I watched Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me the other day. I should have known better, having read the synopsis:
As he struggles with Alzheimer’s disease, country-music legend Glen Campbell embarks on his farewell tour in the U.S., Australia, and Europe.
It’s a fly-on-the-wall, warts and all portrayal of how the disease utterly debilitates the sufferer, the strain it puts on all those around them. It’s utterly compelling, but absolutely heart-breaking.
Between shows, you see him veer from being totally lucid, to suddenly having no idea where he is or who he’s talking to, even if it his wife and kids. He gets frustrated, angry, paranoid.
That changes when he performs. His muscle memory, if you like, his instinctive ability to recall songs wins through, and those moments are a joy to behold.
But as the tour progresses, you see him unravelling more and more frequently on stage. The footage from the final show of the tour is really quite upsetting; you see Campbell go off on rambling monologues to the audience in between songs, complaining that his “hair itches”, before launching into, ironically, the classic Gentle On My Mind. And for a few moments, all is well again.
Until…
Until Campbell goes into the guitar break, which just goes on and on and on and on and is out of time with the band, who he begins to berate and…it’s just so, so sad.
I’d recommend your watching it, but, my, you really have to be in the right frame of mind.
*****
In 2017, Campbell released Adiós, a collection of re-recorded or remastered versions of all his most loved songs, and many others, presumably as a way to enhance those moments when his instincts kicked in and took him back to when he first played them.
Here’s the updated version of Gentle On My Mind from said album:
“Just one week off, please, one week where nothing happens to get my goat, one week where I can post something nice and positive of a Saturday morning. That’s all I ask,” I wrote last week.
A tap on the shoulder from my alter ego.
“There’s always The Chain, which you moved to a Saturday morning…”
Ohhhh yes. Totally forgot about that!
And so I revisited the last post I did in The Chain, and find it was so long ago – December 2020 – that I had the audacity to mention Spurs winning a game of kickball, which hasn’t aged at all well.
So, let’s pick up where we left off all those months ago, with the next record in The Chain that I invited suggestions for. This record:
OK, so you can probably guess where most of the suggestions stem from, but we’ll start off with a suggestion by George (not of ASDA).
“Two members of The Coasters used to be in The Robins, who’s best song, and this will undoubtedly be the best song on the next Chain, was Smokey Joe’s Cafe. Which was written by Leiber and Stoller.”
So, slightly obscure link dispensed with, let’s address the elephant in the room. There are at least two Charlie Browns, the one in the Coasters song of the same name, and the one that we’re probably all more familiar with, from the Peanuts cartoon.
So let’s kick off properly with songs which reference Charlie Brown, and I’ll hand over to Hal, who explains and suggests thusly: Thirty years ago (30 years FFS…) Jim Bob & Fruit Bat released 101 Damnations which featured…:
Hal’s “FFS” is of course Young People Speak for “For Flip’s Sake” [Are you sure about this?- Ed], and is often used when one encounters an anniversary of an event considered to have occurred relatively recently, but which transpires to have actually been much earlier, thereby adding to our feelings of old age and past-it-ness. Don’t be fooled by Hal’s use of Young People Speak, for he is as old as we are, which is why he can conjure up such selections from hitherto forgotten bands such as Carter USM (as I believe the “kids” on “the” “street” refer to them these days, if they do at all).
Hal is to be celebrated for refusing to accept that thirty years have passed since that monumental occasion, oft referred to in history books, as the year of Our Lord 19 Hundred and Ninety, the year Carter USM released their debut album.
And he’s right to refuse to accept this, because as the album came out in January 1990, it’s actually 31 years now. Sorry, Hal!
Staying on the Charlie Brown link, here’s Swiss Adam from Bagging Area who not only suggests a song linked to our favourite wibble-mouthed cartoon character, he also introduces a much needed touch of class:
Echo and the Bunnymen’s Bring On The Dancing Horses covers Charlie Brown in its first 2 lines via Jimmy Brown and Charlie Clown…
But here’s Rigid Digit, dragging us back into Carter USM territory:
Carter USM’s Falling On A Bruise includes the line: “You win some and you lose some, you save nothing, nothing for a rainy day, You need your nutra-sweet daddy or some Peppermint Patty”
Perhaps I should explain. Charlie Brown, as well as being the hapless character in The Coasters records, shares his name with a character in a cartoon written by Shultz called Peanuts.
