5. Autocar Magazine -- James May Sends a Message to the Readers
Staying in the realm of contradictions, up next we have an editor putting an incredible amount of planning into hiding a message that he apparently wrote while drunk (and 10 years old). Fans of the BBC's Top Gear might know James May as one of the three guest hosts of the quirky show. He's also an award-winning journalist and a stunt driver. But back in 1992, he was just a lowly editor for Autocar magazine, and wasn't the least bit happy about that fact. Standard protocol would have suggested that he put his head down, kiss a few asses, and wait for his shot at a job in the magazine industry that he didn't actively hate. That's how you keep your job, and it's not like the magazine industry was going anywhere.
Like the show he would go on to host, May wasn't a huge fan of standard protocol. So when he was given the opportunity to put out the magazine's special Road Test Yearbook issue -- which is apparently the Autocar equivalent of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue -- he did not take this as an opportunity to show off the ol' work ethic, and instead saw it as a chance to do this:
The editors' suspicions were raised when May tried to turn in an entry starting with a drop cap apostrophe.With punctuation added, that reads: "So you think it's really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up; it's a real pain in the arse." May was in charge of putting the whole supplement together, which took several months and was "incredibly boring." So he looked over his shoulder a couple times, snickered to himself, and went about the painstaking process of re-editing the first sentence of each paragraph to hide a secret message that reads as though it was written in 15 seconds.
Instead of moving up to the big leagues of Autocar magazine, May was promptly fired, which is probably for the better, since magazine editors are typically expected to write more carefully than that and not find the job of putting a magazine together "incredibly boring." May went on to a career test driving incredibly fast cars on Britain's Top Gear, co-hosting shows about drinking, and being told "well done" and "Good show, old chap" by everyone in England.
He budgets at least two hours a day for monocle adjustment.
Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_20213...#ixzz2Ipe0zeEa
Getty
Like the show he would go on to host, May wasn't a huge fan of standard protocol. So when he was given the opportunity to put out the magazine's special Road Test Yearbook issue -- which is apparently the Autocar equivalent of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue -- he did not take this as an opportunity to show off the ol' work ethic, and instead saw it as a chance to do this:
The editors' suspicions were raised when May tried to turn in an entry starting with a drop cap apostrophe.
Instead of moving up to the big leagues of Autocar magazine, May was promptly fired, which is probably for the better, since magazine editors are typically expected to write more carefully than that and not find the job of putting a magazine together "incredibly boring." May went on to a career test driving incredibly fast cars on Britain's Top Gear, co-hosting shows about drinking, and being told "well done" and "Good show, old chap" by everyone in England.
Getty
He budgets at least two hours a day for monocle adjustment.
Read more: http://www.cracked.com/article_20213...#ixzz2Ipe0zeEa
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