It's heartening to see that the old Reithian dictum of entertaining whilst enlightening is still very much alive within Auntie's hallowed halls. The tide of recent history has conspired with the daily drip-feeding of the rest of the media to convince all but the most radical and dyed-in-the-wool anarcho-syndicalist that the class war is dead. But, living up to its noble heritage, on Wednesday night the Beeb delivered a savage blow to the clavicles of any capitalist lackey foolhardy enough to try telling *them* that.
David Mitchell might seem to some an unlikely catalyst to spark the Revolution - until, that is, he opens his mouth. Immediately, centuries of rage at the slavery, economic repression and the hegemony of the land and moneyed classes that you've tried to keep the lid on comes bubbling up in the pit of the viewer's stomach and if there were a Molotov cocktail handy (and you weren't quite so *dashed* thirsty) you'd be flinging it with glee from the nearest barricade and running through the king and all his servants before you could say 'Imperialism is the highest form of capitalism'.
"I come from a long line of Scottish sheep farmers", Mitchell sneers, his nose wrinkling in disdain, as if he's standing in a pile of something that's come out of the arse of one of his ancient ancestors' charges. I've tried very hard to get over my prejudice about him - i.e. that he's a chinless, Oxbridge Footlights tosser - and I've even found long stretches of That Mitchell and Webb Thing very amusing. But what's funny as a comic persona gets a bit wearing when it becomes apparent that the mask is indistinguishable from the actual personality.
I know you shouldn't judge someone by where they live, but Mitchell is filmed leaving a house that, were he not so posh and evidently intimate with Stephen Fry would be immediately swarmed over by the Social Sevices. No doubt they'll be looking for the "missing" child he and his "estranged common law wife" have tied up and kept hidden beneath a bed for the last six weeks so they can sell the story to the newspapers and appear on the Jeremy Kyle Show. Cut to shot of Kilburn tube station. David's off to see his parents, who presumably live a hefty old hike from the High Street in the posh bit of Kilburn. Or Finchley, as it's better known.
Mr. Mitchell sr. is a nice enough old cove who looks at his son with a tender smile that's intended to disguise the immense sense of disappointment his offspring engenders in him - and just fails to do so. Pa Mitchell - sadly not, I'm guessing here, obviously, called Phil or Grant ot Archie - has, as far as I can ascertain, been boning up on the Mitchell ancestry. "They came from Scotland and were farmers", he confirms, pointing at an old portrait on the wall of a gruff looking, white-bearded type covered in tartan and bearing a staff. To drive the point home, he's filmed poring over the incomprehensible Gaelic text of some dusty old leatherbound volumes.
Mrs. Mitchell, meanwhile - almost certainly not called Peggy, Ronnie or Roxy, I'd hazard - looks on in the kind of dismay only a mother who has spent a small lifetime knitting pairs of gloves and patiently attaching them together using a length of wool so they can be threaded through and dangled from the arms of a duffle coat when not being used, only to find that her precious infant has come home yet again minus his mitts. "All that effort", her face seems quietly to bemoan, "for *this*...."
Having prepared a substantial packed lunch and a thermos of oxtail soup for the boy and generally helped him into his dufflecoat and wrapped him up warm against the elements, given him a quick sprucing and a lick and a promise and so on, Ma & Pa Mitchell finally wave their intrepid son onto the Highland Express. "I'm not a particularly sociable person" mutters David, seemingly to himself, as the mothers around him begin to collect stray children close to their bosom, their eyes desperately darting toward the furthest end of the carriage in case there are any empty four-seat berths there well away from the child kidnapper with the laptop, muttering away to himself and being filmed, presumably by Social Sevices.
Arriving in Tongue, D.M. witters on to himself about what a shit hole the place is as sheep, goats, pheasants and small rodents all diesperse rapidly for the cover of the gloaming to avoid contact with the troubled looking man in the duffle coat with the gloves flapping loose at the arms passes by. He meets up with a bonny-faced blonde local lady who has presumably been persauded by the film crew to pretend to be related to young David in exchange for a pair of tickets to see 'Strictly Come Danding' being filmed - or possibly, given the distance from here to Shepherd's Bush, a 'Taggart' DVD boxed set.
"So, this is the derelict and rather grand farmhouse from which my forebears ran a 13,000 acre farm in the mid-19th Century", offers David helpfully. He runs his fingers through some empty wooden shelving units which would once, so he's told by his imposter relative, have housed the invoices for the once thriving concern. Conscious of the current recession and its impact upon the majority of the programme's viewers, one of the crew pokes David with a stick until he finally offers a few contrite words about how sad it is to see a business that once belonged to his family going down the tubes. It's deeply moving to see him, wrestling as he is with the private implications of the impersonal forces of economic history whilst simultaneously playing a sudoku game on his Blackberry.
Keen to discover more about the sheep-rearing life of his forebears, David is introduced to a rather stern looking farm hand who, having first instructed the Mitchell lad to take his hands out of his pockets and, if he's *really* that cold, to wear the ruddy gloves his poor wee Ma stayed up all night knitting for him and which he's just allowing to dangle uselessly from the sleeves of his duffle coat, lets David have a run at feeding the flock. It must have been even more painful for this professional animal husbander than for the casual viewer to witness this product of one of our finset academic institutions making such a pig's ear of the task of drizzling food over the ground for sheep to feed on. "Is that enough", demands a clearly bored Mitchell having spent about a third of a second trailing the sack of pellets over a patch of field about the size of a pocket handkerchief. "Use the whole bloody sack!" Advises the farmhand as the flock, clearly driven by a quite outrageously pronounced peckishness to forego their natural reticence of this evident animal abuser and mill around their inept steward.
We find out a little more about the development of the Highland sheep industry. The land clearances of the early 19th Century despatched off to the coast the many small settlements of crofters who had previously settled the land, leaving the way clear for the local aristos to rent it out to farmers like the Mitchells. Fortunately, to the evident relief of DM's unimpeachably liberal conscience, this all happened well before his family started shelling out to the local lairds in order to suffer the privilege of making a livelihood. So that's alright....
Relieved, Mitchell sets off for the Skye Ferry to explore a different branch of his family tree. Pausing briefly to mutter "hmm, yes, er, all very nice...harrumph" at the stunning natural harbour views laid out before him in the clear Highland light, it's out with the laptop as David decides to do the rest of his research online and thus eliminate the need to meet any more of these ghastly farmhands and labourers and all those awful bloody relatives of his. In a hilarious scene, time-lapse photography is used to give the viewer some idea of the risibly slow download speeds those who live in the natural spleandour of Norther Scotland are forced to abjure. It takes *days* for DM to download a very short pornographic film! How terrible!! Never fear, we can rest assured that once hordes of Middle Class southerners start buying the place up for their second homes and forcing the indigenous people into the welfare queues, they'll soon have that little lot sorted out.
