Bruce Forsyth – a slip of the tongue or a damning insight?

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Let’s hope Sir Bruce Forsyth was just a little emotional and sloppy with his words when news of his knighthood broke yesterday.

Let’s hope that it didn’t quite come out as he meant it to when he described how the honour “makes me feel as though my life has been worthwhile”.

Because taking him at his word doesn’t bear thinking about. Especially if you’re his wife, or his children and grandchildren, a close friend, or one of the millions of people he so effortlessly entertained when in his pomp. Thanks for the love and support but quite frankly it means bugger all alongside having the monarch dab a sword on my shoulders…

And how on earth are the rest of us to cope? We who may never get within a thousand miles of a knighthood and have somehow deluded ourselves that aspiring to live for every day and in such a way that our funeral is standing-room-only was pretty much all we needed to make our time on this planet feel well-spent.

What mugs we are. No gong, no meaning. Who knew?

So yes, let’s just assume that Sir Bruce simply chose his words badly and does not in fact possess a sense of self-worth so brittle that a glittering career and the love of family and friends don’t quite do it for him when it comes to feeling “worthwhile.”

Probably for the best, eh?

Sunday papers a round-up of despair

Co-op, Sunday morning. An unlikely setting in which to take the pulse of a nation but a lap of the newspaper stand, digesting headlines each Sabbath has become something of a tradition.

In retrospect, I could have done without the ritual this week. What I thought would be its nadir – yet another bent-over Corrie star panty pic – turned out to be the relative highlight. It might have appalled but at least it didn’t depress.

Elsewhere, however, the news was not so good.

British doctor helps patients around rules against choosing your baby’s sex. We name this child ‘Commodity’.

More relaxation on wedding rules  – now you can be married at any time of night or day – further blurring the line between ceremony and circus.

And a prison governor is advised to apologise in writing to an inmate for finding methadone in his cell because proper procedures were not followed.

“You should always read the newspapers and watch the news at least once a day,” Miss H used to advise us in our final year at junior school. Nowadays, I suspect she’d be more likely to shield our impressionable young eyes.

And illicit panty shots would be the least of it.

Balding highlights bad taste more than she knows

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While the Sunday Times lands some long-overdue blows in his defence, I am generally with Clare Balding in her dispute with Times TV critic AA Gill.

Gill can argue to the contrary till he’s blue in the face but his review of Balding’s programme Britain By Bike has absolutely no need of the following:

“Now back to the dyke on a bike, puffing up the nooks and crannies at the bottom end of the nation.”

“I wonder if the production team noticed that, even through three layers of Viyella and Gore-Tex, Clare has heroically assertive nipples”

This isn’t criticism, it’s the journalist as smart aleck, proffering crass, unnecessarily personal digs that he hopes will bring almost as much of a smirk to his peers’ faces as they did to his own. It is pathetic and there are too many newspaper people who abuse their power in this way, whether it’s a writer or a sub-editor egging him on.

And it’s a shame that the hopelessness of his case detracts from an otherwise valid point made by Gill’s editor, John Witherow, in response to Balding’s complaint:

“In my view, some members of the gay community need to stop regarding themselves as having a special victim status and behave like any other sensible group that is accepted by society.”

Agreed. Watching homosexuality acquire almost reverential status in recent years has been somewhat bewildering. If only this particular case fit his rhetoric. Prejudice, however, starts with name-calling that goes to the core of what a person is. Unchecked, it becomes legitimised and a civilised society takes a step backwards.

As it does when vulgarity rules and people with the intelligence to do better communicate publicly  in the language of the taproom.

Clare Balding was never likely to dignify her stance by taking it onto Twitter but the following input, as reported by The Guardian, drags the issue down to a yah-boo level, at which point those of us who don’t enjoy watching adults embarrass themselves start to move on:

“Balding, who made her debut on the microblogging site earlier this week to call Gill a “twat”, is now seeking advice from fellow tweeter Stephen Fry. Last night former the Labour deputy leader John Prescott tweeted his support for Balding, referring to Gill as ‘a shit’.”

Balding, I should remind you, was educated at Cambridge University. Prescott, I won’t need to remind you, as you’re probably still wiping the tears of laughter from your eyes, is now a peer of the realm.

There was a time when people in their position, whatever language they might use behind closed doors, would have felt obliged to raise the bar slightly when venting their anger in an open forum.

Nowadays, it seems, anything goes. Propriety is once again subjugated to the cult of self and its overriding need to emote.

Yes, Clare Balding, AA Gill gave us ample cause to wrinkle our noses at the state of Britain’s intelligentsia.

What a shame you then had to go and do likewise.

……………………………………………………………………………………….

Bald truth on Gill is vulgar, vulgar, vulgar – Rhoda Koenig, Belfast Telegraph

Moat, Mandelson and the blurring of lines

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So some 13,500 people like a tribute Facebook page set up in the memory of Raoul Moat. Seems they rather dig the martyrdom myth slowly snowballing around a man who took one life, and wrecked two more because the world didn’t quite suit.

You can, if you wish, put this down to a social media generation in desperate need of a life, whose brains are being slowly fried by their laptops, although 13,000 people is a lot to be so dismissively bracketed together.

