Over the years I've always enjoyed the work of feature writer Andy Beckett. Take this piece he wrote for the Guardian's news pages last October on the decline of North Sea oil, which crackles with atmosphere. It starts: "Before visiting a North Sea oil rig it is necessary to become a little more fatalistic."
Beckett then gets into the matter of fact safety information the crews must go through and the suits they wear which are nicknamed "body bags". I think he is great at going somewhere and tapping into something's sensibility. In this article, it is the loneliness and rubbing along of oil crews and the spectre over them of the oil running out. The piece was illustrated with an image of dark seas.
He also wrote a rather legendary piece about Paul Dacre and the Daily Mail in 2001, which includes the quote: "These people couldn't bring up a fucking hamster!"
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