I zone out a bit while Dave is finding out all about his principled preacher great-great-grandfather who campaigned against the child slave trade that saw hundreds of pauperized Highland youths sold into the service of the Manchester cooton mills, but who was also, it seems, bloody horrible to his alcoholic wife. I come back from brushing my teeth to hear David Mitchell's eulogy to the quiet joys of stolid middle classness. "I'm proud to be middle class", he asserts, not even knocked out of his stride by the bigger boy wearing a top hat who cuffs him on the back of his head as he passes. "We can look down on the peasantry and jolly well stick two fingers up at the aristocracy", he chortles, checking to see whether the crumpet he's toasting over an open fire on the end of a silver skewer is browning nicely yet. "So there!"
xxx
Mort
Thursday, 6 August 2009
Wednesday, 5 August 2009
A Thing of Such Beauty...
A while back, apropos of nothing in particular, I happened to post up a quote from a (rather nasty) review of Mary Margaret O'Hara's Miss America LP. The quote described M M O'H as something along the lines of "Annie Hall with a lobotomy". Don't worry, there were people who liked her even less than that: "Dementia's not something you expect of a singer-songwriter" (Whoever wrote that had evidently never heard Gilbert O'Sullivan singing songs about his dog, but nevermind...) In the normal run of things, you'd be able to laugh along at such barbs and content yourself with the knowledge that, say what you like, the lady was blessed with (as The Geoffster so eloquently put it) "the voice of an angel". A very peculiar angel, perhaps, but an angel nonetheless. But sadly, M2 O'H was not only of an angelic but also an acutely sensitive disposition. Stung by such wise-arse cracks, she pretty much turned her back on the record business, thus making the already singular Miss America pretty much her sole recorded legacy. At least, that's the theory...
Until yesterday when I had the good fortune to pick up a CD copy from Oxfam for £2.99, I hadn't heard Miss America for about twenty years. If she hadn't even sung a note, I think there'd be a place for M M O'H in the annals of pop history. The effortlessly iconic sleeve design - is it just me, or does the crown of the Statue of Liberty appear somehow to emerge from those laconic zen brushstrokes - is all her own work too:
At first you'd be mistaken the belief that here's a pretty conventional female singer-songwriter as opener 'To Cry About' drifts along AOR-ly enough with only the odd vocal hiccup and Michael Brook's otherwordly 'infinite' guitar to suggest otherwise. But as 'Year in Song' strides in, it soon becomes apparent that Ms. O'H is coming at this from quite a different angle. The song features some of the most astonishing singing I think I've ever heard, in a performance that seems to turn into a private wrangle the singer is conducting with herself over whether it's worth carrying on with on with the song. The only thing I've heard that compares with it is John Lydon's babbling at the end of 'Holidays in the Sun'. "The aim is joy" she opines at the outset, emptily mouthing what sounds like it might have been advice given to her by a record company executive. But it doesn't sound as if M M O'H is really all that convinced. Pretty soon, in her delirium, she's getting it all arse-about-tit; "iss the aim eh joy?" And then, in a remarkable transformation, just as she's about to make good with the threat to put her audience under sedation, all of a sudden, she's resisting anaesthesia herself: "I'm not ready to go under..." she screeches and before she can add anything about the Berlin Wall, she's been gagged and chloroformed as she's frogmarched off in the direction of the nearest padded cell. The hairs on the back of your neck stand upright in alarm.
'Year in song' appears in the background of this odd clip from a Canadian indie movie (note the rather exquisite pins - M2 O'H's obviously, not the young lad's...):
'Dear darling' is the song I remembered best from all those years ago. It's a lovely, lap steel-guided swoon; "...a thing of such beauty, it must be called love..." Just dreamy. 'A new day' starts out all Laura Nyro, happy clappy in 'save the country' mode but then, just as you're wondering if it's not all abit too winsome, brings you up short with this; "is it better to disappear than to just stand so close to a hole?" It's a line that seems to sum up M2 O'H's all-or-nothing talent pretty well. It also makes me wonder if the received wisdom about her withdrawal from the music business is absolutely true. After all, there's an artistic bravery on display in her work that's often quite terrifying to behold. Her willingness to hold herself up to potential ridicule through the intensity of her performance makes me wonder if a few clumsy barbs such as those above would be enough to derail an artist so uniquely attuned to her own moods and feelings and so evidently driven to go her own way. I think she knew there was only room (perhaps only enough strength in her) for one major work - rather as there could only be one Sex Pistols LP. This album alone took four years to record. Original producer, XTC's Andy Partridge, lasted a day - one would love to have been a fly on the wall at that session... It would have been a pretty intense working experience, cranking yourself up to explode before the microphone like that, as she does on just about every track. No, let the critics have it that their jibes scared the poor thing off, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if this is all we were ever going to get. A thing of such beauty - you don't just churn those out, do you?
So, get Miss America and treat yourself to what's left of a solitary voice, a unique and brave highwire performer.
Here she is lip-synching awkwardly to 'When You Know Why You're Happy' on 'Night Music' I think the guy introducing her is Bill Frissell(?):
The rather too jolly video for 'Body's in Trouble':
And recent footage...which is actually rather scary.
Something I Dreamed Last Night:
xxx
Mort
Until yesterday when I had the good fortune to pick up a CD copy from Oxfam for £2.99, I hadn't heard Miss America for about twenty years. If she hadn't even sung a note, I think there'd be a place for M M O'H in the annals of pop history. The effortlessly iconic sleeve design - is it just me, or does the crown of the Statue of Liberty appear somehow to emerge from those laconic zen brushstrokes - is all her own work too:
At first you'd be mistaken the belief that here's a pretty conventional female singer-songwriter as opener 'To Cry About' drifts along AOR-ly enough with only the odd vocal hiccup and Michael Brook's otherwordly 'infinite' guitar to suggest otherwise. But as 'Year in Song' strides in, it soon becomes apparent that Ms. O'H is coming at this from quite a different angle. The song features some of the most astonishing singing I think I've ever heard, in a performance that seems to turn into a private wrangle the singer is conducting with herself over whether it's worth carrying on with on with the song. The only thing I've heard that compares with it is John Lydon's babbling at the end of 'Holidays in the Sun'. "The aim is joy" she opines at the outset, emptily mouthing what sounds like it might have been advice given to her by a record company executive. But it doesn't sound as if M M O'H is really all that convinced. Pretty soon, in her delirium, she's getting it all arse-about-tit; "iss the aim eh joy?" And then, in a remarkable transformation, just as she's about to make good with the threat to put her audience under sedation, all of a sudden, she's resisting anaesthesia herself: "I'm not ready to go under..." she screeches and before she can add anything about the Berlin Wall, she's been gagged and chloroformed as she's frogmarched off in the direction of the nearest padded cell. The hairs on the back of your neck stand upright in alarm.
