Notes
Patrick Moore writing humour as R.T. Fishall.

Publisher’s Blurb – Lower Cover
R.T. Fishall is a Very Well-known Person, familiar to millions through his frequent TV appearances, renowned for his wit and cosmic vision. His pseudonym is Patrick Moore.

Fishall’s previous book Bureaucrats: How to Annoy Them ('wickedly irreverent and disgracefully irresponsible' – Graham Lord, Sunday Express), an illumination of the goings-on and non-goings-on in the corridors of the civil service, became a best¬seller.

In The Twitmarsh File he turns his attention to the world of local government – or rather its Ludicrous Fringe. These are the wonderful people who gave you wrestling mats for lesbians, persecuted golliwogs, censored Enid Blyton, who outlawed Mozart and Beethoven as elitist and denounced Tippy Fluffytail for having sexist and middle-class values.

No one, least of all R.T. Fishall, would deny that many of the causes pursued by the local council campaigns, such as anti-racism, are excellent, and that the protection of minorities is essential in a free society. What Fishall highlights is Britain’s institutionalized reductio ad absurdium (in non-elitist language 'the Council have gone barmy') in which good causes get lost and bad causes more than they deserve.

Fishall realises that his readers may be startled by his book: but he is charitable about his victims. As he says: 'Long may they prosper; the world would be poorer without them, but then in some cases the rate-payers would probably be a good deal richer.'