Toonatic

The big news sensations of the modern age, the scandals, the scoops, the scourges, break right here in the blogosphere. It takes weeks if not months later for the real world, for the print media, stumbling from the cave and blinded by technology's bright lights, to catch up. It was true with Britney's transmogrification into a fat bald bad mother, and it's true here.
You may remember, several months ago this post of mine of some shameful Lily Allen fan art which led to me being mocked and ridiculed in pubs, on facebook and behind my back. Now skip forward a few months and what's that splashed across page 2 of London's favourite free paper? Just next to none less than Stella McCartney? Yes, it's my picture of Lily.

In the intervening weeks, you see, I saw advertised a poster design competition themed 'My Hero' being run by MTV and Penguin books, all to promote the new yoof-orientated Nick Hornby novel Slam. I casually sent in my picture, and it won.
A few weeks later Charlotte and I went to the glamorous Slam book launch at the Design Museum on the South Bank, where the shortlisted posters where all up on display. It easily surpassed the time I saw Adam Buxton in Nine Elms Sainsburys as the most glamorous occasion of my life. There were hors douvres. There was a bar with no cash till. There was John O'Farrell. Nick Hornby made a really funny speech and then announced the winner. I looked surprised, but I'd actually been meticulously pre-briefed. I skipped up to the front and Nick, as I now call him, gave me a new iPod (a nano, not a touch) a child's t-shirt and a hug and the Penguin MD handed me a bottle of M&S Champagne.
The next day my entry was in thelondonpaper, which pretty much everyone I know evidently reads as I was bombarded with literally three or four text messages of congratulations.
The poster is to be on display for all of November in the Design Museum. They asked me to write a few words about why Lily is my hero for the display, but apparently my submission- a cloying bid to scrape back some street-cred by mocking her- was not serious enough. Here it is:

"When I was younger, I didn't have posters of my heroes up on my wall. Lily Allen, however- despite looking, sounding and probably smelling like a chav- is a pop star I wouldn 't mind being in my bedroom. She's pop royalty and yet I feel I have a lot in common with her: we both made most of our friends on MySpace, we both like the Specials and both are pretty rubbish at playing the guitar. Most of my friends seem to think she's fairly talentless and has only been as succesful as she has because of her rock 'n' roll dad, but whilst I accept these are valid points I think she's alright, still. Plus, she's a lot easier to draws than Amy Winehouse."

So there you go.