'Year in song' appears in the background of this odd clip from a Canadian indie movie (note the rather exquisite pins - M2 O'H's obviously, not the young lad's...):
'Dear darling' is the song I remembered best from all those years ago. It's a lovely, lap steel-guided swoon; "...a thing of such beauty, it must be called love..." Just dreamy. 'A new day' starts out all Laura Nyro, happy clappy in 'save the country' mode but then, just as you're wondering if it's not all abit too winsome, brings you up short with this; "is it better to disappear than to just stand so close to a hole?" It's a line that seems to sum up M2 O'H's all-or-nothing talent pretty well. It also makes me wonder if the received wisdom about her withdrawal from the music business is absolutely true. After all, there's an artistic bravery on display in her work that's often quite terrifying to behold. Her willingness to hold herself up to potential ridicule through the intensity of her performance makes me wonder if a few clumsy barbs such as those above would be enough to derail an artist so uniquely attuned to her own moods and feelings and so evidently driven to go her own way. I think she knew there was only room (perhaps only enough strength in her) for one major work - rather as there could only be one Sex Pistols LP. This album alone took four years to record. Original producer, XTC's Andy Partridge, lasted a day - one would love to have been a fly on the wall at that session... It would have been a pretty intense working experience, cranking yourself up to explode before the microphone like that, as she does on just about every track. No, let the critics have it that their jibes scared the poor thing off, but I personally wouldn't be surprised if this is all we were ever going to get. A thing of such beauty - you don't just churn those out, do you?
So, get Miss America and treat yourself to what's left of a solitary voice, a unique and brave highwire performer.
Here she is lip-synching awkwardly to 'When You Know Why You're Happy' on 'Night Music' I think the guy introducing her is Bill Frissell(?):
The rather too jolly video for 'Body's in Trouble':
And recent footage...which is actually rather scary.
Something I Dreamed Last Night:
xxx
Mort
Prog Classic of the Week...
We're on our way to Rococco's for a cup of tea (why, oh why didn't they call it Rococoa's??) and I'm telling Philip about the compilation CD I didn't buy. It's called 'Heavy Mod' and it has a track on it by Aphrodite's Child from their 1972 LP, 666. A gleam spreads across Philip's face and he starts nodding with the kind of inner wisdom only available to people who have invented their own alphabet[s...] The nodding increases in speed as I start to form the obvious question. Next day, the answer appears upon my desk...
"If you're going to blog about this, I'd prefer it if you could change my name - I have my reputation to think of", suggests Philip. Duly noted. So, from now on, "Phillippe" it is. And, believe it or not, 666 is actually rather good. For the uninitiated, Aphrodite's Child's chief claim to fame is that the band included the unlikely pairing of synthesizer legend Vangelis and portly 70s housewife favourite Demis Roussos (on bass and trademark castrati vocals). The band were pretty big in Europe and don't forget that discerning 'Heavy' Mod following (all though what kind of crazy-arsed fucking mods they were to be into music as weird as this is a moot point).
Having built up a pretty impressive fanbase through their live shows, the band had a couple of hits around the continent and then, in the early 70s, Vangelis left the other members to their touring and disappeared in Brian Wilson fashion with lyricist/librettist Costas Ferris to work on his and the band's masterpiece. The conventional wisdom has it that Vangelis and Ferris took the Book of Revelations as their template for this epic recasting of the Apocalypse, but a cursory listen will tell all but the most obdurate sceptic that the real inspiration for the work is Les Dawson's classic Science Fantasy novel A Time Before Genesis. Obviously, the pair have a double LP to pad out, so they dedicate considerably more time than the paragraph or two that Dawson takes to describe (to wonderful, and no doubt completely unintentional, comic effect) the ultimate conflagration between the forces of good and evil. Also, for some reason, the aforementioned cataclysm appears to take place somewhere closer to the Aegean than the Glastonbury High Street of the original text. But, come on, this is Prog Rock man! If you can't take a few liberties here, where the heck can you?
So, I'll leave the rest of the talking to the music. Highlights? Well, Roussos has a neat line in funky bass playing and you'll hear shades of Another Green World (three years before its release) all over side 2, particularly on the lovely 'Aegian Sea'. The tintinabular opening of 'The Lamb' was obviously absorbed whole at a tender age by American Beauty/Six Foot Under/Road to Perdition composer (and nephew of Randy) Thomas Newman. The Clangers make an uncredited appearance on 'The Seventh Seal' - as, possibly, does Brian Cant...or is it Chloe Ashcroft? Anyroad, whoever it is doing the narrating, I'm sure they used to be on Play Away and they're on pretty much every track. And if you don't have crazy-arsed fucking Mod classic 'The Four Horsemen' going through your brain on a loop after a couple of hearings, why, you're spawn of the devil incarnate, Beelzebub. Get thee behind me!
Enjoy...
[As there are more segues on this album than there are bum notes in a Les Dawson piano concerto, I'll be posting this up as complete sides - hence the low bit-rate.]
Side One
The System
Babylon
Loud, Loud, Loud
The Four Horsemen
The Lamb
The Seventh Seal
Side Two
Aegian Sea
Seven Bowls
The Wakening Beast
Lament
The Marching Beast
The Battle of the Locusts
Do It
Tribulation
The Beast
Ofis
xxx
Mort
"If you're going to blog about this, I'd prefer it if you could change my name - I have my reputation to think of", suggests Philip. Duly noted. So, from now on, "Phillippe" it is. And, believe it or not, 666 is actually rather good. For the uninitiated, Aphrodite's Child's chief claim to fame is that the band included the unlikely pairing of synthesizer legend Vangelis and portly 70s housewife favourite Demis Roussos (on bass and trademark castrati vocals). The band were pretty big in Europe and don't forget that discerning 'Heavy' Mod following (all though what kind of crazy-arsed fucking mods they were to be into music as weird as this is a moot point).
