Andy Richardson: The troll of the week prize goes to sweet Caroline

And in that time, the most significant moment was this: being asked to judge a competition to find the region’s best sausage. Yes, I am the guy who made a butcher’s day by telling him his banger was better than the next.

Dizzying heights, I’m sure you’d agree. Not for me a Christiano Ronaldo-esque dream cupboard of trophies. Just the happy memory of a gelatinous sausage cooked in a hot skillet at the AGA factory, in Telford.

And people think this job is glamorous.

I may, however, have surpassed myself in recent weeks. Forget interviews with Bono, Prince and Daniel Day Lewis, ignore the publication of enough books to fill several shelves, in recent weeks I have finally arrived.

And it’s thanks to one of you, dear readers.

One of you took the time to express your anguish at my weekly whimsy by cutting out letters from this august newspaper and sellotaping them to an earlier column in an act of punk-ish rebellion.

Oh me, oh my. If only I’d known life could be so exciting.

Sex Pistols did something similar, as I recall, around 36 years ago – and yes, like many of you, I’m old enough to remember – when they cut and pasted letters to make a punkish point.

I too am the recipient of such anarchic behaviour as the not-really-much-of-an-insult letters ‘Leftie’ were stuck onto an altogether different headline that began: Never Trust A….

It’s endlessly amusing that someone took the time and trouble to find the right letters from different pages, find a roll of Sellotape, apply themselves to the task and then spend a quid – man, the cost of stamps and envelopes, these days – in posting it.

And, hai-karimba, it duly arrived. And caused us all a giggle.

It was, I have to admit, better trolling than the habitual internet doom-mongering that PortHillBoy and another I can’t remember offered for a little while. Fun. Thank you for reading.

Troll of the week, however, was Caroline, a woman who’d read a book I’d published by a man who pops up regularly on telly and who’s written a handful of exceptional travelogues based on his dangerous journeys around the globe.

The typesetting was wrong on page 18, I think she said, and so I ought to be horsewhipped or something similar.

Caroline, from who knows where, was unlike the mystery letter-sticker and deigned to offer a name and email address.

And having told me how pointless my life was, she kindly offered to provide her rates of engagement should I ever wish to engage someone who she said would be far better than me at everything.

I thought long and hard about her offer, it must have been six nanoseconds, before reaching my conclusion and sharing it with her.

She insisted that criticism was a gift.

I agreed with her, in my second and final reply, while concluding that entitlement wasn’t.

And that, funnily enough, was the end of it. Sweet Caroline, the good times never felt so good.

Still, at least I’m not in Government. That’s when the trolling gets really serious. Prime Minister Boris Johnson sensibly decided to go on a walkabout in Ukraine, rather than the UK, where he’s less well known and where his domestic policies don’t put people into debt.

Why, might we wonder, doesn’t he do similar walkabouts here? Maybe he could try it in Liverpool, for instance, or right here in the Black Country.

Rishi Sunak, meanwhile, wants an enquiry into who leaked details of his wife’s tax status.

Others want an enquiry into why he has put up taxes 15 times for ordinary people while his family was allowed to get away with not paying taxes.

Silly me. I’ve slipped into trolling. Now, will the man or woman who kindly got their scissors and Sellotape out the last time I did this please do the decent thing and change today’s headline before posting it to the usual address?