A couple of days back I gave advice on what you should get yourself for Christmas, suggesting that young shavers who did not see them first time round should get themselves copies of the Alan Coren columns from Punch.
I am afraid that this statement is now inoperative as I have received an email from one Michael Bywater who states:

Don’t for pete’s sake send everyone off to get copies of Coren’s old
Punch stuff or there’ll be none left & I had just decided I needed to
rebuild my own set.  He was an absolute master & taught me a hell of a
lot – most importantly, that what counted above all was rhythm. I was
lucky enough to work with him at Punch – on the staff – for 7 years and
it was, to use your word, a hoot.  The bugger could do that stuff
extempore, on the hoof, as you’ll know if you ever heard the news quiz.
Possibly the cleverest man I know.

So, buying old Coren books at the second hand stores is strictly verboten as I remember some of the Bargepole columns of old and would not want to get on the wrong side of this man. Pity his new work is behind the subscription wall at the Indy really. He goes on to add:

Do you recall The Chronicles of Magoon, his "latest of the
newly-emerging African nations"?  Hopeless incompetents with no money
and grandiose ideas & it rained all the time… you couldn’t do it now
(not PC) but it was a wonder satire on our own governments. A bit
before my time at Punch but a masterpiece. Can’t recall which of the
collections it was reprinted in.

I admitted that I had not but that I remembered the Amin stuff to which the response was:

Magoon was the precursor of the Amin stuff, I think.  Affable
incompetents with Ideas. They got a Clarnico toffee tin with a picture
of Windsor Castle on the lid as a present from the Queen on their
independence.  Awful border squabbles. "Okay. We send in the
Deterrent."  "We can’t. He’s gone to see his mother." Cut to some
benighted chap plodding through the rain with a rocket strapped to his
back.

So, the chrissie present advice has changed. It now comes in two parts.
1) You should buy this, this, this or, if you are really politically incorrect, this, which is an absolute scream. Any and all of them would make good ways to spend book tokens, Amazon certificates and the like.
2) If you should find, while roaming the bookstores, any of those old collections of Coren I talked about, purchase them, wrap carefully and mail to:
Michael Bywater,
c/o The Independent
Independent House,
191 Marsh Wall,
London E14 9RS

No doubt he will be able, by return of post, send you the autograph of the Yazzmonster or some other item of similar value.

(Please note that he is not aware of my blegging on his behalf. It is, in fact, an attempt to position myself with someone on the inside for the next time the Indy realises it needs a piece from a foam at the mouth Libertarian who is not John Laughland. Or Mark Almond.)

Anyway, it seems that he hasn’t been infected by his proximity to the varied social liberals and the like who infect the Comment section at the Indy, for as he says:

I agree with you about Polly Toynbee, though. She’s lost it. Completely.

which rather shocked me. For the first time in my life I actually have a view, an opinion, shared by a columnist in The Independent.