The World According To Andy McDonald 

What do you do when you have an over-active sense of humour, a sarcastic streak a mile wide and a slightly abstract view of the world? Become a Pink Floyd fan? Well...yes, more than likely. But aside from that let me just warn you not to do what I did.

Hi. my name is Andy McDonald, from Victoria, Australia. A few years back I found what I thought would be the perfect outlet for my humour. I sent a comment to the Herald Sun letters page, which has a column for short letters called "50/50". My comment was to do with the 2000 Australian Football League Grand Final. That year the Bombers were the best team by miles, and although the Grand Final combatants hadn't been decided yet it was obvious no-one would beat them. A topic of discussion in the media at the time was whether to award runner-up medallions to the losing team's players, which had never been done before in AFL. I came up with this gag:

It was quite a buzz seeing the comment in print, especially knowing that this newspaper has over a million readers. After a while I sent in a couple more comments, but back then it certainly wasn't the regular hobby that it was to become.

That was until the 2002 soccer World Cup. I sent in another comment, and for whatever reason it was like I'd flicked a switch, and suddenly decided to write to the paper regularly. The comment was again to do with Aussie Rules football, at a time when many star players were out of action through injury. It said:

I put my own name to this comment, but having decided to make a regular thing of this I thought I'd better come up with some pseudonyms. I assumed that if the letters editors saw the same person writing repeatedly they'd knock a lot of it back, in order to let other writers have a go. I have since learnt how wrong that idea was, but thanks to Colin Turner and "A Fleeting Glimpse" I can at least tell my sorry tale.

I started thinking about pseudonyms, and decided to have a theme which would tie the different names together. Pink Floyd stood out as the obvious source, as it was probably the subject I knew most about. I knew all the songs, album titles, band members and lyrics, and as I looked into the possible names provided by the band, either hidden or obvious, I soon realised there'd be no shortage of material.

The Floyd names also added a bit of extra interest because a number of my friends were into Floyd, and I thought it'd be fun seeing which of them picked up on the names when my comments appeared in print.

And as I thought along this line I saw how it would also apply to any other Pink Floyd nuts out there who read the paper. Let's face it, we rarely get to see anything in the papers relating to Floyd, and this was the case even when they were at the height of their popularity. I know how excited I get any time I see anything at all to do with them. I can spot the words Pink Floyd, or the name Gilmour in a newspaper from 20 paces! Just as I can hear a Pink Floyd song on someone's radio no matter what other sounds are drowning it out. 

This gave me great motivation. Picturing Pink Floyd fans spotting comments in the newspaper signed with plays on song titles, band members' names or song lyrics, sitting there scratching their heads and wondering where the heck these comments were coming from. Yes, this would be .... well, I'll use Col Turner's own description "a HOOT". 

So I began to keep a closer eye on news and current affairs in order to have fresh, topical material to write in about. 

The first comment with a Floyd pseudonym related to the autobiographies which had been released by a couple of famous Australians, in which they basically whinged and blamed others for everything that had gone wrong in their lives.

The Wimbledon final in 2002 was interrupted by a streaker, at a time when a hot topic in Australia was public liability isurance.

July 10: "If the streaker at Wimbledon was to injure himself jumping the net, would an insurance company cover him?" C. Emma LePlaye

 This was accompanied by a cartoon, drawn purely as a result of my stupid comment.

 Lleyton Hewitt had won the Wimbledon title and appeared on the Herald Sun's front page with a cigar in his mouth. This caused some controversy among the anti-smoking lobby, but I had a different reason for commenting:

July 13: "I saw Lleyton Hewitt on the front page with a cigar in his gob. Oh, if only it had been a sock." Brian Damage

The AFL Tribunal had been handing down some very puzzling and inconsistent penalties.

I was on a roll, with letters getting published in quick succession. The next related to the TV show "Big Brother", which had been a huge hit but was now struggling for ideas. They'd started doing celebrity versions and were looking for interesting housemates. Meanwhile several women in Australian politics were creating havoc.

TV coverage of AFL matches was being destroyed by too many ad breaks.

It got worse when his mother sued "for her suffering at seeing his injuries" and got $18,000.

In an unrelated letter, a guy called Nemo wrote in:

"Years ago the police fixed youth gangs. Four or five police in a car and if they saw a gang they got out and gave them a foot up the backside and told them to get home. It worked!"

In light of the drunken teenager's payout I replied.

A letter I'd written to a football column, which I'd signed Lester B. Morelyte was printed, but the "B" was left out, rendering the name meaningless. One consolation was the letter won two Medallion Club tickets to an AFL match at Telstra Dome.

A second letter I'd written to the football column that day was also printed, signed W. Hubbard and in the letter I used the line "it all makes perfect sense."