But then you may like to consider this: two posters on a fly fishing forum (and fly fishing isn’t a sport lacking in people with their heads screwed on) talking about Peter Mandelson in the wake of his memoirs being published…

“Thing is, as much as I’d love to loathe the man, I just can’t. He is without doubt the shrewdist political operator of our times and as such I can’t help but admire him. Totally unflappable (even when confronted by Paxman), totally in control and fully in command of his destiny, even after all the scandal”

“Whatever you might think of him, in a world of dull pasty-faced political yoofs he does add a bit of interest”

This persuades me that we’re dealing with something rather broader than misguided dimwits when we behold the homage to Raoul Moat.

I fear there is now a genuine amorality at large in British society generally; a lazy, blinkered mindset that warps wrong into right and leaves it down to each indivdual as to where the distinction is drawn.

The red light of moral relativity has begun to flash. This will not end well.

Autumn time for Hitler

Cover of Downfall

The real reason Constantin Films called halt on all the wonderful parodies of the Hitler rant scene from Downfall?

It suddenly dawned on someone that long after Constantin Films has been forgotten, people will still remember the folks who took the idea and ran with it to create one of the best viral YouTube clips ever.

And they couldn’t bear the thought of it.

That’s my theory anyway.

I call ego.

Enjoy this one while you can.

Harry Carpenter, RIP

Proof of my old boss’s belief that one of the perks of talent is knowing when to break the rules, Harry Carpenter‘s finest moment comes at about 5.55 in the following clip and when learning of his death on Monday, I was delighted to learn it had made as much of an impression on others as it did on me.

It tells you everything about Carpenter’s understated professionalism that he remained mortified by that ‘lapse’. Too many of those who benefit from television’s current obsession with hiring former stars over broadcast journalists to anchor its sports coverage would be smugly proud of the moment.

To those of us standing in bars and hotels watching the Bruno-Tyson fight on new-fangled satellite TV 21 years ago, however, the ‘lapse’ did what good commentary should do – drew its audience fully into the drama of the moment. I still feel the hairs rise on the back of my neck when I think of it (just as I do with “here comes the Rock” – not one of Harry’s but another example of the right words at the right time).

Steady, undemonstrative, helpful yet never intrusive, Harry Carpenter was like a favourite uncle and because Sportsnight was always his baby in my eyes, I’ve thrown in the second clip, from 1982: testimony to the power of music to transport you back in time faster than a speeding bullet. Just like the occasional magnificent lapse…

Where does Tiger Woods’ arrogance come from? From journalists like this…

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You can always tell when a sportswriter has become a little too close to his subject.

It’s when he pens a list of good and bad things about Tiger Woods’ return to competitive golf and writes of his PR people:

“They finally got something right, making an early announcement to short-circuit the rampant speculation and give the world time to prepare”

The world?

I wouldn’t be so naive as to assume there are still millions of people out there who’ve never heard of Woods but I suspect the number of those who give a damn about anything he says, thinks or does, even before the events of last Thanksgiving, is considerably smaller than that imagined by the author of this drivel.

Take a holiday, Alan Shipnuck. And if you’d like to find out what really makes the world hold its breath, Google ‘Afghanistan’ or ‘Haiti’.

Why I’ll still raise a glass with my boys

I‘ve been more steamed at government pronouncements, certainly.

Indeed, when it comes to assessing the Government Medical Officer Sir Liam Donaldson‘s recommendation that treating children even to small, occasional amounts of alcohol in a bid to defuse its allure be discouraged, Les and Brookston are far more vituperative.

I simply recall what the local undertaker told my father when he saw Dad and I in the pub one Sunday lunchtime, not long after my 18th birthday: “if your kids feel they can try alcohol in front of you, they’re less likely to pour God-knows-what down their necks behind the bike shed.”

Rightly or wrongly, those words ring more true with me than do the views of Sir Liam.

As does the conviction that when a Government declares a spurious conflict with Iraq to be just and proper, it can have no complaints if no-one takes a blind bit of notice of anything it advises thereafter.

Just in case you had accountants all wrong

I didn’t expect the accountancy giant Deloitte to be thrilled when a joke email from one of their staff went viral.

Undoubtedly, there’s a measure of embarrassment to deal with when one of your young guns emails her colleagues , inviting them to consider figures of a different ilk, in the run-up to Christmas:

“In the email, entitled Deloitte First year analysts Christmas Awards, sent on December 8, [Holly] Leam-Taylor asked her female colleagues to vote on which men in the office they considered most attractive.

She listed nine categories including, ‘boy most likely to sleep his way to the top’ and ‘most attractive older member of staff’…

…The email was only intended for a small group within her office, but was quickly forwarded outside the building and within hours was being read by millions of internet users as far away as New Zealand and Australia.

Miss Leam-Taylor, who has been employed as a trainee analyst at the international company since August, resigned from her job the following day.”

But did the company’s response, penned by someone who I’m guessing won’t be leading the conga at this year’s office party, have to be quite so po-faced?

“We are very disappointed by this matter. While intended as a joke, this is a stark reminder of the need to exercise careful judgment when using email.”

Now bear in mind this message has probably been signed off by someone paid many thousands of pounds each year to make Deloitte look as good as possible. With that in mind, let’s think outside the box here: would the following have been so bad, in the circumstances…?

“We don’t pretend to be thrilled at seeing company time used in this manner and we’ll be having a chat with Ms Leam-Taylor at some point on the beauty of discretion. That apart, Deloitte is happy to lead the way in shattering the misconception that accountancy and personality are mutually-exclusive concepts”

But no. They take the pomposity option and in doing so reinforce the same old image with which accountants have been saddled for decades, epitomised among professional people everywhere by a familiar joke.

How do you spot an accountant in a crowd?

The crowd stands out.

[pic courtesy of Ha! Designs]