We are all in the gutter, and most of us have our minds firmly entrenched there. Certainly that’s the case with the lovelorn desperadoes who populate the personal ads of The London Review of Books. Like most of us, they’re looking for love but willing to settle for a little dirty action…yet what separates these high-minded lowlifes from the rest of us (thankfully), is their refusal to compromise their truest selves, they’re determination to give full voice to their darkest desires:
‘I’m everything you ever wanted in a woman. Assuming you’re into fat 47-year old moody bitches who really don’t enjoy the mornings. Stop talking and pour the bloody mary’s at box no. 1908’
‘Man, 46. Animal in bed. Probably a gnu. Box no. 1910’
‘Sexually, I’m More of a Switzerland’ is the second collection of LBR ads, following on from the surprising mainstream success of ‘They Call Me Naughty Lola.’ Together, the collections may be read as a portrait of a particular sector of England’s reading class – sarcastic, bitter, wildly inventive, willfully perverse, abject losers in love. Alternatively, they can be read them for the simple pleasure of the laughter they provoke – particularly if grew-up with the advantages of American dentistry and are able to laugh unselfconsciously in public. For these sad-sacks however, the sun may have set on the old empire, and Great may less frequently be attached to Britain, but the people’s continuing delight in adventurous word-play and its ongoing love affair with eccentricity suggest that there will, indeed, always be an England.
