Editorial: Welcome back

So we're back in business, although in a different form. Anyone that has been following Tomatoshoe's fairy tale rise in the internet and business press, both online and in print, will know what a struggle it has been to get this far.

Tomatoshoe began as long ago as the mid nineties, 1994, to be exact. Back then the web was the thing keeping flies off your lunch, and the net was something you used to pick food out of your neighbours rubbish bin. At least, where I lived. In those days we were more concerned with the demise of line dancing and the promotion of the many uses of pot.

Times change, though, and pretty soon everyone wanted a piece of online real estate. Tomatoshoe stayed out of the whole melee, stayed out of the whole thing. Away from investors and wheelbarrows full of cash, and got on with providing online brain chew for the masses.

This was fine, but after a while is can be a bit grating to get yet another invite from the guys over at The Gazelle, asking you to yet another flotation of some offshoot or other of their web "project". It wasn't a website anymore, but a project. The way Nazi Germany was Hitler's project."Oh, and bring some shorts, we're having it by the pool," they would bleat down their cordless, dickless phones.

The pool, became "The Pools" as their editorial team wisely used the investment money and "liquified" some of their stock (quite literally in the case of the staff photographer). Coke snorting idiot illiterati, they gave whole new meaning to the expression "Lucky gift horse using fuck wits".

It was inevitable then, that I, editor in chief of Tomatoshoe would be bitten by the bug. We were finally to get our piece of the pie, and as George Bush famously said "We will build the pie higher." We would indeed have our time in the limelight.

All the signs were good, we moved our entire operation from the sleepy valleys of Wales over to Silicon Bally, Europe's new hothouse for online think-tankery. Armitage got work started on his new pool, we hired new writers, Opraskalski and Clutterbuck sorted out where we would use the money. Casino's, bars, women and "get even richer" schemes were all examined in painstaking detail. Being the legal team, they could have looked at the finer points of our agreement with Conte-Nasty ® ^TM inc, our Investors/Überbosses, and that was our undoing.

I was to no longer be 'editor in chief', but simply 'editor', snappier they said, more today than before(?).I should have realised what was up when they sent a representative to our first editorial meeting in the new offices. I thought he was there to fix the drains or something. He had a red pen with him. It was very large. It could take refill cartridges. He used refill cartridges. Very soon my carefully crafted story about a very naked Queen of England, a midnight encounter with a Corgi and a few bottles of scotch became several sheets of A4, covered in blood red ink, with the words "Queen owns some dogs, alleges man" written on them. Even Armitage's scathing review of the new Naked George album, pointing out the many similarities between NG's music and a bowl of rotting, petrifying man puke became "I love this band, buy Naked George's new Album, out on Conte-Nasty ® ^TM inc Records."

This went on, and got worse. Very soon Tomatoshoe was no longer considered a website, but a 'content provider'. We were to 'provide witty content' for the whole Conte-Nasty ® ^TM inc Network. They had a 'network' for Christ sake. As time went on, the man with the red pen, came to more meetings. Pretty soon he was arriving before all of us every morning, and each time he brought more people. "Meet Chet, " he'd say in a voice which could only be described by the word swell, "Chet's a people person, he's a real funny guy. Maybe you could use some of his ideas."

Chet, and his many clones sent by the Überbosses were indeed funny, but for all the wrong reasons. I found the polyester funny. Armitage found the strange newspeak funny. They would tell us jokes about Viagra which were not ironic but were, they would tell us, topical. "People like topical," red pen man used to say, "It reminds them where they are and where they are going. People find it comforting, life affirming." I though my slapstick story about abortion clinics was topical and life affirming (literally). Red pen guy did not agree.

Very soon I was no longer referred to as editor, but as 'chief content provider'. This soon became 'content provider'. The visits became more frequent, and now they brought clipboards with them. We went to focus groups to discover what was funny. Who would know, but apparently saying "Is that your final answer", over and over again, is funny, they wanted me to end all the stories with that god-awful phrase. I always thought ridiculing public figures was funny or farting in a room full of people in starched suits and then staring a whispering campaign accusing one of the starchees of the very same crime. No, said the focus group. That's not funny.

It took a year and a half, but eventually it happened. We were no longer 'content providers' to the Conte-Nasty ® ^TM inc Network, but a drain on resources to be jettisoned as quickly and as quietly as possible. You see, some guy somewhere, who I never met, finally twigged it. We weren't making any money. Nothing, no profits, nothing. Why did they buy us?

"Head's are gonna roll," red pen guy told me one morning, as if it was somehow my fault. "You guys have got to become profitable."

Profitable? This was a new concept, and left us all stumped, we figured we'd make our money buy selling stock in our company, and using that money to buy stock in other companies which we would then sell and make more money. Suddenly the suits stopped discussing the New Economy, but started discussing, "Re sizing, down sizing, projecting futures and future projections."

And then they dumped us, the company was worthless, but they tried to sell it anyway. Armitage and me stole some of the bizarre office crap those Conte-Nasty ® ^TM inc Dickless Wonders^TM had made us buy, sold it, and bought the company back.

The suits are gone. We are not.

The Queen has sex with her corgies when nobody's looking. There I've said it now.

Editor in Chief and President for Life of Tomatoshoe, in perpetuity.