Author’s note: OK, this was fun. We had started to get a cult following and a reasonable readership. All the authors were anonymous (I was known as Beaumont) and I thought it would be silly to write two contrasting descriptions of what life at Brains Trust Towers was really like.
Perception
Many of our readers write in on a regular basis to request details of how we put each issue of the Brains Trust together. Unfortunately, our high powered jobs in vital Government departments prevent us from disclosing our identities. However, today we are able to reveal for the first time a behind the scenes look at how the Brains Trust works.
Each day our team of highly paid full-time contributors meet in our luxurious Belgravia offices at 6AM to sing the Brains Trust anthem, have a team hug and swap story ideas over a power breakfast. After a short but fulfilling address from the editorial team, the contributors engage in workshops to develop ideas into top quality satirical material. The office operates in a collegiate atmosphere, with team working and a non-judgemental style that fosters creativity through encouragement. The office walls are festooned with motivational posters exhorting the team to “be the best”.
Ideas are constantly being thrown in for consideration with no thought for credit. The well-paid and contented staff also find time to browse all the major international news journals for new material. However, the editorial team is ever vigilant for the slightest hint of plagiarism. Mid-way through the day the group, all teetotal vegans, stop for a nutritious lunch time snack of tofu washed down with soya milk. They are then joined on the satellite link by the US correspondents. The US and UK teams engage in some hilarious, but positive and non-judgemental horseplay cleverly highlighting cultural differences whilst encouraging creative tension. The US contributors bring their own style and approach to the Trust and the UK welcomes their US brethren’s different outlook on world affairs. Outside contributions are also welcomed as bringing new life and vitality to the journal. All submissions are carefully reviewed and every one receives a response from the editors offering constructive advice and encouragement. Occasionally, our offices our visited by our principal investor, a wealthy philanthropist who insists on having no editorial involvement
As the deadline approaches the BT team put in many long hours polishing stories and ruthlessly editing and re-editing material. The stories are then automatically downloaded into the BT’s state-of-the-art web authoring software. Original images are created to enhance the world leading text. On the Thursday before publication the issue is fully prepared by the middle of the day. The entire team then meets and works laboriously until midnight to ensure that the issue is the most pin-prick accurate satirical effort possible and ensure that all last minute issues are covered. Following “go-live” at midnight the team enjoys a brief prayer session, an invigorating cup of cocoa and start to prepare for the next issue. From then on, the messages of praise start to flood in from our millions of readers.
Reality
The only person to ever enquire about the Brains Trust was a police inspector wondering why the BT offices were used as the forwarding address for a Romanian call-girl ring. The “offices” are a small shed under the railway embankment in Braintree, Essex. Each day the editor-in-chief Carroll attempts to call together the regular contributors, a group of tramps, thieves and Romanian call girls, to flog them and force them to write stories. All available time is spent in the pub or reading Hello magazine and watching daytime TV soaps.
By Wednesday evening, no contributions have been made, except for an obscene limerick by Pullman, an article about currency fluctuations that no one understands from Beaumont and a twenty page anti-capitalism tirade from Hammerton, and so the editor, Delano, is released once more from the editor-in-chief’s bedroom cupboard. A vile, unkempt snarling creature, he terrifies all the contributors into writing articles. By midday Thursday a review of all contributions reveals 12 of them to consist entirely of the words “la la la” repeated over and over again. However one article by Reinold is compact and hilarious but he confesses under torture that it was copied from a five-year-old issue of The Onion. After several seconds of debate on plagiarism, editorial ethics and copyright the team vote unanimously to run it as the lead story having changed every fifth word to “treacle” to avoid any possibility of being sued.
At this point the US contributors’ carrier pigeon arrives and they join the UK team via a 1970’s proto-type speaker phone that makes them sound like Daleks. The two US contributors are Mons Meg, a Mormon Mother of fifteen children, and Seycley, an Hispanic illegal immigrant who believes he is taking part in a weekly English correspondence course and whose contributions each week read “My name is Miguel. The sky is blue.” At 6PM all submissions from external contributors are ritually burnt whilst the team chants “Loser! Loser!” over the flames. Any new member of the team has their feet roasted on the flames and then undergoes a full initiation ritual. Abe Froman is still suspended upside down over the toilet after 14 weeks, as part of his character building exercise. Carroll then extorts money from the other contributors for “miscellaneous production disbursements”. Donations guarantee the placement of an article in this week’s issue. He spends the 27p on supporting his drug habit. The articles are laboriously entered onto punched cards and fed in the 1960’s mainframe originally featured in “Billion Dollar Brain” but now worth only 17 cents. The hand-crafted word processing software written by Carroll then crashes for the 50th time losing all the articles and refusing to restart.
An editorial decision is then made to create all the articles by copying out pages from ancient “Terry and June” scripts. The editorial team then leap into action. Armed only with his “Ladybird book of comedy editing” Delano ruthlessly removes any hint of subtlety and nuance and replaces it with phrases such as “cried like a girl”, “dribbling through a straw” and “Hugo Z Hackenbush”. Pictures are cut out of back issues of National Geographic and crudely stuck on to carbon copies of the original articles. After several minutes of frenzied activity, disturbed only by the sound of snoring from the other contributors, the Brains Trust is almost ready for release. Then with the traditional cry of “Bugger it, that’ll do. I’m off to the pub” the issue is released to the delight of all other satirical journals on the web who can once again rest easily that their readership will be unthreatened.
Sex and Drugs and Growing Old 