…but within the cartoon strip known as Peanuts, there are many characters who do have their names crop up in songs. Peppermint Patty is one of them, and here she is again, courtesy of TheRobster:
‘And then there’s Nobody Speak by DJ Shadow & Run The Jewels which includes the line “I walk Charlie Brown, Peppermint Patty, Linus and Lucy / Put coke in the doobie roll moodies to smoke with Snoopy'”
There was also a band called Linus, continues TheRobster, but I don’t know much about them. Me neither, and I’m not going to do your research for you.
Another Peanuts character, picks up the Devonian, is Lucy Van Pelt, whose name was taken for a Japanese indiepop band, and then they had a trademark issue with whoever owned Peanuts after Charles Schultz died, so they changed it to Advantage Lucy instead. But from their days as Lucy Van Pelt, I’ll suggest:
Now when somebody describes a band as being “Japanese indiepop“, I had a pre-conceived idea of what they might sound like, but it was nothing like that. And that’s a good thing – my favourite “never heard of this lot before, must explore” record of the month.
And then there’s the eponymous Charlie Brown himself, or, as Phonic Pat deliberately mis-spells it to get it fit his next suggestion, Charly:
Along with his already aired suggestion Rigid Digit also laid claim to some other records being linked, which weren’t (unless I were to allow pun-related tunes, which I might be minded to if we were a little short on the ground of suggestions, which we’re not), so I’m afraid Hang on Snoopy (because it’s Sloopy, not Snoopy) and Oasis’ Don’t Look Back in Anger (because he admits to making up that the line “And so Sally can wait” was written after Noel Gallagher had been watching an episode of Charlie Brown), are both disqualified.
However, nothing wrong with his two Brown suggestions, even if he does claim that they are both related to Charlie’s non-existent siblings:
Devonian is back, with this suggestion: As nobody’s said it yet, “Charlie Brown” is not the only hit song to make use of the hookline “Why’s everybody always pickin’ on me?”. There’s also…
Finally, says Phonic Pat, somewhat presumptuously, but I like this suggestion a lot, so I’ll let it slide, linking the trombone sound the adults make in the Peanuts films, how about a trombone take on the Pixies?
Although I get the impression he’s not proud of the second choice, as he signs off with the words “I’ll get my coat.” No need, Stevie, really: all of those rock’n’roll and doo-wop records of the late 70s and early 80s were my introduction to pop music, and I have a soft spot for them all, from Shakin’ Stevens to The Stray Cats, from Coast to Coast to Rocky Sharpe and The Replays.
What Stevie has inadvertently done there is lead us seamlessly into those suggestions which consider the Coast aspect of the source record, and here’s The Great Gog with another couple:
I also wonder what type of Coaster the band were named after. A mat on which one places a drink, a person that lives by the sea or a fairground ride? Assuming the latter, we could have:
Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking: Crikey, he’s been a bit quiet with his own suggestions this time. And you’d be right. Those last two were mine, and so are all of the rest left to go, all of which are Coast-related. To say I picked up on that and ran with it would be an understatement. So strap yourselves in, here we go:
If I was still giving out points, I’d have to consider giving myself one for that double coast link as a double pointer.
Now, some parts of the coast have a beach, some have other geographical characteristics. Where there’s a beach, they tend to fall into two general categories: ones made up of pebbles:
Now, earlier this week it would have been the comic genius Rik Mayall’s birthday, so indulge me for a minute will you?
Thank you.
Here’s the moment from the final episode of The Young Ones where it all goes utterly utterly wrong:
Here’s the video for the song:
And here’s the gang performing it live for Comic Relief:
And best of all, here’s the speech Rik gave when he was awarded an Honorary Doctorate. If you’ve never seen this before, I’d heartily recommend you take ten minutes to watch it:
All that leaves me to do is to announce the source record for next time’s edition, and to express some sympathy to The Robster, who picked the wrong version of the right song:
I’ve not written one of these for a few weeks, chiefly because I’ve been in such an apathetic fug it seemed hypocritical to post tunes of a Monday morning specifically selected to raise one out of the pit of despair that is the working week unrolling out in front of us.