Having built up a pretty impressive fanbase through their live shows, the band had a couple of hits around the continent and then, in the early 70s, Vangelis left the other members to their touring and disappeared in Brian Wilson fashion with lyricist/librettist Costas Ferris to work on his and the band's masterpiece. The conventional wisdom has it that Vangelis and Ferris took the Book of Revelations as their template for this epic recasting of the Apocalypse, but a cursory listen will tell all but the most obdurate sceptic that the real inspiration for the work is Les Dawson's classic Science Fantasy novel A Time Before Genesis. Obviously, the pair have a double LP to pad out, so they dedicate considerably more time than the paragraph or two that Dawson takes to describe (to wonderful, and no doubt completely unintentional, comic effect) the ultimate conflagration between the forces of good and evil. Also, for some reason, the aforementioned cataclysm appears to take place somewhere closer to the Aegean than the Glastonbury High Street of the original text. But, come on, this is Prog Rock man! If you can't take a few liberties here, where the heck can you?
So, I'll leave the rest of the talking to the music. Highlights? Well, Roussos has a neat line in funky bass playing and you'll hear shades of Another Green World (three years before its release) all over side 2, particularly on the lovely 'Aegian Sea'. The tintinabular opening of 'The Lamb' was obviously absorbed whole at a tender age by American Beauty/Six Foot Under/Road to Perdition composer (and nephew of Randy) Thomas Newman. The Clangers make an uncredited appearance on 'The Seventh Seal' - as, possibly, does Brian Cant...or is it Chloe Ashcroft? Anyroad, whoever it is doing the narrating, I'm sure they used to be on Play Away and they're on pretty much every track. And if you don't have crazy-arsed fucking Mod classic 'The Four Horsemen' going through your brain on a loop after a couple of hearings, why, you're spawn of the devil incarnate, Beelzebub. Get thee behind me!
Enjoy...
[As there are more segues on this album than there are bum notes in a Les Dawson piano concerto, I'll be posting this up as complete sides - hence the low bit-rate.]
Side One
The System
Babylon
Loud, Loud, Loud
The Four Horsemen
The Lamb
The Seventh Seal
Side Two
Aegian Sea
Seven Bowls
The Wakening Beast
Lament
The Marching Beast
The Battle of the Locusts
Do It
Tribulation
The Beast
Ofis
xxx
Mort
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
Make it Easel on Yourself...
Ah, deep joy! My all-time favourite televison programme based on the (s)exploits of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood returns to our screens tonight. Is it really a week since the last episode of Desperate Romantics?
Things certainly weren't like that when I was at Art School, I can tell you! Just to clarify, I was only at Art School for about 3 months - turns out I was allergic to egg-based tempera. Haven't been able to keep down the starters in a Thai restaurant since. Tragic really. Still, I'm not complaining - you've seen one ripe and buxom life model in the buff, you've seen 'em all, haven't you? In any case, there's no real money in the art game unless you're prepared to swallow your naturalist principles and go the conceptual route; you know, all that "I think, therefore Yoko Ono is" caper. Always more of a figurative, neo-romanticist, pre-vorticist, post-symbolist man meself. No, you'll not catch me mithering or lashing out at the nearest Young British Artist and trying to shove a canape sideways up Tracey Emin's tentflaps. I'm not bitter...
No, it was nothing like the idealised world of the PRB when I was at the Academy. Instead of being seduced by the gorgeous, Italianate wife of England's finest art critic and connoiseur of the smutty sketch (Ruskin), we shivered away with only a one bar fire for warmth in a damp and chilly garret on the top floor of a tumbledown, soviet-style municipal building. There was no security whatsoever, anyone could just walk in off the street, so you'd have some scruffy, dishevelled looking little dwarf with a vomit flecked beard come up behind your easel, can of Tennents Super Strength Lager in hand, tutting and calling your life drawing "horrible" before falling over in a giggling, drunken heap and smashing the etch-a-sketch kit belonging to the priggish girl in the wraparound tartan skirt sat next to you. Oh, I imagine the security's improved a lot since then. They're probably better at keeping the lecturers out nowadays.
Anyway, back to D.R. What can you say about it? I tried to make some notes during last week's show in the hope of posting up a satirical little piece about it here, but I gave up after about four minutes. It's so preposterous to begin with that the show simply defies any further parody or ridicule. In that respect, it's actually quite a remarkable achievement. You can just imagine the pitch, can't you? "Erm, blah blah blah exciting new televisual interface...rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb post-historico-validity ....formidable youth demographic......erm...here, I know, here's a good one - just imagine a cross between Desperate Housewives and erm...something to do with romantics?" But no matter how ludicrous the precept, once commissioned, they have to give it a go I guess and the programme makers are only to be congratulated on the astonishing verisimilitude of the period feel they've achieved and the lovingly researched authenticity of the dialogue:
Dante "Dave" Gabriel Rosetti [throwing his mobile phone away with gay abandon...]: Lizzy, I want to *knob* you...
Elizabeth Siddel: Phwoar!! Not 'arf!!
You half expect to hear lines like, "...we the Brotherhood vow to revitalise the stagnant pool of English art with our rejection of Victorian morality and heightened depictions of the natural world, innit?" No, sorry, that *was* one of the actual lines from the programme - you see, it really is impossible to spoof. Then there's the sight of Rafe "Yes, I do bear an uncanny resemblance to my father don't I, only I'm obviously much posher and more better lookinger than what he is - and, no, I don't have a *clue* how you spell my first name either" Spall, rogering senseless the young actress who will henceforth get all the work that Billie Piper turns down, up against a conveniently situated upright pianoforte.
But at least D.R. is instructive in one very important way. It demonstrates, if nothing else, the ridiculous lengths that programme makers need to go to in order to get any kind of arts-based subject matter onto the schedule. And those lengths really are desperate if D.R. is anything to go by. I was surprised by the PRB when I did my degree. I had no idea they were as passionate and angry in their critique of Victorian industrial capitalism. They were a genuine affront to the artistic establishment of their day - and that's always a good thing. They were a genuinely puzzling phenomenon; a disruption. You don't really get a sense of that in D.R. And, did I blink and miss her perhaps, but where the feck is Christina?? Now *she* knew how to paint!!
