Crimes Against Literature

I read with much amusement that the Home Office's Top Tackdog, Doctor John Reid, plans to ban convicted criminals from publishing the memoirs of their exploits. He intends to trackfast this legislation too, so watch out!

This comes as a classic redtop-led kneejerk response to recent rumours that paramilitary murderers, released into the community by the Good Friday Agreement, have been paid substantial cash advances by UK publishers.

So it isn't [honestly, guv] about winding up disgraced tories Jeffery Archer and Jonathan Aitken, although clearly there will be no tears shed at the Politburo if those two perjurers are stripped of their royalties. It's about stopping some very nasty criminals from benefitting financially from their crimes.

The most prevalent UK publisher of hard-man autobiographies is John Blake. I've read some of their stuff, Guvnor, Pretty Boy, Chopper and Bronson; it's not very edifying, but it does sell well south of the river. What's more, it is in general written by men who have served their sentence and been released. And whether we like it or not, and read it or not, they should be free to ply their wares, shouldn't they?

The task of codifying this legislation will be a nightmare. Will it be retrospective; and if so will there be a rule of limitation? Will booksellers run the risk of imprisonment for selling a copy of The Ballad of Reading Gaol? Or Papillon? Or Jimmy Boyle's A Sense of Freedom?

Mishmash Bookshop suggested some time ago to friends of ours at 'the Yard' that the Metropolitan Police should have a literary division. A few coppers could sit around on an overstuffed leather banquette, cross-referencing charge sheets with galley proofs from this month's violent bestseller. If the subject claims to have 'blagged' a bank robbery that remains unsolved, the response is only a phonecall away.

Or perhaps we could 'come to an arrangement' with the various firms to extend the 'East End Omerta' to cover the West End publishers.

Andrew Mishmash