But maybe this is what’s needed: a strutting 1970s era Rolling Stones-esque version of an old Otis Redding classic, chosen for you this morning to shake ya bootie to:
Tonight, a song which remind me of two of my besties: Dum-Dum and, of course, Llŷr.
Firtsly, Dum-Dum, because I remember we’d gone to see Pete Tong play at Cardiff’s much missed Emporium nightclub; it was, if I recall correctly, an anniversary of local club night Time Flies. Also if I recall correctly, Tong’s set was really rather dull until he dropped this tune.
Dum-Dum and I spent many nights dancing alongside each other, and I’m sure he won’t mind me describing our dancing style as conservative (with a small c); we both belonged firmly in the shuffle-from-one-foot-to-the-other school of dancing, with the occasional wagged-finger in time with a tune, sometimes the whirling index as we attempted to count in the crash-back after the breakdown. Perfunctory without doing anything which especially caught the eye.
But on this occasion, Dum-Dum went for it, proper moves on display, and I’ve never seen a man so lost in the moment, so deliriously happy as he was then.
The song in question went on to be an absolute smash hit, but when Tong dropped it that night it was months before that; we knew it of course, but that was because we were so goddamn supercool.
And although he was with us that night, it reminds me of Llŷr for a very different reason.
Months later, we were at home mid-week watching some football, when the ITV commentator suddenly compared the half-hearted actions of one particular footballer (sadly, I don’t recall which) to being “like the man in the Lazy video!”
Llŷr and I found this hilarious, sounding as it did like when a politician pretends to like a cool band because they think it might earn them a few votes (it won’t, it never will), or when your Geography teacher implores you “Hey! Don’t call me Mr Sullivan, I don’t call you by your surname. Call me Dan” (subtext: please like me, please like me, please like me).
This phrase – “like the man in the Lazy video” – soon became our stock phrase for when someone wasn’t trying hard enough in our books, and although it really doesn’t seem like much now, it was one of our little jokes that nobody else got, which would have us both in side-hugging fits of giggles when it got mentioned.
Here’s the man in the Lazy video, being exactly like the man in the Lazy video:
Just one week off, please, one week where nothing happens to get my goat, one week where I can post something nice and positive of a Saturday morning. That’s all I ask.
But no. Here I am, banging on yet again about the latest injustice and trying desperately to justify it by tagging a tune or two on at the end.
We’ll get on to the biggie soon enough, but let’s start with some good news for a change.
This week, taxi/private hire company Uber finally gave in to a recent Supreme Court ruling that their drivers were not, as Uber had previously contested, self-employed but were employees, and as such entitled to the normal “perks” other employees were entitled to: a minimum hourly wage, sick pay, pensions.
It comes to something when it takes a Supreme Court ruling before companies will give their workers what they are entitled to, and is indicative of how some companies will try and bend the rules, squirm through as many loop-holes as possible, to try to exploit their staff and maximise their own profits. (Take) That’s Capitalism, folks!
But this isn’t just about the exploitation of your working man (or woman): research by Citizens Advice has suggested that as many as 460,000 people in the UK could be falsely classified as self-employed, costing up to £314m a year in lost tax and employer national insurance contributions. That’s £314m which the Government could be passing on to their mates, so I’m struggling to see why the fight was so hard, the original ruling having been handed down in 2016, but then contested by Uber. Surely Johnson or Hancock or Raab could have waded in, insisting they accept the ruling, hand over the cash in a brown envelope to be swiftly popped into the pocket of old Spewy Dickson – seriously, he was such a laugh at college – who swears he knows how to rattle up a few Covid-compliant face masks or aprons or something?
Uber operates around the world, with the company valued at more than £50bn.
I often wonder: just how rich do you have to be, before you stop being a greedy arsehole?
And then I think of “Sir” Philip Green, his love of other people’s money, and yachts, and conclude: well, richer than him, apparently.
Some of the people I went to school with have ended up being far wealthier than me. And that’s fine, I’m comfortable with that. I rarely meet up with them these days, but on the occasions that I do, I always feel them looking down on me, wondering where things went wrong for me. I was a fairly bright, if lazy, pupil when at school, I could have made money like they did, why haven’t I?