It's disappointing that the only way that large numbers of viewers are going to find out about the Pre-Raphaelites is by way of this ill-conceived comedy-drama series; one that, whether intentionally or not, serves only to make these interesting and subversive artists look quite ridiculous. Not all arts programming needs to be as epic or heavyweight as The Ascent of Man or Civilisation. But there is such a thing as making things *too* easy. And really, if the Beeb thinks that the only way of interesting the Great Unwashed in the arts is to raunch it up, then for heaven's sake, can't they just put on some decent porn? Or bring back the New Avengers?
xxx
Mort
Things certainly weren't like that when I was at Art School, I can tell you! Just to clarify, I was only at Art School for about 3 months - turns out I was allergic to egg-based tempera. Haven't been able to keep down the starters in a Thai restaurant since. Tragic really. Still, I'm not complaining - you've seen one ripe and buxom life model in the buff, you've seen 'em all, haven't you? In any case, there's no real money in the art game unless you're prepared to swallow your naturalist principles and go the conceptual route; you know, all that "I think, therefore Yoko Ono is" caper. Always more of a figurative, neo-romanticist, pre-vorticist, post-symbolist man meself. No, you'll not catch me mithering or lashing out at the nearest Young British Artist and trying to shove a canape sideways up Tracey Emin's tentflaps. I'm not bitter...
No, it was nothing like the idealised world of the PRB when I was at the Academy. Instead of being seduced by the gorgeous, Italianate wife of England's finest art critic and connoiseur of the smutty sketch (Ruskin), we shivered away with only a one bar fire for warmth in a damp and chilly garret on the top floor of a tumbledown, soviet-style municipal building. There was no security whatsoever, anyone could just walk in off the street, so you'd have some scruffy, dishevelled looking little dwarf with a vomit flecked beard come up behind your easel, can of Tennents Super Strength Lager in hand, tutting and calling your life drawing "horrible" before falling over in a giggling, drunken heap and smashing the etch-a-sketch kit belonging to the priggish girl in the wraparound tartan skirt sat next to you. Oh, I imagine the security's improved a lot since then. They're probably better at keeping the lecturers out nowadays.
Anyway, back to D.R. What can you say about it? I tried to make some notes during last week's show in the hope of posting up a satirical little piece about it here, but I gave up after about four minutes. It's so preposterous to begin with that the show simply defies any further parody or ridicule. In that respect, it's actually quite a remarkable achievement. You can just imagine the pitch, can't you? "Erm, blah blah blah exciting new televisual interface...rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb post-historico-validity ....formidable youth demographic......erm...here, I know, here's a good one - just imagine a cross between Desperate Housewives and erm...something to do with romantics?" But no matter how ludicrous the precept, once commissioned, they have to give it a go I guess and the programme makers are only to be congratulated on the astonishing verisimilitude of the period feel they've achieved and the lovingly researched authenticity of the dialogue:
Dante "Dave" Gabriel Rosetti [throwing his mobile phone away with gay abandon...]: Lizzy, I want to *knob* you...
Elizabeth Siddel: Phwoar!! Not 'arf!!
You half expect to hear lines like, "...we the Brotherhood vow to revitalise the stagnant pool of English art with our rejection of Victorian morality and heightened depictions of the natural world, innit?" No, sorry, that *was* one of the actual lines from the programme - you see, it really is impossible to spoof. Then there's the sight of Rafe "Yes, I do bear an uncanny resemblance to my father don't I, only I'm obviously much posher and more better lookinger than what he is - and, no, I don't have a *clue* how you spell my first name either" Spall, rogering senseless the young actress who will henceforth get all the work that Billie Piper turns down, up against a conveniently situated upright pianoforte.
But at least D.R. is instructive in one very important way. It demonstrates, if nothing else, the ridiculous lengths that programme makers need to go to in order to get any kind of arts-based subject matter onto the schedule. And those lengths really are desperate if D.R. is anything to go by. I was surprised by the PRB when I did my degree. I had no idea they were as passionate and angry in their critique of Victorian industrial capitalism. They were a genuine affront to the artistic establishment of their day - and that's always a good thing. They were a genuinely puzzling phenomenon; a disruption. You don't really get a sense of that in D.R. And, did I blink and miss her perhaps, but where the feck is Christina?? Now *she* knew how to paint!!
It's disappointing that the only way that large numbers of viewers are going to find out about the Pre-Raphaelites is by way of this ill-conceived comedy-drama series; one that, whether intentionally or not, serves only to make these interesting and subversive artists look quite ridiculous. Not all arts programming needs to be as epic or heavyweight as The Ascent of Man or Civilisation. But there is such a thing as making things *too* easy. And really, if the Beeb thinks that the only way of interesting the Great Unwashed in the arts is to raunch it up, then for heaven's sake, can't they just put on some decent porn? Or bring back the New Avengers?
xxx
Mort
Sunday, 2 August 2009
Someone at the BBC is on Drugs...
...Either that or they've just taken a crash course in Gonzo journalism. How else to explain the hellish visions paraded before us on this morning's Breakfast News. And, no, I'm not talking about Kate Silverton's pastel pink, Nehru jacketed twin set and wedge heels combo - although, for the record, NO KATE, NO! It is 2009 Ferchrissakes and you are not, repeat *not* Audrey Hepburn auditioning for the role of Mr. Magoo's even more short-sighted wife.
No, the disturbing hallucination passing for a an interest-worthy news item was a bizarre film about a Christian ministry aimed exclusively at the devotees of that persistent and timehonoured craze-cum-hobby commonly known as Skateboarding. That's right, for some reason known only to the drug-/Hunter S. Thompson- [delete as applicable] addled mind of the film's creator, we are introduced to our guide through this satyricon on wheels; I'm only slightly exagerating when I tell you his name is Ulysses Gongolphus Anthracite Moon Harbinger III. You've probably already guessed that our Ulysses is of American extraction and may or may not have been John Belushi in a former life. He's also been given an 'awesome' opportunity to extend the ministry of Christ's teachings to those who would ordinarily be too immersed in being raced to casualty on a drip-feed after coming a-cropper in mid-triple-overhead somersault to pay any mind to the Good News of Risen Lamb of God. That's right - this is no ordinary church: this is Ramp Camp.
And so powerful is the appeal of Ramp Camp that even hard-faced, heavily tattooed blonde ladies who look as if they know their way around a few darkened alleyways themselves are sending their spindly, board twizzling progeny into the care of Ulysses PuffAdder Macrame Knee Botherer II's tender care. So, rather than waste precious hours that could be spent in spiritual improvement and the contemplation of the infinite mindlessly swivelling a piece of balsa wood that's had some roller skate wheels stuck onto it beneath their feet, they can wheel into 'Ramp 48' (I'm guessing that's what they call their place of worship instead of 'Church'), pick up a tatty paperback Bible with a scary cartoon (presumably of Jesus - although with the beard and the piercings, it could be someone from Slipknot I suppose...) on the cover and....again, I'm guessing here.....mindlessly swivel a piece of balsa wood that's had some roller skate wheels stuck onto it beneath their feet whilst Ulysses P. Orridge in Kanchelskis XIX prattles on about Jesus.
