The UK’s Best Newspaper Columnist Is… Steve Canavan
Sometimes you need a little break from the horrors of local crime and unemployment news, particularly if you live in a place like Blackpool, the crime-ridden seaside resort north of Liverpool. “The Inverness of the south,” I think they call it. (OKAY, relax, it’s not that bad, don’t freak out on us.) Fortunately, they have an attraction in the form of Steve Canavan, a BBC Sport writer and local hero. He is our man from Manchester. While the paper may be forced to front stories like Woman stole gin and tonic can, which is amazing, obviously, inside, it’s our man, the Canavan. Unlike literally EVERYONE at the New York Times, he can get a column out of ANYTHING.
A sampling of his recent bests:
For a while now, it has seemed to me that inventions aren’t as exciting as they once were.
This one is about how he came to love caravanning (cc: “Happy Valley”).
I’ll never forget the awkward conversations when I returned to school each September.
“My summer was so-ooo awesome. We saw Niagara Falls, the Empire State Building and then dad arranged a helicopter ride over the Grand Canyon. What did you do Steve?”
“Well, we huddled behind a windbreak on a deserted beach in Anglesey, and my sister had acute diarrhoea after she ate some dodgy scrambled egg at a cafe on the A39.”
He went on vacation to Majorca:
Now the English don’t do topless sunbathing.
It must be something to do with our uptight, prudish ways or the fact that, as a nation, we get embarrassed very easily.
Europeans, on the other hand, have a different outlook on life.
They enjoy three-hour lunch breaks, shutting up their shops and nipping off for an afternoon nap or a long, lazy lunch with a glass of red wine.
He went to see Noel Gallagher:
Something distressing occurred the other night, something that has not happened since I was aged six-months.
I spent an evening drenched in urine. Worse still, it wasn’t my urine.
And here. His biggest triumph to date. God bless this mess.
