See Below

Writing about Gyles Brandreth reminded me of a Way of the World column I cut out and  kept in my special folder of things that have no rhyme or reason. It was originally intended to go in its own Way of the World folder but, shortly after I cut it out, the Telegraph, in its infinite lack of wisdom, decided to dispense with the services of Craig Brown and, therefore, Way of the World ceased to exist. At around the same time, BBC Radio Four decided to replace Ed Stourton with Evan Davies on the Today show and the Telegraph set up an on-line petition, so that people could register their disapproval of this move with a comment of support. When I wrote, 'Bring back Ed Stourton - and Craig Brown, while we're at it', the comment, strangely enough, was not allowed to appear. Its suppression was an example of what my brother described - rather beautifully, I thought - as 'depthless hypocrisy.'

Anyway, this is the Craig Brown column that I did keep. Brown writes, as always, very amusingly, and he also highlights a hilarious aspect of Brandreth's work (1):

 (1)I love the phrase, 'Like a pushy footman edging into a group photograph of bigwigs'

More Fun than Fun

I listened to Desert Island Discs the other day (I rarely do these days as I find the Scottish female presenter has a moist way of talking that makes it impossible not to think about the wet mucous membranes inside her mouth - ugh). The subject was Gyles Brandreth, a man who I know very little of, beyond his occasional participation in Just a Minute. I suspect he is someone one might feel ambivalent about, if one met him. His friend Roger Lewis in the rather wonderful Seasonal Suicide Notes describes a visit Brandreth makes to Lewis's house:

'Gyles Brandreth called in for lunch on his way to address the Oswestry branch of Bingo for the Deaf ... I made him a cup of tea. "This is the most wonderful cup of tea I have ever had in my life," he said, so firmly I believed it. I opened the door to the dining room and we proceeded to tuck in. "This is the most wonderful lunch I have ever had in my life," he claimed. Later on, Anna took him to Leominster Railway Station. "This is the most wonderful lift I have ever had in my life," I expected him to say in a heartfelt manner - and, when the Arriva Trains Wales train pulled in, "This is the most wonderful train I have ever seen in my life."'

Brandreth does sound a bit exhausting to be with, but his never fading enthusiasm is quite enviable as well. Therefore, when he told the Desert Island Discs lady that he takes Noel Coward's letters and diaries as inspiration, I made a note. According to Brandreth, when things went wrong, Noel Coward always said, 'Rise above it,' and Brandreth has taken that admonition very much to heart.

Which is why, when I was at the remaindered bookshop yesterday and saw a copy of The Letters of Noel Coward  for a relatively knockdown price, I bought it immediately. I started reading it yesterday evening and, despite the slightly Brandrethesque (or rather, I suppose, since Brandreth has been inspired by Coward, it is in fact purely Cowardesque), gushing nature of a lot of the phrasing in the letters (Dear Darling old Mummy-snooks is a bit sickening, I have to admit, and there is quite a bit of that kind of thing ['Ducky old Diddleums' - eurgh]), I am rather enjoying it.

The book has a good introduction, outlining Coward's life and the development of his career. It turns out that at two years old Coward 'had to be removed from church for dancing in the aisle to accompany the hymn', which suggests that it would have been impossible to try to get him to be anything other than an entertainer. What is also emerging though is that in some respects he was born before his time. 'He was always a man in a hurry', the author explains, 'a hurry to get on to the next thing and the next place. Which is why he was particularly fond of the telegram as a means of communication. Not only was it necessarily brief and to the point but it lent itself to the kind of verbal jokes that he dearly loved.'

When I read that, I thought about all the modern ways of sending messages around the world at immense speed. There are many things in the modern world that Coward would have hated, but I suspect he would have absolutely adored Twitter.

Ways of Seeing

I have a credit card. That credit card runs a free scheme whereby you get awarded points for every dollar you spend using the credit card. I belong to this scheme. My friend says I am stupid to belong to the scheme. She says that, if these schemes didn't exist, things would be cheaper. I agree with her - they probably would. However, these schemes do exist and my not joining one of them is not going to prevent them from existing. Therefore, I might as well take advantage of them. I should mention, perhaps, that I am writing this on a laptop that I received in exchange for points I had collected from my credit card's points scheme. My friend, on the other hand, has an ancient Apple that needs weird floppy disk things inserted into it after a few pages of typing. It cannot be connected to the Internet. It is probably about to become valuable as an antique.

Who is right? I think I am, because my friend is making a point, but no-one is paying any attention, whereas I am accepting that the status quo, although not ideal, is as it is and that, given I have little influence over it, I may as well work within it to my own advantage (I should also point out that I pay off my credit card debt in full at the end of each month and never use it just for the sake of getting points).

Despite my belief in my rightness, I find that I still can't help feeling guilty about my points and what they bring me. I think this is partly because I receive things, thanks to my decision to be in the scheme, whereas my friend receives nothing from her refusal. This reaction of mine may be purely the result of growing up in a Protestant culture: I have the feeling that, precisely because she gains nothing material, my friend has gained something more important - namely, the moral high ground.