Because I have no desire to be wealthy, that’s why. I’m quite happy, bobbing along in my moderately-paid job, paying my taxes, my rent, my bills, and enjoying whatever I have left after doing so; eking out my monthly salary until the next payday is part of the rollercoaster of life for me, safe in the knowledge that whilst I am certainly not as well off as some, I’m definitely better off than many.
Will I make it to the end of the month without resorting to beans on toast as a staple meal? Yes, usually. Will I have any money left over at the end of the month to pop away in a savings account? No, not usually, for I am far more likely, with a few days to go until payday, to splash out on a takeaway or a bottle or two of something to make my Friday night a go with a whizz.
I can’t think of much worse than being so wealthy the question of whether I can afford something or not never enters my head. How dull their lives must be! To misquote Joe Fagin’s 1984 hit and theme tune to Auf Weidersehen, Pet!: That’s Not Living, Alright?
But I digress: the action against Uber had originally been brought by the ADCU, the App Driver and Couriers Union, on behalf of two of its members, Yaseen Aslam and James Farrar, which leads me to the first tune of the morning.
As mentioned last weekend, I am a huge Billy Bragg fan, although generally I prefer his (unrequited) love songs to the political songs with which he’s most associated by those who don’t really know anything much about him.
This song first appeared on his “difficult third album”, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry, but that’s not a version I’m fond of – it’s a bit too Billy-By-Numbers, if that makes sense. Somewhere I used to have a full band version, all fiddles and folk, but frustratingly I cannot lay my hands on it right now (it popped up on a B-side somewhere, I’m sure….I may be thinking of the instrumental version on Greetings to the New Brunette, but I don’t think so….), so instead here are two versions which I found on YouTube when frantically searching for the lost-Billy version.
The first is what YouTube insists is lifted from the closing credits of the wonderful movie Pride, although, whilst I recall the song being used, I don’t recall it having a choir and a brass band on it, as this does. I’ll have to revisit, which will be an absolute joy as Pride is one of my favourite films from the last twenty tears, telling the true story of a London based group of gays and lesbians (before they would have been called LBGT+) supporting a Welsh mining village during the strike of the mid-1980s. If you’ve never seen it, put that right as soon as possible.
As a disclaimer, I’ve not had chance to do due diligence and look into Picker’s Local 608, so I do hope they don’t turn out to be of the redneck Confederate breed.
And so to the grim stuff.
*****
Remember last year, when we watched how Trump dealt with the BLM protests, how multiple examples of police brutality were caught on camera? And remember how, whilst we condemned it, we, privately, breathed a sigh of relief and thought: “Well, that could never happen here”…?
Well, last weekend, it did.
And here too, many disturbing photographs were taken, as the police waded in to break up what was, to all intents and purposes, a vigil, not a protest, in memory of Sarah Everard, the woman murdered as she walked home alone one night.
Around the world these images flowed, none more evocative and widely shared than this one:
Over the course of the day, mourners had left flowers around the bandstand of Clapham Common, close to where Everard vanished. One such mourner was Princess Cathy, the Duchess of Cambridge, who was seen paying her respects:
Not wearing a mask, I notice.
Funny how the police didn’t wade in when she was there, right? You’d think the Royal Family would have welcomed a change in focus after the couple of weeks they’ve had.
But no, it was much later that evening that the trouble started. And by trouble, from everything I’ve seen, I mean the actions of the police who suddenly decided that the crowd needed to be broken up.
Now, it would not be entirely truthful to say that this was simply a vigil, with no protest aspect attached. Placards were displayed, songs were sung. But what protest took place was, again from what I’ve seen, 100% peaceful, until PC Law decided enough was enough.
And, to my eyes, its important to note that both were going on at the same time, but neither vigil nor protest was worthy of the attention the police gave them. Peaceful protest, even in these times of Covid restrictions is permitted. Indeed, the activities of the day, whilst originally blocked by the Courts, were ultimately allowed to take place.
What followed was an upsurge in real life stories from women about occasions that they have felt scared, threatened, or, on far too many occasions, actually been assaulted by men as they made their way home after a night out.
