Wright On! - Shelley Wright takes a wry look at life

TAKE two minutes to look up 'gullible' in the dictionary and you will find it means easily tricked or fooled.

And do you know how I know? Because, much to everyone's amusement, I have just done exactly that.

Because that is apparently what I am. Great eh?

No longer am I simply the grumpiest person in this office, if not the world according to some, I am now also forever to be known as the stupid one here at the Lancashire Evening Telegraph. The gullible one who is easily tricked or fooled. Hummph.

Perhaps I could add it to my current CV eh? Shelley Wright, 24, winner of two journalism awards, likes swimming, Miniature Heroes and ridiculous jokes that make her look stupid in front of everyone she knows. Has a certain je ne sais quoi about it, don't you think?

In fact, is that the editor of The Daily Mail I can hear a-hammering at the door?

Now forgive me for being so flippant but, in case you haven't noticed, I'm not that chuffed about this new-found reputation which seems to have me up there with supreme numpties like Mr Bean or Homer Simpson when it comes to being a bit green. Doh!

It all began yesterday when the deputy editor wandered past my desk and spotted an unusual lack of food-related activity going on, despite the fact it was 11.45am and well past my dinner time.

I mean, I'm usually well into my second packet of post-lunch crisps by then, you know.

Anyway, I reckon he was already on the prowl for a victim because as quick as he could say "What, no food?" he'd pirouetted on the spot like Superman in a telephone box and was half-way back to his own desk, going on about how I had to try some really great chewing gum someone had given him. I should have known something dodgy was afoot by the way everyone looked up as he seized the green packet that was cunningly disguised to look like Wrigley's Double Mint.

He might as well have said "She's behind you", or used some other panto-style signal that lets the audience know someone's about to get whacked with a custard pie or comedy plank, because what he actually meant was: "Hey! Everybody within ten miles! Watch Shelley fall for this!"

So, luckily, everyone turned around just in time to see me pluck a piece of gum and get my thumb snared in a particularly vicious spring-loaded trap. Ha ha ha eh?

It's like starring on the Big Breakfast in here some days you know, though I don't think Johnny Vaughan would stand for a bleeding knuckle and ego-battering like that.

And I wouldn't mind but I actually had one of those tricks myself when I was about five. Me, a perceptive journalist too.

It's not good. Next thing I know we're all talking about being gullible and falling for stupid things when the deputy news editor said it was one of the only words commonly used in the English language that wasn't in the dictionary.

"You're trying to tell me gullible's not in the dictionary?" I sneered, probably a little too loudly following my humiliation at the hands of East Lancashire's answer to Jeremy Beadle just moments before.

I was right, it was. But by then everyone was laughing too much to care.

Well, don't mind me, as long as you're all amused eh?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.