Like a bad politician

Who is interesting?

It's a good rule of thumb that things which have to be introduced as interesting are normally incredibly dull. The conversational gambit of "Interesting story..." is nearly always a prelude to a tale guaranteed to have similar sedative effects to drinking a litre of absinthe while wrapped in a kingsize duvet.

But therein lies the rub - the narrator clearly feels the story is interesting enough not only to recount, but to actually flag up the fact at the beginning. Who am I to say that a detailed explanation of how the protagonist cleverly avoided heavy traffic on the M1 last Sunday by driving on 'a little detour he knows' is dull? How can I say that my standards are correct when I will happily spend an evening discussing which is Brian Wilson's best Beach Boys composition?

Normally what we find interesting and what we don't does nothing more than govern the lengths we're willing to go to to avoid ending up stuck chatting to a man called Fotherington, about the impact of the credit crunch on overseas investment accounts. But as a journalist we have to decide what we think will be interesting for other people because, after all, if they are not interested in what we write they simply won't read it.

The interests of the readership will dictate the order in which stories are published in a paper, which to an outsider can seem totally illogical. For example, the average person across the UK is probably more likely to be interested to read about someone being mugged by hoodies than flats being built in Harrow town centre, but if you consider our readership there really is no competition as to which would make the front page (unless the mugging victim is someone famous such as Pat Sharp).

So as a newspaper survival is absolutely dependent on knowing who your readers are and what they are interested in. It is with this in mind that many national newspapers are beginning to make me really despair over the state of the national psyche.

The best example of this recently was in one of the free commuter papers a couple of days ago (I can't remember which, but it was probably in all of them anyway) which dedicated an entire half page to a photograph of David Walliams chatting to Jude Law after the pair bumped into each other on the street. There was no mention of what the two were actually talking about, we were just supposed to be unquestioningly interested in the occurrence of the event itself.

Now as far as I can see there are three possible explanations for this sort of news:

- Celebrities have developed different metabolisms to the rest of us mere mortals and they must constantly be in the public eye or they will shrink and grow antlers.

- The general public are genuinely interested in the minutia of the lives of people, some of whom are merely famous for being famous, and however inane, pointless or inconsequential their activities the average reader will lap it up with gay abandon.

- The British press has become so patronising and caught up in itself it believes the above to be true.

Sad as it is I sincerely hope it is the third option which is true and not the second, as this would truly be a miserable indictment of our society.

I'm not saying I'm above reading celebrity news, I obviously looked at the picture of Walliams and Law, but I could think of at least ten news stories that day which I found a lot more interesting and which could easily have been put in its place.

Anyway, if you've read this far thanks, I hope you've found it interesting and just so you know - my vote goes for God Only Knows every time.