For some years now, the shelves of newsagents have been awash with… well, I don’t know what you’d call them, really; tragic confession magazines? I’m sure you know the sort of thing – like the one pictured here, they’re jam-packed with true tales of tragedy and woe, and yet often topped with a no-context-at-all picture of a smiling woman. Given the coverlines swirling around her, I always wonder: just what is she smiling at?

Anyway, there are a lot of these magazines, and a lot of the tales seem to focus around death or children or the deaths or illnesses of children, but there seems to be very little coverage of them; I can’t help but wonder if, like their equivalent in book publishing, they’re a bit of a ‘dirty secret’ – very lucrative, but not necessarily something that the folks involved want to admit to being involved in or talk about too much. Like being a pimp or drug dealer, or the composer of The Ketchup Song.

But, in a strange case of synchronicity, these magazines are the focus of not one, but two programmes on TV this week – one on Tuesday and another – on a different channel – on Thursday.

Hang on a mo, though… is it synchronicity… or a clever marketing ploy?

Hmm. If the latter, then my simple-minded ways have been exploited by a cruel media machine. I feel so dirty and used, like my very soul’s been violated.

Perhaps I should sell my story.