondly, is it even desirable to be published anymore? Look at the dreck that does come out (..sorry, Lionel..)

I mean,

a) Would Martin Amis be published if he started out now?

b) Would Cervantes be published if he was writing now?

c) I think I've made my point.


So, Bob Swipe, cult blogger it is...


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