Forgive Me Brighton, For I Have Sinned... (From The Argus)

Forgive Me Brighton, For I Have Sinned...

7:53pm Thursday 24th November 2011

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By Quentin Delahunty – Liberal. Creative. Brightonian »

Elton John once sang “Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word”. Well personally I struggle to successfully emit words such as 'capitalist', 'corporate', 'conservative' and 'otorhinolaryngologist'. Anyway, I dig Elton’s jive. And today readers, you find me in a strangely apologetic mood. I’m not the sort of man who regrets what he has or hasn’t done, as, to be perfectly honest, I have lived (and am living) the kind of glamorous, on-trend, uber cool, organic and creative lifestyle that most of you, stuck in your bland open-plan offices and depressing “dress-down” Fridays, can only dream about.

However, after the huge furore over my last piece – Does Brighton Really Need A Football Club?, I feel that I, Q Delahunty, need to ask forgiveness. This blog is the confession box, and you, dear readers, are my priest (please edit to reflect whatever belief system you prefer).

Apology 1 – To Brighton & Hove Albion, staff, players and fans alike...

My last blog was undoubtedly one of the most potent and exciting pieces of web writing any of us will have seen in a long time, if ever before. That piece, which bravely questioned the need for a great big corporate-hugging football club like Brighton & Hove Albion, created quite a fuss, and opened up a debate which had obviously been simmering in the hearts and minds of Brighthelm’s residents. However, the resonant power and widespread influence of my words shocked even moi, as my blog proved to have an adverse effect on the performance of the Seagulls themselves.

Since the infamous blog was posted on the Argus website, on September 20th, Brighton & Hove Albion have won just one of the subsequent 11 games. This compares to just one defeat in the nine games before the release of my record-breaking piece. Therefore, it is quite obvious that my words not only influenced fans of the clubs, but also the club itself – from the manager to the coaching staff to the players. My words obviously sowed some seeds of doubt in their ability, maybe by tapping into their guilt over the corporate nature of their American Express-polluted club.

For this I apologise. I know how a good Brighton result can lift the spirits of those locals less fortunate then me. So, Gus and co, forget about my words and get back to winning ways! (But keep it real yeah? And steer clear of Luis Suarez).

Apology 2 – To the Argus staff...

The massive popularity of my last blog was no doubt a surprise to a lot of people (not me, of course). Indeed, it became not only the most commented on Argus blog ever (154 and counting), but at the time, it was the most read article overall on the Argus website, outperforming articles written by ‘proper’ journalists at the newspaper. I imagine this caused some amount of jealously at Argus towers towards moi. However, hopefully my writing talent will rub off on those less-gifted, more prosaic journos and they can improve their own work. So, fellow Argus scribes, I am sorry for putting you all in the shade. We are all in this together, yeah?

Apology 3- To you, my readers and fans...

All the aforementioned hoopla following that last blog meant that everyone wanted a piece of me. I was a walking, talking, fat-free vegan Chocolate cake, the fruity, juicy, locally grown apple of everyone’s eye, from podcasts to journos, radio to TV. Obviously, as I prefer to stay under the corporate media radar, I eschewed the attention, but I must admit it was flattering. Even Jocasta wasn’t immune to the Quentin effect, with some of the students in her Handi-Shandi yogi class pestering her for titbits of intimate info about her famous partner, while at school, Lex and Nimsie were constantly fielding requests for their gifted pére’s autograph.

Indeed, I found myself joining the celebrity elite of our coastal idyll. There I was alongside Brighton Twitterati such as Guardian beauty scribe Sali Hughes (never ever spell her name ‘Sally’, she goes mental – that “i” is what makes her quirky and better than you), Independent music journo and the south-coast’s number one professional middle-aged fat goth, the perennially adolescent Simon Price and of course, the fragrant and thoroughly down-to-earth Annabel Giles who bravely eschews her former celeb lifestyle. Indeed, the ‘model, TV and radio presenter, actress and comedienne, novelist and journalist’ (as her website modestly describes her) is a jewel in our city’s crown, plugging into the spiritual coastal vibe as she leaves her glam past behind (check out her website where you can see her getting gunged on Noel’s House Party).

However, while I was enjoying the heady heights of the high-profile media stratosphere, I was forgetting about you, my regular readers and fans. Hence I haven’t blogged for two months. So, to each and every one of you (presumably you are in the thousands now), I apologise for ignoring you. But, you can stop worrying now. Q is back.

Forgive me Brighton for I have sinned (ish… actually, not at all). But I am now cleansed and ready to lead the liberal fight for equality, freedom and widely available fresh organic hummus.

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