This next bit is more guesswork, I'm afraid, as it's far too early in the morning for a delicate and - let's be honest - booze-addled mind like mine to fully comprehand what's going on in this obscene inferno with the first cup of tea of the day still barely even sipped. Matters are made worse by the fact that the crazed Gonzo mind behind this has eschewed the habitual narrative voice that would drone on over these images of scrawny yank kids in baseball caps and baggy t-hirts and give them some kind of thematic unity with the other images presented. Instead, we're left with these odd, disconnected voices talking, alternately, about skateboards and religion and we just have to assume that these people actually exist somewhere in the world and have valid reasons to be the way they are, instead of being allowed to ignore the item altogether and distractedly wonder what Kate Silverton's like in bed, as one usually would.
It's a bizarre temple, is this. You see, where there would normally be pews and those little block cushions you can rest your knees on whilst your praying (or, more likely, pretending to pray whilst wondering if you should take a punt on young Jack Wilshere in your Daily Telegraph Dream Team...) there's what can only be described as a ginormous, curved piece of even thicker balsa wood - sort of life size, wooden version of those hazardously curvaceous bits of yellow plastic track you used to be able to race Tonka toys on, when you weren't using them as a hand-held microphone and pretending you were Irish Eurovison song contest winner, Dana, obviously. This contramption is presumably the aforementioned 'Ramp'. Around the walls of this... arena is the only word that comes to mind given my ignorance of the terminology for the skateboarding equivalent of a velodrome, are grafitti-style paintings of allegedly Biblical allegories - although they look to my untrained, apostate eye to be more concerned with the Passion of Lemmy from Motorhead than of the Lord. It's at this point that I have to depart to the bathroom. Even my insufferably lengthy ordeal with the interdentals is preferable to this bizarre combination of skateboard screech and evangelical self-righteousness.
It's neither skateboards nor Christainity that are the problem. Rather, it's the facile and peculiarly modern conceit that somehow a set of religious beliefs that have been handed down with little deviation from each generation to the next suddenly needs to be contorted to fit the monosyllabic needs of this current, over-indulged and ill-prepared youngsters. "We give thanks, oh Lord, for our boards, and our ramp and our helmuts..."
Christ on a bike... where's the morphine???
xxx
Mort
No, the disturbing hallucination passing for a an interest-worthy news item was a bizarre film about a Christian ministry aimed exclusively at the devotees of that persistent and timehonoured craze-cum-hobby commonly known as Skateboarding. That's right, for some reason known only to the drug-/Hunter S. Thompson- [delete as applicable] addled mind of the film's creator, we are introduced to our guide through this satyricon on wheels; I'm only slightly exagerating when I tell you his name is Ulysses Gongolphus Anthracite Moon Harbinger III. You've probably already guessed that our Ulysses is of American extraction and may or may not have been John Belushi in a former life. He's also been given an 'awesome' opportunity to extend the ministry of Christ's teachings to those who would ordinarily be too immersed in being raced to casualty on a drip-feed after coming a-cropper in mid-triple-overhead somersault to pay any mind to the Good News of Risen Lamb of God. That's right - this is no ordinary church: this is Ramp Camp.
And so powerful is the appeal of Ramp Camp that even hard-faced, heavily tattooed blonde ladies who look as if they know their way around a few darkened alleyways themselves are sending their spindly, board twizzling progeny into the care of Ulysses PuffAdder Macrame Knee Botherer II's tender care. So, rather than waste precious hours that could be spent in spiritual improvement and the contemplation of the infinite mindlessly swivelling a piece of balsa wood that's had some roller skate wheels stuck onto it beneath their feet, they can wheel into 'Ramp 48' (I'm guessing that's what they call their place of worship instead of 'Church'), pick up a tatty paperback Bible with a scary cartoon (presumably of Jesus - although with the beard and the piercings, it could be someone from Slipknot I suppose...) on the cover and....again, I'm guessing here.....mindlessly swivel a piece of balsa wood that's had some roller skate wheels stuck onto it beneath their feet whilst Ulysses P. Orridge in Kanchelskis XIX prattles on about Jesus.
This next bit is more guesswork, I'm afraid, as it's far too early in the morning for a delicate and - let's be honest - booze-addled mind like mine to fully comprehand what's going on in this obscene inferno with the first cup of tea of the day still barely even sipped. Matters are made worse by the fact that the crazed Gonzo mind behind this has eschewed the habitual narrative voice that would drone on over these images of scrawny yank kids in baseball caps and baggy t-hirts and give them some kind of thematic unity with the other images presented. Instead, we're left with these odd, disconnected voices talking, alternately, about skateboards and religion and we just have to assume that these people actually exist somewhere in the world and have valid reasons to be the way they are, instead of being allowed to ignore the item altogether and distractedly wonder what Kate Silverton's like in bed, as one usually would.
It's a bizarre temple, is this. You see, where there would normally be pews and those little block cushions you can rest your knees on whilst your praying (or, more likely, pretending to pray whilst wondering if you should take a punt on young Jack Wilshere in your Daily Telegraph Dream Team...) there's what can only be described as a ginormous, curved piece of even thicker balsa wood - sort of life size, wooden version of those hazardously curvaceous bits of yellow plastic track you used to be able to race Tonka toys on, when you weren't using them as a hand-held microphone and pretending you were Irish Eurovison song contest winner, Dana, obviously. This contramption is presumably the aforementioned 'Ramp'. Around the walls of this... arena is the only word that comes to mind given my ignorance of the terminology for the skateboarding equivalent of a velodrome, are grafitti-style paintings of allegedly Biblical allegories - although they look to my untrained, apostate eye to be more concerned with the Passion of Lemmy from Motorhead than of the Lord. It's at this point that I have to depart to the bathroom. Even my insufferably lengthy ordeal with the interdentals is preferable to this bizarre combination of skateboard screech and evangelical self-righteousness.
It's neither skateboards nor Christainity that are the problem. Rather, it's the facile and peculiarly modern conceit that somehow a set of religious beliefs that have been handed down with little deviation from each generation to the next suddenly needs to be contorted to fit the monosyllabic needs of this current, over-indulged and ill-prepared youngsters. "We give thanks, oh Lord, for our boards, and our ramp and our helmuts..."