Execrable

I apologise unreservedly to anyone who required medical treatment for shock following my misspelling of the word 'excrescence' in yesterday's post (now corrected). It was never my intention to cause suffering to my fellows, but I understand that I must now accept my punishment for having done so, however inadvertently. Sentence has been passed and, as soon as I have finished writing this, I shall go and face the firing squad. I should add that, as the members of the squad are all extremely ancient professors of linguistics, none of whom have ever handled a firearm,  let alone borrowed Elvis Costello's phrase in order to boast, 'My aim is true', it is possible that I will be back before very long.

Good Intentions

In the streets around my house someone has been scrawling this slogan on every flat surface they can find:

My first reaction when I read it was, 'How cheering - yes, I draw renewed courage from this to continue my valiant fight against the steady march of couch grass  through my garden;  yes, I will not let temporary defeat deter me from my quest to get the grim woman I have to work for to show a fractional amount of warmth to a fellow human being - or even, (dream the impossible dream) to smile.'

But then I thought a bit more about it and realised that, like most woolly-minded attempts to spread good cheer via the medium of half-baked homily, this one might not be purely a force for good. I mean imagine if, for example, Colonel Gaddafi (and, as my brother pointed out the other day, the really interesting question about him is why, given his self-aggrandising costumes and general carry on, has he been content for so long to remain a mere colonel?) came around the corner and read those encouraging words, just when he was on the point of surrendering to the rebels? Where would we all be then?

And it's no good saying that that's never going to happen. How do you know? Gaddafi is, after all, just about the most erratic character to stride the world stage, at least in living memory. Almost anything's possible with him - including a surprise visit to the People's Republic of Ainslie.

So, after a moment's wavering, I was able to return to the comfort of my usual narrow-minded beliefs. Graffiti  (the tattoo's distant and even more hideous cousin) is, indeed, an excrescence, (although I thank it for giving me the opportunity to use the word 'excrescence'), that is visited on the urban face of the nation in an undemocratic, self-important and arrogant way.

Modern Mystery

There's been lots of publicity recently about the forthcoming Sydney Writers' Festival, (it begins in May). As always, when confronted with information about a writers' festival, I am left baffled. What is the atttraction of these things? They seem to be immensely popular and yet surely, of all the arts, writing is the one that a festival least suits.

After all, writers write books and the contents of the books are supposed to communicate what the writer wants to communicate. What on earth is the point of going and sitting meekly in a lecture hall while a writer blathers about their writing, when the writing itself is right there on the shelf, contained in a handy paper package that can be opened and shut at will? All you have to do is take the thing down and read it, without ever leaving home (even to buy it, if you use Abebooks or Amazon).

If a writer is any good at all at writing, his writing will express whatever it is he wants to express. What is to be gained from going and listening to him? Is he actually a writer or just an idle chatterer, eager for adulation? Has anything ever been said in one of these forums that was more profound than what is contained in the books of the various participants encouraged to expose themselves to the public gaze?

Of course, I'm not against festivals per se - I just think they are not a useful medium for writers. What I would like to see instead are festivals of visual artists, events where the kinds of people who exhibit at the Frieze Art Fair, (for example), are paraded before us and forced to explain themselves. I should add that, if I were running things, I would stipulate that, in their efforts to tell us what they may be attempting to do, the 'artists' would not be allowed to use any vague jargon about postmodernism et cetera, they would not be allowed to say that their work 'privileges' anything, they would not be allowed to talk about their 'practice' and they would never be allowed to mention Walter Benjamin, particularly his essay titled, 'The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.'

Actually, I think there might be quite a good television series one could fashion from getting 'contemporary art practitioners' to explain their work to the public, while sitting on a ducking stool that threw them into deep water whenever they transgressed by doing any of the above. And, to persuade them to participate, all that would be necessary would be to tie the distribution of arts' grants to their attendance at such events. I think quite a few people might watch such spectacles with some interest. In fact, I think I should go and patent the idea before Peter Bazalgette pinches it, now that his Big Brother franchise has begun staggering towards its final gasp.

The Mighty English Tongue

English speakers are masters of the language that is most widely spoken as a second language anywhere in the world. However, we should not kid ourselves that this is quite the same thing as having a language that is widely spoken. What is widely spoken is a peculiar aberrant that should probably be called 'Multicultural English'.

I was reminded of this on my morning walk just now, because I passed a bus stop where the Multicultural English dialect was being deployed to great effect. This is the conversation that I heard being conducted in Multicultural English between a woman with a German accent and a woman who I have seen about before and I think is Vietnamese:

'Bus coming?'


'So, here is the time table that I am reading. So, in the morning they a little bit more longer are and then in the after early morning they are more settled becoming.'

'Bus coming?'

'I think now it is a more settled time.'

'So coming now bus?'

'The bus is now not coming, but soon it comes.'

'Bus coming?'