The Daily Mail :: The Backlash

After just reading through the comments on the Daily Mail piece in which I featured today, I feel the need to defend myself.

Most of my defence rests on this: I didn’t actually say any of the unpleasant things I was accused of having said. Which is to say, I was heavily misquoted or, when things I was alleged to have said actually bore some relation to what I did say, they were taken entirely out of context.

For example, the account of the speed date is entirely fictitious. We didn’t talk about that at all. Rather it’s a fake conversation based on a much longer, much more detailed description of what actually happened which I blogged about here, here and here.

The vast majority of the nasty reaction in the comments, however, centres on this excerpt:

‘I know being critical and superficial must sound terrible when I'm so ugly myself,' he admits. 'But I fancy dark women with black hair, black eyes and olive skin. I went to Italy for the first time recently and it was like landing in Paradise. I would love to live there - or, in fact, in any country where women are less pasty than in Britain.'

Jesus. What an absolute arsehole I would be if I had said that, apropos of nothing. In reality, what happened was this: during the interview I was asked if I had ‘a type’. I said that I did, yes, but I could see that admitting that was tantamount to saying ‘I find some women attractive and some women unattractive’, and that this could make me sound rather superficial and hypocritical, because how dare an unattractive man find some women unattractive? I went on to say that some of the women I found unattractive were women who were commonly accepted as being beautiful – women like Paris Hilton and Pamela Anderson. I think I also mentioned Jordan. I certainly meant to. I made a point of pointing out that a person’s personality makes all the difference, and if a conventionally 'beautiful' person has an 'ugly' personality, then it's that personality shines through.

I guess I should really have known I was being set up.

Oh, and I never said that women in Britain were ‘pasty’. What I actually said – in response to a question about whether or not I was seeing anyone at the moment – was that women in the North East of England – where I’m living at the moment – are ‘pasty’ and ‘white’. To be more specific, I talked about how the vast majority of the people in the North East seem to have been born and bred in the North East and I talked about how that’s almost entirely the opposite in London, where almost everyone you meet is from somewhere else. I talked about the women in London being from all over the world and about how I enjoyed and was excited by that diversity.

But there you go. I knew the risks when I agreed to the interview. The Daily Mail is a tabloid newspaper and that’s what tabloid newspapers do. They distort the facts. They conflate, misquote and when things don’t quite fit with their remit, they invent. And I can’t really blame the commenters either, because despite the fact that everyone knows this, everyone seems to forget it. You read a quote and you assume it’s an accurate reflection of the subject’s personality. And if that personality comes across as rather unpleasant, you react, usually without pausing to wonder if what you're reading is true or not. I’ve done it myself.

Having said that, Sandy in London? Go fuck yourself.

...

Oh, and I'm on GMTV on Wednesday morning. PLEASE DO NOT WATCH ME.

Thank you.

I Am the Woodlouse

I have a friend who once found himself urinating next to Martin Amis at the ICA. Thankfully, they were both in the toilet at the time, positioned at adjoining urinals. My friend was very interested in drugs in that period of his life – from an academic as well as a practical perspective – so, knowing that Martin Amis wasn’t opposed to a little dabble himself, my friend asked the urinating author which drugs he considered most efficacious for writing. ‘Cannabis,’ replied Amis, tapping the old man thoughtfully. ‘It has a shamanic quality.’



When my friend told me this story, I was thrilled. One of my favourite writers of all time had basically, via a pissing intermediary, said: ‘You carry on the way you are, Stan. You’re doing everything right. You’re going to be OK. Oh, and… get dental insurance.’

Speaking of cannabis, one thing that’s become extremely clear again recently is that although it can, if used carefully, buttress the process of writing, it in no way contributes to a healthy dream life. Currently, however, I haven’t smoked anything for more than a month and I find that I’m dreaming like a drugged wizard.

In fact, as I write this, it's just after 5 a.m. on Saturday morning and I’ve just woken up from an unpleasant dream about Morag.