Christ on a bike... where's the morphine???
xxx
Mort
Confession time...
...I'm developing a bit of a thing about Dale Winton. No, not like that - although if he were to tone down the orange face a little and stop trying to look as if he still qualifies for an 18-30 holiday, who knows...? Anyway, it's got nothing to do with his *looks*. I'm talking about his Saturday afternoon radio show. Dale has been given the invidious task of attempting to fill the comfy slippers of all-time radio-jock hero Alan Freeman on Radio 2's relaunched Pick of the Pops series. Obviously, it could just be the inherent strength of the old Fluff favourite's formula - play a judicious selection of whatever was in the charts on two given weeks from yesteryear - or perhaps it's just the theme tune (I can hear you all humming it surreptitiously at the back there), but I think it's an inspired rejuvenation and is fast eclipsing Brian Matthews' Sounds of the Sixties as the week's mustn't-miss radiophonic fix.
You're probably getting the mistaken idea from all this that I'm some Luddite, stick-in-the-mud nostalgia freak who's one squirt of Blue Stratos away from being atrophied in the pre-digital age. Nonsense! I'm as with it as the next person and I have my brand new Ramones t-shirt and metrosexual faux-hawk hairdo to prove it. I just think that things were so much better in, say, 1975. I mean, fine as things are now - global recession, imminent tory revival and Lily Allen not withstanding - what could beat sitting there on your 10th birthday in your brand new Admiral England replica kit watching Malcolm MacDonald hammer 5 past the hapless Cypriots at Wembley with Van McCoy's 'Do the Hustle' rampaging around your skull like a global pandemic in a tabloid editor's imagination whilst wondering if you'll get to catch another glimpse of the Concorde prototype from the playground or ever make an honest woman of Patricia Larrigan.
And it's 1975 Dale takes us back to. Remember Linda Lewis's version of 'It's in his Kiss (The Shoop Shoop song)'? No, neither did I. Nor the wonderful 'Highwire' by another Linda - this time the lovely Ms. Carr, ably assisted by her very own Love Squad (see, I'm even starting to *sound* like Dale...) Then there's the Sensational Alex Harvey Band's preposterously Brechtian reworking of Tom Jones' 'Delilah' and, of course, some of the ubiquitous slick Philadelphia-style soul that for me will always remain the dominant sound of the era. Ray Stevens - remember him? - chips in with a lovely C&W version of Errol Garner's 'Misty' (although, I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing it had been 'The Streak'..." he went by wearing nothin' but a smile...") The Bee Gees singing 'Jive Talking' reminded me of my Dad, who had an uncanny ability to pick a monster hit within its first 10 seconds - he'd been confidently predicting resurgence of the Brothers Gibb within a nano second of this wonderful single starting up, just as he'd previously done with Harry Nilsson's 'Without You' and would go on to do with Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire' (which must have cheered the Bee Gees up enormously, having their careers boosted by other people's hits, that is...) He had to be physically restrained after the 1 millionth play of the cassette copy of 'Storm Front' my sister foolishly bought him for his birthday.
Heck, even that week's number one, The Bay City Rollers singing 'Give a Little Love', sounds rather good now, in a knowing sort of post-Glasvegas clever clever kind of way. (Sorry, I'll try not to get too technical in future...) Still, it's not all bad, living in the 21st Century. At least you can download this week's show* if you missed it. (Although we're probably stuck with the recession, the imminent tory revival and Lily Allen, I'm afraid.)
So, give it a whirl, pop pickers...
xxx
Mort
* it's up there for the next six days, so get in quick...
*****STOP PRESS******
You trendy and with-it lot probably knew this already, but if you need any further reason to listen to yesterday's PotP, check out the BBC i-Player.....the volume goes up to *ELEVEN*!!! How, as the contemporary vernacular has it, cool is that???
You're probably getting the mistaken idea from all this that I'm some Luddite, stick-in-the-mud nostalgia freak who's one squirt of Blue Stratos away from being atrophied in the pre-digital age. Nonsense! I'm as with it as the next person and I have my brand new Ramones t-shirt and metrosexual faux-hawk hairdo to prove it. I just think that things were so much better in, say, 1975. I mean, fine as things are now - global recession, imminent tory revival and Lily Allen not withstanding - what could beat sitting there on your 10th birthday in your brand new Admiral England replica kit watching Malcolm MacDonald hammer 5 past the hapless Cypriots at Wembley with Van McCoy's 'Do the Hustle' rampaging around your skull like a global pandemic in a tabloid editor's imagination whilst wondering if you'll get to catch another glimpse of the Concorde prototype from the playground or ever make an honest woman of Patricia Larrigan.
And it's 1975 Dale takes us back to. Remember Linda Lewis's version of 'It's in his Kiss (The Shoop Shoop song)'? No, neither did I. Nor the wonderful 'Highwire' by another Linda - this time the lovely Ms. Carr, ably assisted by her very own Love Squad (see, I'm even starting to *sound* like Dale...) Then there's the Sensational Alex Harvey Band's preposterously Brechtian reworking of Tom Jones' 'Delilah' and, of course, some of the ubiquitous slick Philadelphia-style soul that for me will always remain the dominant sound of the era. Ray Stevens - remember him? - chips in with a lovely C&W version of Errol Garner's 'Misty' (although, I'm sure I'm not alone in wishing it had been 'The Streak'..." he went by wearing nothin' but a smile...") The Bee Gees singing 'Jive Talking' reminded me of my Dad, who had an uncanny ability to pick a monster hit within its first 10 seconds - he'd been confidently predicting resurgence of the Brothers Gibb within a nano second of this wonderful single starting up, just as he'd previously done with Harry Nilsson's 'Without You' and would go on to do with Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire' (which must have cheered the Bee Gees up enormously, having their careers boosted by other people's hits, that is...) He had to be physically restrained after the 1 millionth play of the cassette copy of 'Storm Front' my sister foolishly bought him for his birthday.
Heck, even that week's number one, The Bay City Rollers singing 'Give a Little Love', sounds rather good now, in a knowing sort of post-Glasvegas clever clever kind of way. (Sorry, I'll try not to get too technical in future...) Still, it's not all bad, living in the 21st Century. At least you can download this week's show* if you missed it. (Although we're probably stuck with the recession, the imminent tory revival and Lily Allen, I'm afraid.)
So, give it a whirl, pop pickers...
xxx
Mort
* it's up there for the next six days, so get in quick...
