Snap out of it

"I told the reporter I was a happy person, but look at the caption she has given my photo – 'Gay Man'!"

Most people like attention.

Like making it to the papers, being part of the ‘happening’ crowd, and making those of your friends and family who are able to suppress their nastier, secretly competitive sides, proud of you.

Which makes it so sad when media gets your name wrong.

Imagine this – you see your photograph in the papers. After that initial dread that you may look like your passport photo, or that you’ve been photographed eating, yawning – or in any one of those human moments nothing can render pleasant-looking – you find you’re OK, not bad, given newspaper photographs.

And then you see it.

The name under the photograph.

And you know you’ve been had once again.

Very unfair.

And why that name?

So thair saadham, daahling. And on Page Three?

Besides, what’s with this obsession to ‘caption’ every photograph?

Like the poor victim who wore a red T-shirt to a party and found himself labelled: ‘Red-y’.

Bit much – these flights of fancy that flounder like a large-ish cow making a feeble attempt to jump over the moon.

Attention, shutterbugs-who-snoop-around-events, clicking all and sundry – go all caption-crazy if you must, but at least re-think the ‘what’s in a name’ style of reporting.