The #MeToo movement over the past couple of years shocked many of us, but I still think a large amount of people considered the hashtag related exclusively to the famous, the celebrities who had been abused or forced to the euphemistically referred to “casting couch”. Referring to it as such allows you to escape the horror of what that actually means, in a way that the victim was unable to.
Personally, I know of at least two of my female friends who have been assaulted as they travelled home. Both in London, but that doesn’t mean it’s a London problem.
This is a male problem.
And I pray that, reading all of the stories women have posted on social media, men finally learn to change their behaviour.
We all need to reassess our actions. I’ve never assaulted anyone, never taken advantage of anyone when they were drunk or alone or vulnerable, but even I can look back at certain incidents in my life and think: “I could have behaved better there”.
The protest which ran parallel with the vigil was, largely, from the Reclaim The Night movement. Put very simply, all this movement asks is that women be allowed to travel safely at night in the same way as men do. It’s such a basic request, that it saddens me to my very core that they even have to exist. Here. Now. In 2021, when we’re all supposed to be equal, except we’re clearly not.
I pray, but I’m an atheist, so I’m not confident anything will happen as a result of my prayers.
I’m certain that the man who wrote this song didn’t do so in order that it might be included in a blogpost about how women should be able to walk the streets without fear of intimidation or assault, but at first blush it seems to fit. It’s the “Because the night belongs to us”, I’m thinking of here as making this appropriate.
I could have posted any number of versions of this song, but I’ve gone for my very favourite:
By way of a reaction, the Metropolitan Police have announced that once COVID lockdown measures are lifted, they plan to employ more plain clothes officers to frequent bars and clubs, in an effort to stamp down on offences of the nature mentioned.
Which rather overlooks the fact that the person arrested and charged with Sarah Everard’s murder is…a serving policeman from the Metropolitan Police.
Yeh, nice one. I’m sure that will put many people’s concerns to rest.
*****
Now, you know when something seismic has happened, where public opinion and sympathy lies in a particular way, because politicians suddenly leap into action and want to be seen to be doing the right thing.
And so it was that our Home Secretary, old Smirky McSmirkface herself, Priti Patel, criticised pictures of officers manhandling women at the vigil, rebuked the Met commissioner, Cressida Dick, and ordered an inquiry.
Quite right too, until it emerged later in the week that Patel had sent a memo to all police chiefs making her position clear: she wanted them to stop people gathering at vigils. (She also promised she would personally urge people not to gather – but she never did.)
And this shouldn’t be much of a surprise to those who had followed a bill which passed it’s second reading at almost the same time Patel was feigning outrage, a bill which written by Patel, further restricts the ability to protest and increases police powers.
What is interesting is that in the debate about the bill on Monday she said this: “On Friday my views were know and they were based on the fact that people who wanted to pay tribute within the locality… laying flowers was the right thing to do.” Which rather implies the opposite of the leaked memo, that she encouraged the Met to let the vigil go ahead, but ho hum, lying to Parliament seems to be acceptable these days, just ask our PM.
Now, permission to protest is one of the cornerstones of democracy; remove it, as this bill seeks to do, and we are sleepwalking into a territory where dissenting voices can no longer be heard in public.
One of the problems with this Bill is that it allows Patel to change the meaning of the phrase “serious disruption” whenever she likes:
In other words, this Bill seeks, amongst other things, to limit the power and ability to protest, whilst also giving Patel the power to decide what is and isn’t acceptable. What the bill should do is lay down the terms, rather than leave it in the hands of someone who has a proven record of being a duplicitous bully to decide.
The Bill attacks, on a permanent basis the fundamental human right of peaceful assembly.
For example, under this Bill, the Home Secretary (Patel, as it stands) could decide that one person protesting in a vocal manner in public should be shut down and imprisoned.
Netpol analysis of BLM demos found that “black-led protests disproportionately faced excessive interventions by police”. This Bill radically increases police power and discretion to impose restrictions on protests. It allows them to impose them not for disruption, but for “impact”, and on the broadest, vaguest and lowest possible basis. It allows police to impose restrictions if they believe a single passer-by will experience “serious unease” from the noise.
These aren’t flashers we’re talking about, likely to cause offence by wanging their wongers in the general direction of some schoolgirls; they’re people exercising their democratic right to protest. Make no mistake about it, this is the most violent attack on our civil liberties we’ve seen since Thatcher blocked flying pickets during the miner’s strike.