*****STOP PRESS******
You trendy and with-it lot probably knew this already, but if you need any further reason to listen to yesterday's PotP, check out the BBC i-Player.....the volume goes up to *ELEVEN*!!! How, as the contemporary vernacular has it, cool is that???
Wednesday, 29 July 2009
Get Out of my Face...
As anyone who's met me will testify, as a rule, I'm a pretty easy going fellow. It takes quite a lot to wind me up. Obviously, I'm not perfect and, like anyone, I have my little foibles - things that, though trivial, will always hit the exact spot most likely to cause me to fly into a brief but passionate rage before once again returning to my more usual demeanour of icy cool, zen-like calm. Often they're such silly things, I myself wonder why I'm letting them get to me at all. Like the way that Rachel in Friends pronounces Joshua; "Josh-oo-wah". Or Kirstie Allsop thinking that by paying someone a tenner for a tatty Reject Shop mirror, passing it on to a master craftsman who will charge her several hundred pounds to give it "that distressed look" she is somehow "personalising" her vast country pile in Devon. Then there's Carol Kirkwood - don't you just want to shoot someone who's that chirpy at 6 minutes past 6 in the morning? Alex Ferguson? Fucking sclerotic cunt - I'll fucking chin him if I'm ever within spitting range of his unsportsman-like wristwatch-pointing because his team of over-paid, wife-beating superstars needs another 10 minutes of time added-on-for-stoppages in order to win or draw the game that they've probably already fixed with the referee. Bastards. And don't get me started on David Cameron. Just because you once looked at someone else's copy of The Queen is Dead doesn't make you remotely cool, you chinless middle class tosspot. Fuck off back to stockbroker belt and take that stuffed pig Allsop with you, you effete tory wanker. Maybe you can make her Minister for Skips in your first cabinet re-shuffle and send her out to make multi-coloured tumblers or cushion covers with some Holocaust-denying Polish Euro MPs, eh? You fucking arsehole.
Of course, this inner serenity is easily explained. Unlike today's breed of self-obsessed, overly materialistic youngsters, people of my generation were bought up to be grateful for what we had and to be prepared to wait for the good things in life rather than having everything delivered to us via a digital download two minutes before it's even been finished - and then having the temerity to complain because the download speed in Dumfries means you have to wait 22 minutes for the entire Godfather trilogy to be delivered in HD format onto your i-pod instead of the national average of 17. In my youth, you knew you'd enjoy that Scalectrix or Arnold Palmer indoor golf game (complete with moving Arnold Palmer doll at the base of the trigger-operated golf club *and* extensive range of woods, irons and putters) *so* much more once you'd waited for your uncle/nephew/older brother to bash the shit out of it for several years before handing it down to you - by which time you'd discovered masturbation anyway and so had no use for pathetic plastic replicas of South African golf legends, even if you could use them to hack lumps out of your sister's shins and be far enough away to avoid getting kicked). Whereas nowadays, if the slightest thing goes wrong in anybody's life, it's been posted up on the world wide inter-web and within weeks turned into a raunchy ITV2 vehicle for Billie Piper that no one will watch because it clashes with Ladette to Lady.
It could be argued, I suppose, that this is all part of the empowerment of people which, we're told, is such a beneficial by-product of the globalisation process. Whether you're from Ankara, Kabul, Midlothian, North Carolina or Peru, you have the same right to complain as someone from Hertfordshire. It's called democratisation, but doesn't it often ring hollow? In any case, I suppose we'll have to get used to all the moaning minnies who want everything on a plate, instantaneously, as a matter of right, and whose freedom to do as they damn well please is the single most important issue in the whole history of human affairs. But it comes to something, I'm sure even the most rabid free-market individualist would agree, when even the *criminal* *classes* begin to mither about how hard done by they are. Like the granny murderer who featured on the news the other night. Rather than count his good fortune for having got away with his despicable crime on a technicality (the police "lost his files") and put his hands up in time honoured "it's a fair cop guv, but society's to blame fashion, when cornered by a brave/foolhardy (delete as applicable) journalist trying to bring to his attention the recent changes in the double jeopardy laws that may lead to a retrial he thrashed away with his stick at the cameraman yelling at him "get out of my face". So, right now, personal space, it seems, is above all else sacrosanct.
Right, where's the Radox?
xxx
Mort
Of course, this inner serenity is easily explained. Unlike today's breed of self-obsessed, overly materialistic youngsters, people of my generation were bought up to be grateful for what we had and to be prepared to wait for the good things in life rather than having everything delivered to us via a digital download two minutes before it's even been finished - and then having the temerity to complain because the download speed in Dumfries means you have to wait 22 minutes for the entire Godfather trilogy to be delivered in HD format onto your i-pod instead of the national average of 17. In my youth, you knew you'd enjoy that Scalectrix or Arnold Palmer indoor golf game (complete with moving Arnold Palmer doll at the base of the trigger-operated golf club *and* extensive range of woods, irons and putters) *so* much more once you'd waited for your uncle/nephew/older brother to bash the shit out of it for several years before handing it down to you - by which time you'd discovered masturbation anyway and so had no use for pathetic plastic replicas of South African golf legends, even if you could use them to hack lumps out of your sister's shins and be far enough away to avoid getting kicked). Whereas nowadays, if the slightest thing goes wrong in anybody's life, it's been posted up on the world wide inter-web and within weeks turned into a raunchy ITV2 vehicle for Billie Piper that no one will watch because it clashes with Ladette to Lady.
It could be argued, I suppose, that this is all part of the empowerment of people which, we're told, is such a beneficial by-product of the globalisation process. Whether you're from Ankara, Kabul, Midlothian, North Carolina or Peru, you have the same right to complain as someone from Hertfordshire. It's called democratisation, but doesn't it often ring hollow? In any case, I suppose we'll have to get used to all the moaning minnies who want everything on a plate, instantaneously, as a matter of right, and whose freedom to do as they damn well please is the single most important issue in the whole history of human affairs. But it comes to something, I'm sure even the most rabid free-market individualist would agree, when even the *criminal* *classes* begin to mither about how hard done by they are. Like the granny murderer who featured on the news the other night. Rather than count his good fortune for having got away with his despicable crime on a technicality (the police "lost his files") and put his hands up in time honoured "it's a fair cop guv, but society's to blame fashion, when cornered by a brave/foolhardy (delete as applicable) journalist trying to bring to his attention the recent changes in the double jeopardy laws that may lead to a retrial he thrashed away with his stick at the cameraman yelling at him "get out of my face". So, right now, personal space, it seems, is above all else sacrosanct.
Right, where's the Radox?
xxx
Mort
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)