If you asked a Mail reader to describe a Guardian reader, it would probably be me. I’m a 34-year-old who lives in Islington. I self-righteously believe in social justice, environmental causes and reducing inequality, and a growing awareness of my own hypocrisy on those scores meant switching from the world of corporate advertising to public campaigning. Sadly, I’m still probably 90% pious gobshitery rather than Gandhiesque being the change you want to see, but like Julius in Pulp Fiction, I’m trying to switch to being the shepherd rather than the tyranny of evil men. I now have one of those textbook metropolitan-elitey jobs, as an advertising manager for a public information campaign about how smart meters can help us all save energy. I’m not from a posh town originally, but when I was older I did get the benefit of a posh education. I enjoy hummus. I have even thrown the occasional dinner party. That’s pretty much a Guardianista full house. God, even I think I’m awful reading that back.
When I’m not being a walking leftwing cliche, I’m probably to be found lying on the floor of my flat, competing with my 18-month-old daughter about who can do the best farmyard animal impressions (she can), or trying to decipher just what the hell In The Night Garden is all about (no idea at time of writing). I’ve read the Guardian fleetingly from my mid teens and through university, but only became monogamous when I was about 22. Previously I’d read whatever happened to be lying around wherever I was, which was the Mail or sometimes the Times at home, and a mixture of different broadsheets at university. But as I started reading more of the comment section rather than just the news and sport, I just found that the Guardian’s voice and beliefs most closely aligned with mine.
While naturally lefty, the bits I turn to first are often the people who can make me smile. I’ll usually turn to the sports section first, where Marina Hyde’s and Vic Marks’s drollery make them absolute must reads, along with Barney Ronay and his amazing multitiered similes, rolling over into endless sentence-extending subclauses like a motorcycle driven by a racehorse flying out of a window made of adverbs (am I doing this right, Barney?).
The Guardian has definitely affected how I think about a lot of things. It’s seemingly very fashionable BTL to bash anything written that falls under the broad umbrella of “identity politics”, but how else would do we broaden our understanding of the world if we don’t make the effort to hear the perspectives of those who’ve lived completely different lives. You don’t have to agree with everything, but you’d be foolish not to listen. To give just a few examples, Laura Bates (street harassment), Paris Lees (trans rights) and Frances Ryan (disability) have made me think about issues that would otherwise be almost entirely invisible to me. Sometimes I think the Guardian is as guilty as anyone when it comes to preaching to the choir and making itself a safe echo chamber, but then Simon Jenkins or someone like that comes along for us all to have a good old disagree with (but usually learn something new without realising while we’re at it).
The whole WikiLeaks expose was memorable and brilliant, and exactly what newspapers are for. Even if WikiLeaks has turned out to make, to put it kindly, something of a disappointing contribution to liberal values today.
I’m one of the remaining 47 people in Britain under the age of 40 who still buys a newspaper in the morning, and I read it on the bus on the way to work. But increasingly my main route in is via the mobile website, which gives me the opportunity to stare through my fingers at some of the comments made below the line.
• If you would like to be interviewed in this space, send a brief note to good.to.meet.you@theguardian.com
