Glenda Slagg is a fictional parodic columnist in the satirical magazine Private Eye. She first appeared in the mid-1960s. Her writing style is a pastiche of several female columnists in UK newspapers, notably Jean Rook^[1] and Lynda Lee-Potter^[2]; brash, vitriolic and inconsistent.

Glenda's column usually takes the form of several paragraphs lauding people in the news that fortnight, each followed by a paragraph deriding the people she has just praised. For example, she will begin "Hats off to Anne Robinson!", and follows the comment with "Anne Robinson? Aren'tchajustsickofher!" She finishes her column by listing, with heavy sexual innuendo, the men in the news she finds attractive that week, often using a variation on her catchphrase "Crazy name, crazy guy!?!" She signs off with "Byeeeee!!!!".^[3]

Her characteristic style also includes overuse of exclamation marks and question marks, and saying "Geddit!!??!" whenever she makes a joke. She is often fired and rehired by "Ed" in the space of a paragraph.

Despite being fictional, Glenda Slagg has become an archetype in UK journalism^[4].

[edit] References

1. ^ "Lynda Lee-Potter", Daily Telegraph (2004-10-21). Retrieved on 30 August 2006. 
2. ^ Claire Cozens (2004-10-20). "'First Lady of Fleet Street' dies", The Guardian. Retrieved on 30 August 2006. 
3. ^ See any issue of Private Eye since the mid 1960s.
4. ^ Bernard Shrimsley (2003). "Columns! The good, the bad, the best". British Journalism Review 14 (3): 23–30. doi:10.1177/09564748030143006, http://www.bjr.org.uk/data/2003/no3_shrimsley.htm.