Editorial
The best way to sum up Tom, the balding, 45 year old Yorkshireman, father of two teenagers and current Editor-In-Chief of The Turnip, is via an email he sent back in 2012 to Richard Bacon’s ‘Moan In’ on BBC Radio 5Live.
27th June 2012
Hello Richard.
I would like to moan about “cloud storage”. It’s everywhere - “Google Drive” this, “DropBox” that, Icloud here, “SugarSync” there...all providing exactly the same service yet aiming to outdo each other by offering more “space” per your pound or free “gigglebits” depending on how many other poor souls you “invite” to join this hoop-la.
I say why would anyone want to upload their information to some data centre in the middle of Arizona to be meddled with by faceless IT executives who are primed to bombard us with advertising based on this information we so willing to submit via payment of a monthly direct debit into the hands of Apple, Google, Microsoft et al? Bah.
We are already told to back up the back ups of our back ups. People turn round and say “ooooh but what if you have a house fire and lose it all?” I say a) what’s stopping these data centres catching fire? (it’s very hot in the desert after all) and b) IF YOU HAVE A HOUSE FIRE JUST BE THANKFUL YOU ARE STILL ALIVE.
I can do this myself - why doesn’t everyone in your studio put all their important documents and precious family memories onto an SD card or portable hard drive and send them to my house where I will store them upstairs in my attic near the ACTUAL clouds - and I’ll charge you £5.99 a month for the privilege.
Honestly. This Country.
Great show!
Tom
YORK
(Not ‘Thom Yorke’, from Radiohead. Ahahahahahahaa.)
The first thing to note about this is, apart from ripping of a well-know Alan Partridge phrase and acknowledging the horrendous Radiohead reference, is that it was composed on a Thursday. At 9.41am. Clearly not at work…
The second thing to note is…Christ, it’s 2026 now. We’re old.
But, wise words nonetheless. Richard opened the show with it. Or at least that’s what Tom tells us.
It’s in this aggressively mundane spirit that he edits ‘The Turnip’ each week. Most of the headlines come from his meandering middle aged mind. For a long time he wondered where the best place was to dump it all…blogs, social media accounts, voice notes, countless Google Docs…even PEN AND PAPER, god forbid. But nothing felt right.
Then, he watched ‘The Day Today' for the 27th time and it finally clicked. Go with satire. Go with headlines. Go with Grandad, former editor of a local newspaper and whom he still wishes was around to correct his grammar (spoken and written).
Is that the correct use of ‘whom’ by the way?
We hope you enjoy reading Tom’s ramblings. You might have more in common with him than you think.
A lot in common if you're also on X a lot, still moaning at Richard Bacon.