Journalism.

What other trade would lift a young lad out of the north east of England and plonk him on the doorstep of a billionaire playboy’s luxury London apartment, the night he was due home with his new lover - who happened to be the mother of Britain’s future king?

Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed never did come home that night, they both died in a Paris underpass.

What other trade, half a dozen or so years later, would lead to another doorstep, this time to a bombed out palace in Baghdad as a horde of American soldiers sought out evidence of weapons of mass destruction? 

Saddam Hussein’s mythical weapons never did show up either; the marauding holy warriors of Islamic State did instead, along with the ritual beheadings of victims in orange jumpsuits. 

Saddam’s Iraq had no connection to the 9/11 attacks on the US, zero, despite the contortions of the US regime to ‘prove’ otherwise. And it turned out, as many of us suspected at the time, that the Bush/Cheney US administration also had absolutely no plan for a post Saddam Iraq, it was all pretty much just “America, f**k yeah!” 

Never mind dumb humans huddling themselves together into tribes and their lies and their nasty wars, what other trade allows one to witness the true awesome power of nature and get a glimpse of what the end of the world will look like? 

I drove up and down the hills of the north east coast of Japan in the spring of 2011 and found every town and village washed away by a planet-shaking earthquake and the subsequent 40 metre (130 feet) wave that followed. That wave clocked speeds of almost 450mph (700 km/hour). 

It’s surreal indeed to see cars parked in top floor apartment windows and fat boats run aground several miles inland from the sea, living fish still wriggling in puddles nearby. Even a porpoise. 

Around 20,000 people died within a few minutes. That’s about the same as a packed stand at a football match. Around a quarter of a million people were left homeless. Oh, and a nuclear power plant went into meltdown and will take about 40 years to be made safe. Yet the Japanese were expecting this great wave, they’d seen them before. Man will never ‘conquer’ nature, it’s an illusion.

What other trade would put you in a Beverly Hills hotel suite for a chat with a real life Beatle, and find that Sir Paul McCartney had somehow managed to stay a ‘normal’ bloke, despite all those songs, the intergalactic fame and the sheer longevity - plenty other ‘celebrities’ aren’t much fun to be around in the flesh.

What other trade would pay you to watch a man with football feet forged in another galaxy, float over a pitch and into the record books. Lionel Messi is -nobody is even a close second frankly - the GOAT (greatest of all time).

What other trade… what other trade… what other trade.

mfl 

Resources:

Addison on literary agent’s website:

Vice Interview:

An Interview with the Guy Who Wrote an Unauthorised History of the 'Daily Mail'

The Guardian:

BBC's Addison to go it alone