Cod Almighty | Diary

She dries meat gravy

6 April 2022

Another week has passed without Marvel picking up Daubney's "Cod Almighty" screen treatment. It's your standard sci-fi/period piece/religious epic/romcom loosely based on the true story of a time-travelling medieval cod imbued with superpowers whilst trying to rescue his descendants (spawn of a taboo-breaking affair with a haddock causing him to be cast out of paradise, aka Dogger Bank) from Killingholme refinery effluent off Spurn Point. Well the big screen's loss is your gain as it means at least another week of Daubney Diarying.

Results went our way last night, leaving our play-off destiny in our own hands. Or at our own feet to be precise, with it being football. That doesn't mean Daubney is prepared to take the month off work with play-off fever just yet. Years 2013-2015 of the Grimsby Town Discography are enough education that getting there is one thing and having your insides in a 1600rpm washing machine for three weeks before taking a direct hit to the nuts from a Gav Holohan 35-yarder is also one thing. Having said that, Wembley in June would be rather nice wouldn't it. Plucky little upstarts Wrexham, isn't it? Foetal ball of nerves for 120 minutes plus penalties, isn't it? Mmm, bring it on.

Titans of turdy news publication, Reach have reacted to the Mariners' imminent surge to the play-offs and up the leagues by advertising for a new "Football Writer Yorkshire". Yes, like you, we're so tired of saying Grimsby is not in Yo...see, we just trailed off there.

Remarkably, the lack of basic geography isn't the biggest sin. The list of candidates' traits gets past priorities of "SEO and other website traffic driving strategies" (aka clickbaitery bollocks) and "Passion for digital storytelling which goes beyond the confines of local journalism" (aka making stuff up), to finally get to "Demonstrable knowledge of football which goes beyond mere awareness". Mere awareness? 

Where this advert leaves the encumbent is anyone's guess, perhaps someone will run a tasteless Twitter poll later to speculate. You know, like the one along the lines of the Telegraph's recent hatchet job on who of Max Crocombe and James McKeown will keep their job. We're not going to link to the article because that's what Reach want, isn't it. 

A terrifying thought is that perhaps we're being unfair here and the job is being advertised because the Telegraph is currently not clickbaity enough. In that case, journalism has turned into the world's best ever limbo dancer, with the bar getting lower and impossibly lower. "It's the way the industry has gone, don't blame Reach or this week's bloke" is the cry we can hear from beyond the screen. It doesn't have to be that way as the sage Blow Monkeys and latterly Liam Gallagher crooned.

Like a mistimed clearance by Nathan Clarke, off the top of my head I could mention News and Star's Jon Colman in Carlisle. And Devon Diary has chipped in with an upvote for Guy Henderson, despite Torquay's Herald Express being part of Reach. "He builds real relationships with players and managers and wouldn't dream about splitting that content up into a dozen threadbare articles and tweeting it every ten minutes. The articles also have complex sentences arranged in paragraphs."

"Oi Daubney, instead of complaining about others and their writing, why don't you give us something worth reading yourself?". Well, the exorbitantly-priced King's Lynn tickets are on sale here. And eagle-eyed Fenty Years author Mark Stilton is inking up his quill for future chapters having spotted that old Frozen Fish Face himself is, like all upstanding Brexit-loving Tories, quite happy to set up in Spain when it suits. Would you buy a timeshare from this man, Luxury Sun Kissed Properties?