Blacker

I'm surprised no-one seems to have picked this up. Terence Blacker can be as pugnacious as the next journalist, but he's usually well-informed and fair. But in yesterday's Independent he was fulminating against the appointment of Sally Crabtree as poet-in-residence for First Great Western Railways:

Crabtree, described in the press as a "pink-wigged pocket Venus from Cornwall", will perform for passengers as part of what the rail company calls "our annual engagement with our public".

Leaving aside (though why should I?) the lookist comment there, it's easy to get concerned at this development. When even leaky headphones from other customers can be a nuisance, I'm not sure the whole business with a guitar will go down well. Personally, I prefer looking out of the window and daydreaming when I'm on the train - or occasionally looking out of the window and scribbling in my notebook. Blacker continues:

The fashion for hiring poets as a way of illustrating corporate respectability, rather as developers and supermarkets plant trees when they are up to no good, had seemed to have passed a couple of years ago. Companies quickly discovered that modern poets, with their fluting voices and studied eccentricities, merely ratchet up irritation levels.

'Fluting voices'? 'Studied eccentricities'? Who on earth can he have in mind?