Life at the sports desk

The offices of the Delhi Sentinel. A harassed sports editor hurriedly finished his lunch: two bottles of whisky, a lasagne, two curries, a chicken in a basket, a few cans of low-fat lager, a KFC family bucket and a packet of Rothmans.

"I'm sick of this diet," he shouted. "I can't work. I feel faint with hunger. What are we putting in the paper tomorrow?"

A nervous flunky raised his hand.

"Well, sir, we've got Gautam Gambhir's latest piece."

"What's in it? Who's he had a go at this time?"

"Oh, everyone. He says that all his opponents are rubbish, apart from his mates, but he doesn't want people to think he's being unkind or arrogant. And he says Simon Cowell's written to him and told him not to be so harsh to everyone."

"Okay, good. What else? Has our man in London filed his opinion piece yet?"

"Yes sir," said the flunky. "He says he hates the IPL and it's vulgar and noisy and everyone involved is a grasping little oik."

"This seems a bit familiar," said the editor, fiddling distractedly with a bit of duck in his ice cream. "Didn't he do that last week?"

"Yes, it's the same one four weeks in a row, only this time he's said that cricketers with logos on their shirts are worse than Hitler and that cheerleaders spell the end of civilisation as we know it."

"Get him to add in something about why he can't understand why anyone would want to watch the IPL when Old Etonians are playing the Bullingdon Club at the Parks in the driving sleet and that'll probably make a page," said the editor. "What are we doing on Sachin?"

"Well, apparently Sachin went to the shops on Saturday and bought a bottle of mineral water, so we've got full coverage of that, photo galleries, reaction from some people who know somebody who once met a bloke whose brother does Sachin's dry-cleaning, a 10,000 word statistical analysis of the shopping trip, and a series of features about how this shopping trip rates alongside other shopping trips he's made in his career."

"How many pages coverage is that in total?"

"14 pages, plus we've got an interview with the bottle of mineral water."

"Just 14 pages?" shouted the editor. "Get out of my sight and write a proper amount of coverage. And get me a pack of crisps, too."

He chewed moodily on a leg of lamb. It was impossible to get the staff these days.