The Daily Jolly

'Bad news sells' has been the principle of the mainstream press for a couple of centuries. Have you ever noticed that you feel more upbeat if you don't read a newspaper or see the tv news for a week? Disasters, frauds, cutbacks, recessions, unemployment, terrorism, kidnappings, murders and muggings fill the news and produce a general feeling of doom and gloom. I reckon their theory is that by absorbing it, we feel part of a group that is banding together in adversity, to fight against a common enemy, like soldiers in a war.

If this is true (and I suspect that the newspapers will have invested heavily to find out) then there will be a small market indeed for Chalk Enterprises' new endeavour provisionally entitled 'The Daily Jolly' which will report such upbeat things as the success of the London rent a bike scheme, the numerous crime free neighbourhoods where teenagers are doing their homework of an evening rather than prowling the streets hoping to relieve you of your mobile phone and the beautiful colours of autumn visible up and down the country at the moment.