likes, loves and lusts

how to lose your job, but gain countless fans

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I've always enjoyed Top Gear. Not for the cars (obviously) but for the presenters. They're quirky, quick-witted and funny to say the least. This morning I found out something about James May I never knew, and never would have guessed. He really is a dark horse...

According to Wikipedia, Top Gear presenter and journalist James May was fired from Autocar magazine in 1992 for putting together a hidden message spelled out using the drop letter at the start of each article.

"So I had this idea that if I re-edited the beginnings of all the little texts, I could make these red letters spell out a message through the magazine, which I thought was brilliant. I can't remember exactly what it said, but it was to the effect that "You might think this is a really great thing, but if you were sitting here making it up you'd realise it's a real pain in the arse". It took me about two months to do it and on the day that it came out I'd actually forgotten that I'd done it because there's a bit of a gap between it being "put to bed" and coming out on the shelves. When I arrived at work that morning everybody was looking at their shoes and I was summoned to the managing director of the company's office. The thing had come out and nobody at work had spotted what I'd done because I'd made the words work around the pages so you never saw a whole word. But all the readers had seen it and they'd written in thinking they'd won a prize or a car or something."

his masterpiece:

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