Do you think people would take us more seriously if we wrote this article anonymously? It is an op-ed after all. Anonymity is all the rage in big media circles.

Well, since nobody believes you actually contribute to this, you’re as good as anonymous already. As we both know, since I’m the best-known, best-loved and best-looking one, I get the praise. Or I would if there was any, but I’m probably lucky I’m not getting pelted with rotten cabbages in the stocks twice a month for this. So there’s no need to worry, son — keep writing the way you do, and your identity will remain a well-kept secret.

Very amusing. Anonymous publishing has such an old school quality to it, though, like the early days of the printing press rebellion. Plus, I feel as if my life would be vastly improved if my public collaboration with you were to end. I could achieve the approbation my talent richly deserves — and that my association with you denies me.

Look, mate, three people read this: Bailey, Bevin and Fischer. Why do we need anyone else to make us feel brilliant? Having a shed-load of readers is overrated. By definition, the great philosophers are esoteric and unpopular. Have you studied Kant? Or Locke? It’s totally unreadable bollocks, of course. My point being we’re in exceptional company: The fewer readers we have, the smarter we appear.

Well, changing the subject from academic titans to college hucksters, I’m learning to love Rick Pitino… sort of, in an I-still-can’t-stomach-the-greasy-bastard kind of way. They should bring back “Celebrity Death Match” and have him and Bevin pull each other apart for the baying mob. It would be higher quality sport than college basketball, which isn’t exactly saying much — and no matter who loses, everyone wins.

Yeah. If there are two people I’d absolutely love to see go at it in a cage, it’s those two. Bevin’s got the size advantage and faux military bravado, but Pitino is built like Gollum — and we know that he turned out to be a much better scrapper than he looked at first blush. Come to think of it, Pitino looks increasingly like Gollum, even more so since the teats on his tax-funded cash cow, his precious, withered and fell off.

As much as I hate myself for doing it, I have to agree with Pitino in his assessment of our governor. From the moment the bearded bell-end got to Kentucky he’s had a full-on stonker for doing as much damage to UofL as he could — and with all the zeal of a late-life-snake-handling convert. It’s so fucking fanatical it’s inexplicable.

I’ve never found Bevin’s attitude to Louisville inexplicable — inasmuch as I assume my behaviour would be pretty easy to explain in places where a significant majority of the population hated me.

Yeah, whenever Bevin is in Louisville he must feel about as out of place as you do inside a church. Or a library. Or at Cardinal stadium. And speaking of how utterly shite college sports are, did you see that a bunch of UK footie players got suspended for having a kick-about with Grohl?

Nothing says more about college sports than the NCAA taking every opportunity to kick the joy out of everything. Not that I care that much for Foo Fighters — one of the most overrated bands of all-time, which is saying something given Foreigner just played a gig in town, apparently — but I do like Grohl on a personal level. He seems like a genuinely nice bloke. But can you imagine being so petty that you’d stop kids playing their joyless sports because of a kick-about in a place where a grifter like Calipari makes five million bucks a year?

If kids want to get rich, sports isn’t the answer. Being Bevin’s head of IT is the answer. How about that? Damn me, here I was pissing about at uni with a bunch of chip butty-eating northerners, when all I really needed was to have influential friends.

If I can be serious for the briefest of moments: What the actual fuck is that all about? How much dosh are we talking?

Like seventy-five grand more than the bloke who does the same job for 53 million Californians in an economy 15 times larger than our own. It’s farcical and corruption of the worst kind.

Worse than the Adoption-Czar kind? Worse than Beshear’s-Mate-Getting-a-No-bid-Contract-on-the-Last-Day-of-His-Term kind?

All of it revolting. And all of it no doubt lawful. I’ve said it for years, America is one of the world’s most corrupt countries — the only difference being we make all of our corruption legal. We allow people to make cash contributions to campaigns for judges — at every level — and then sneer at some impoverished minor civil servant in Africa taking a backhander. It’s obscene.

I agree completely. Although it’s good to see that being a racist piece of shit still carries some negative consequences, even in Kentucky. What a result for Charles Booker: He’s going to run practically unopposed, since Everett Corley revealed himself to be yet another right-wing rural bigot.

Not sure how much of a big reveal that was. What the hell is wrong with these people?

I don’t think it’s so much that there’s something wrong with them, although, of course, there is. It’s more that they now assume everyone thinks the way they do. One of the great delights of the Trump era has been watching this insidious scum expose itself and, in so doing, render itself unelectable and unemployable. At some level, it proves that justice is being served on the regular, which gives me hope.

Also that justice can only be served when anonymity is rejected.

Bingo. So keep sticking your name on this.