I’ll end by quoting the words of Nadia Whittome, MP, as part of the debate on the bill: “There is so much wrong with this bill that three minutes couldn’t possibly cover it. We’re debating it today because the home secretary despised Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter…[The Bill] expands police powers to levels that should not be seen in a modern democracy. If we were debating this legislation in another country, I’m sure members of this House would be condemning that country as an authoritarian regime…We’re sick of male violence. We’re sick of male violence whether it’s at the hands of the state, our partners, our family members, or strangers. And we march because some people don’t survive that violence. The public realm belongs to women too…[The Bill] hands unaccountable power to the police. The same police that were forcing women to the ground on Saturday night.”
The same police which includes the man charged with the murder of Sarah Everard.
It’s cheesy, I know, but there’s only one song which can illustrate this properly:
The other day I received an email from some mailing list I must have signed up to sometime and forgotten all about.
It was from Team Kristofferson, telling me that although Kris had taken the decision to retire last year (a little overdue in my opinion, given his very sad inability to remember some of the wonderful lyrics he had written when performing live), I should be assured that there were some projects underway and they were going through all of his demos and unreleased material.
Plus, a link to Kristofferson’s website, where you can stream all of his back catalogue, via Apple, Spotify or Amazon, here: Discography – Kris Kristofferson
So I figured this was as good enough a reason to post something by the great man myself which I may or may not have posted previously, I can’t be bothered to check:
Secondly, because as long-term readers may recall, a load of my vinyl inexplicably vanished a few years ago, stolen either by an ex-flatmate who did a runner, or by some unsavoury types invited back from a ropey local pub and left unsupervised by later flatmates, and amongst the records lost was my entire collection of Billy’s records.
This week, all for the princely sum of £15.00 + P&P (a bargain!), I (re)purchased Brewing Up With…, Life’s a Riot with Spy vs. Spy, and a 12″ single of this, :
I noticed on Twitter this week a very mixed reaction to the tune the mighty Tottenham Hotspur play at home games when they score.
Generally, tweets were split between those asking “Why are they playing that to celebrate a goal?” and those saying “I love that they play that when they score!”
Those that said the second are, of course, correct, and those asking the first, well, the answer is I have no idea. Maybe it’s because scoring is such a euphoric moment, only some euphoric trance will do? Anyway, it’s an absolute banger, so why not?
What these people should be asking themselves is why their club isn’t playing it when they score. (Insert your own joke about a particular team needing to score, first, here.)
And the tune in question is this (and they play it from around the 2:45 mark when it absolutely explodes):
It may have escaped your attention, although Lawd knows how, but earlier this week an interview with former royals Harry and Meghan was broadcast on ITV, illustrious home of hard-nosed journalism and snuggly interviews on the GMTV sofa.
But this was different. This had gravitas. For this time, an interview broadcast on ITV was hosted not by Richard Madeley, but by Oprah Winfrey, someone who actually knows how to interview people without coming across like an Alan Partridge tribute act, and who knows how to look aghast when the crucial details (that she already knew) are revealed.
And there was no greater cluster-fuck of a revelation to look aghast to than that someone in the Royal family had said something racist to Meghan when she was pregnant with the couple’s first child.
For full disclosure, I didn’t watch the interview, but I have seen clips of it. The best bits. And Oprah is a much better actor than her performance in the interview, gasping “What?” when the bomb was delivered implies (seriously, watch The Color Purple and tell me she can’t act.)
Obviously, that’s not what I want to write about today.
You know how much I adore advertisers, but I think they missed a trick here. When it next cut to an ad break after the big revelation, Ray Winstone’s massive head should have appeared on our screens, shouting “Who done the racist thing? We’ll give you evens on Prince Phillip (he’s got form, hasn’t he), 2-1 on Princess Michael of Kent and 100-1 on one of the Corgis. Tap out at anytime you muppets!”
My money’s on Camilla; I can just imagine her stubbing a roll-up out on the head of a servant, hoiking a tit up like Les Dawson as Ada, and asking “So what colour is this baby going to be, anyway?”
Cue absolute uproar in the press. Particularly as Harry also mentioned the reason they had gotten out of the Royal Family was because of the treatment his wife was getting from the good old British press.