Actually, I’ve been having lots of unpleasant dreams about Morag recently. In fact, even dreams that did not seem to be about Morag, may have actually been. For example, the dream about the woodlouse.

Sometime last week I dreamt that a woodlouse was living in my chest hair. I was happy about this, despite the fact that when I looked down, it seemed to be coming apart at the seams, its little legs and its almost transparent carapace separating as it struggled in my manly pelt. Then, when I woke up alone, sans woodlouse, I felt horribly alone. Not happily alone, as I have on occasion felt. No. Horribly alone.

Whereas this morning I dreamt that Morag and I were still together and she was distant, down and distinctly uncommunicative. Something had happened with a mutual friend. She said it was something to do with money, but she wouldn’t tell me what it was. I didn’t believe her. I woke up in distress. I found myself wanting to go back to the dream and ask her if she loved me at all; if she’d ever loved me.

Could it be that I’m not actually over her?

I don’t think so – I mean, I am over her. It’s not like I want to go back. We weren’t right. I want someone who’s right for me. I want someone who can love me wholeheartedly and Morag couldn’t do that. Not for long. What’s preying on my mind now is the fact that I loved her more than I’ve ever loved before and I’m afraid I’ll never be able to do that again, for fear of doing it wrong, for fear of loving the wrong person. But then just because it didn’t last forever doesn’t mean she was the wrong person to love.

Oh, fuck it. I’m going back to sleep. Perchance to dream sweeter.

...

Sunday night, Monday morning...

I didn’t dream at all last night. Or at least nothing stayed with me. Typical. I’ve cursed it. I will never dream again.

I’m floundering about a bit at the moment. In general I mean. I don’t really know what I’m doing with this blog. And I don’t really know what’s happening with the book. I guess it’s early days still. But on the whole I’m feeling a bit fed up. With everything. Mostly I’m fed up with being cut off from everything. I need change. It’s coming soon I know, but I kind of need it now. So – in the absence of change, I’ve decided to plump for something which is apparently just as good: a rest.

Oh! And well I never. I’ve just realised that a year ago this week, Keith’s old flat was flooded and I stopped blogging till the beginning of September last. That settles it then. This year – although I don’t have the excuse of an act of God – I’m going to do the same. I’m having some time off. Yes. It’s a decision I’ve made. I might draw the occasional Jackson and tweet the occasional nonsense, but unless something staggering happens, I’m away from here till September.

And just in case you’re wondering, this has nothing whatsoever to do with any shame I might feel over my misquotathon in the Daily Mail today. In fact I feel no shame at all. Not that I'm claiming that I’m suddenly a fan of the newspaper. Heaven forfend. I still regularly entertain unimaginably violent fantasies involving Amanda Platell, Peter Hitchens, Richard Littlejohn, Liz Jones, Christopher Hart, a roll of cling film and a meat tenderiser. However, I would like something a friend of mine said – when I mentioned my misgivings on the day of the Mail interview – to be taken into consideration. She said, and I quote:

‘I’m all about preaching to the unconverted, so I think MUCH better to speak to The Enemy, have some of their number find and fall in love with your writing, then be convinced by you that they should live better. It’s really an actively good thing you're doing.’

You See? An Actively Good Thing.

Plus, I’m hoping it’ll sell some more books. Not because I want the money, you understand, but because I want to Heal The World with my words.

Oh, and if you’ve come here from the Daily Mail, and you’re genuinely not aware of what a hideous paper it is, then look at this. And have a good long think about what you’ve done.

So. That’s all for now. Oh, except this, which is funny.

Right. I'm done.

See you in September. In London!

Oh, and I realise of course, that in many ways – deep breath – yes – I am the woodlouse.



Goo goo g’joob.

