Will to live sapped? Check!

There are two words that strike fear into the all-but-empty chest cavity of the half-hearted hack: advertising feature. Gahh! Nooooo! (Whimpering noises, rocking and drooling reflex engaged.)

Oh, it's OK now. I've had a large measure of Appleton Estate for my nerves and it's all fine. Really. Sunshine, lollypops...

Recently, I did a stint on ad features for my sins (which are obviously many and varied and will one day see me sunk in a pit of sulphur, vomit and Boney M Christmas albums).

For the (happily) unitiated, ad features are those things you never read in newspapers and magazines. They are also known as ad supplements, but they differ in a way that I have yet to grasp fully from the true advertorial. Depending on where they appear, ad features are usually given to people who buy ads. Simple, yeah? The people who buy the ads often just write the words and send them in. He/she of the shattered spirit (on this occasion, me) takes said words and makes them into something grammatically correct and, hopefully, eye-catching enough for you to be arsed reading it. There is always a contact number and possibly an address at the end of an ad feature. It sounds just like an advertorial, doesn't it? Nothing of the sort, apparently. Ad features involve Editorial Independence. You'd think that EI would mean that if it were crap, it wouldn't get a run, right? Pffft. As far as I can ascertain, it actually means that if there's no room, or the picture is bollocks - or worse still, there's no picture - then it doesn't get a run. Welcome to the sad and tragic world of ad features.

I still don't understand why they need a journalist for this job. Perhaps it's to make the advertisers feel more important. Whatever the reason, it does nothing for the morale of the poor sods who have to write the stuff. I don't know how journos do this day in, day out and remain sane. One week in, I found myself dangerously close to an alcoholic coma. "But why did you agree to do this?" I hear you cry. Well, I didn't have anything else to do at the time and it kept me in gas bills. And I'm just a gal who cain't say no, pity upon me.

I think my lowest moment came when I had to write (for "write" read "retype") the words, "Are you worried about unwanted hair this summer?" No matter how low the hack goes after this, even if she ends up being a spin doctor for a petrochemical company, being forced to tell people why fairy penguins are happier covered in deisel sludge, nothing will ever be as bad as that moment.

Unwanted. Hair.

I had to think about kittens and Hugh Laurie and Haigh's peppermint truffle bars to keep that sentence from sapping all of my will to live. Harry Potter fans, you know that moment in the movie version of The Prisoner of Azkaban when the unpleasantness of Dementors flies in and starts sucking Harry and Sirius's faces off? Yup, you got it.

Never. A-fucking-gain.