You won’t be surprised to learn that I have very little empathy for the Royal Family as a whole, but I do think that watching your mother literally be hounded to her grave by the British press is going to have an effect on you. And if it were me, if I saw certain behavioural patterns within the Press re-emerging, I would probably do what Harry did: get them the heck out of there, sharpish.
And so in the same interview, there was an allegation that the Royal Family and the British press were racist.
Step up Ian Murray, executive director of the Society of Editors, who released a statement insisting that the British press was not racist.
Well, he would, wouldn’t he?
So let’s have a look at some of the things which were written about Meghan, and some of the things, on an identical subject, which were written about a different (i.e. white) member of the Royal family. It’s probably easiest if we focus on perhaps the best point of reference, Kate, having married Harry’s brother only a few years earlier. And for consistency, we’ll only look at articles written by the same paper, albeit their online version.
Nothing to see here in the Express, where North London luvvie-food the avocado is a gift to the Duchess of Cambridge to help her with her morning sickness, but a blight on everything that is bad in the world when linked to Meghan.
Nothing to see here in The Mail either, where it’s a symbol of caring motherhood when Kate “tenderly” touches her pregnant bump, but when Meghan does it it’s either “pride, vanity, [or] acting” but a very definitely a bad thing which ever option you choose.
Well, that all seems perfectly legitimate, fair and not at all driven by either of those papers general hatred of all things non-white. If they’re not determinedly rowing across the channel to try and live a life picking fruit, the bastards, then they’re infiltrating a British Royal family which is German anyway or, even worse, bringing the house prices down where you live.
Having stated that the British press is not racist, Ian Murray, who you will recall is the executive director of the Society of Editors, went on TV to be interviewed by Victoria Derbyshire.
He should have known better, because Victoria is not only a fine journalist, she’s also (I imagine) still mightily pissed off that the BBC cancelled her mid-morning TV show, pushed her back behind a news desk, and therefore has an axe to grind and a point to prove. The interview does not go well for Murray, and Derbyshire is brilliant:
Get her hosting Question Time and maybe I’ll start watching it again.
On Wednesday, Murray resigned.
But this was not the most startling resignation this week. That honour rests with *coughs* people’s champion, Piers Morgan, who walked out of his cushy job on GMTV this week, because someone had the audacity to challenge his position:
And there’s the nub with Morgan. He liked her so much he was prepared to risk public humiliation by admitting to have watched Suits, which nobody in the UK ever watched. They met (once), he liked her, but she thought so little of him, they never met again. Such is Morgan’s life: when he’s not sticking his fingers in the air to see which way the wind is blowing, which bandwagon to jump on, then he’s whining about the fact that Meghan Markle met him once and decided that was enough. Spurned, he started to oppose every thing she did or said.
What a sad, pathetic man.
Later in the week, Morgan tweeted this:
What you don’t get in that screenshot is the whole of the quote he posted, so here it is:
That’s Morgan, unironically posting a Churchillian quote which highlights Morgan’s inability to deal with criticism without flouncing out of a TV studio.
And so to a tune. I had a song in mind, but I asked a friend if they thought it could be construed as racist. They said that although they knew I didn’t mean it as such – it’s just a record to illustrate a point – it could be misinterpreted, so I won’t be posting it. I suppose the fact I needed to ask should have told me all I needed to know.
So today you will, rightly, not be listening to Boney M’s “Brown Girl in the Ring”, because there’s only so much weight my cheeky approach to all of this can bear.
Instead, this, dedicated to Morgan & Murray, but in particular Morgan:
Let’s not forget that whilst all of this palaver is going on, the Royals continue to block the FBI’s efforts to question Prince Andrew about his links with dead nonce Jeffery Epstein.
Funny that they can release a statement about alleged racism, but not that, isn’t it?
Still, say what you like about Prince Andrew, at least he never refused to have sex with an underage girl because of the colour of her skin, as far as we know.
Which makes him definitely not racist, and by extension, we can only conclude that the whole Saxe-Coburg-Gotha Windsor family isn’t either.
Wheel him out for another interview, I say. The last one went so well, after all. I may even watch this time.
A History of Dubious Taste 