Oh, Mrs Porter, What Shall We Do?

So. Janet Street-Porter, the highly-paid doyen of Fleet Street, rails against the humble blog? Donchajustknowit? The much-made-over hackette seems to think blogs are nothing more than self-indulgent mediocrity (Just blog off. And take your self-promotion and cat-flap with you, Independent on Sunday, 6 January 2008).

Perhaps she thinks Joe and Josephine Blogger would be better off punting up £1.80 of their precious cash to read her whining, self-obsessed ramblings in the IoS every week? Keen to see what she was up to these days, I did just that. Her musings about Marks & Spencer, Big Brother and a plug for her latest publication Life’s Too F***ing Short (for which we are invited to punt a further £12.99) are hardly the most scintillating of reads.

She confesses to being ‘a bit nervous’ that M&S might branch out into online food delivery – worse still, that they are considering expanding their range of food to include more basic ingredients with which meals can be cooked. Well, I think JS-P needs to toughen up a bit. It takes more than a shift in retailing strategy by a high street chain to make Bill Blunt even the least bit nervy.

Janet is clearly no stranger to irony. After slagging off the lowly blogger for self-promotion, should we be surprised that her angle on Big Brother is that ‘I was allowed to hijack the programme last Friday’, or that a quarter of her column is devoted to advertorial for her own (just-published) book?

At least no one can accuse her of being a hypocrite. ‘Start each day … by telling yourself you are great. No one else is going to, believe me,’ she says. How true, Janet. Now – where’s that cat-flap? Mee-owww!