Suicide Is Shameless

Of course it could just be a lazy sub-editor that insists on prefacing many of Amanda Platell’s Daily Mail hate-piece headlines with the word ‘sorry’, but I’m pretty sure it’s Amanda herself. You can hear her voice in it, and she isn't sorry at all. Rather, her sorry is the equivalent of her furrowing her brow like a salted slug and snorting contemptuously, ‘Errr, hello?’ For example, there was ‘Sorry, why should the NHS treat people for being fat?’ Then there was, ‘Sorry, but all of us - including me - must share the blame for Susan Boyle's path to The Priory’. Then there was the (slightly ironic? No.) ‘Sorry, but we need more than apologies’, directed at Gordon Brown et al.

Then this week, she did it again. Another title, another contemptuous fake apology. ‘Sorry,’ it begins, ‘but Debbie Purdy’s brave victory diminishes us all.’

This of course is the story of primary progressive MS sufferer Debbie Purdy and her desire – when the pain of her disease becomes unbearable – to go to Dignitas in Switzerland to hasten her death, and to be accompanied by her husband in the knowledge that her husband will not then be sent to jail for 14 years, as the current legislation decrees. Purdy doesn’t want her husband imprisoned.

Platell’s not so sure.

Hmmm.

Platell is worried that in mapping out the guidance for future cases, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer QC, will set our country on course for the legalisation of voluntary euthanasia. ‘Surely it is part of being human,’ Amanda argues, ‘that life is not all about joy and happiness - it is about learning to cope with disappointments, sorrows and, yes, death. The shadows on life's journey are what make its sunny moments so precious. Yet increasingly we seem to shy away from these challenges.’

Amanda Platell, it seems, is a bona fide moron. She seems to be under the impression that deciding to end one’s own life - for whatever reason - is an easy option, a walk in the park on a sunny day; and she seems unaware that opting for death is actually a perfectly valid way of coping with the challenges of life.

‘Coming to terms with a natural death,’ she goes on, ‘is an essential part of the human experience - not just for the person coming to the end of their existence, but for all those around them. Assisted suicide, on the other hand, reduces dying to a process no more significant or challenging than checking out of a hotel.’

Oh, Amanda. Don’t make me wish a wasting disease on you. Again.

Presumably, when - after 54 years of marriage - Sir Edward and Lady Joan Downes chose to end their lives together last month, rather than accept the slow decay of blindness and deafness, and cancer respectively, Amanda would have stepped in and said, ‘Sorry, but a natural death is an essential part of the human experience.’ Rather than allowing this fantastically vibrant and creative and inspiring couple to end their lives peacefully, painlessly and most importantly, together, Amanda would have insisted they suffer the frustration and agony of slow decay and forced them to die on her terms, depressed, out of control and alone.

The strange thing is, being an arch-right winger, you’d expect Platell to be all in favour of self-determination. Perhaps she has religious qualms and thinks that only God should say when life is over. If so, she’s even more of an idiot than she initially appears. For if God actually existed, surely he’d be made up that some of his children sought to speed their return to his loving bosom? At the very least he’d forgive them. But anyway, this is no place for fiction.

The facts are that despite primitive thinkers like Platell, things do seem - finally - to be heading in the right direction. Keir Starmer this week suggested that whether a person seeks to die in Switzerland or even here in England, their friends and family would be equally protected by the new ruling. ‘This is not a policy that's going to apply only to those who go abroad,’ he said. ‘This policy is going to cover all assisted suicides.’ With this kind of thinking, voluntary euthanasia looks certain to become a reality in this country, sooner rather than later.

What makes this excellent news even more exciting is knowing how much it sticks in Platell’s toxic craw. For me it can't come soon enough. I'm hoping that within 20 years, the whole of Europe will be teeming with suicide cafés. They won’t be called ‘suicide cafés’ of course – that would be crass. They’ll be something quite prosaic and functional like Assisted Suicide Centres or Existence Curtailment Clinics. But colloquially they will be known as Euth Clubs and Toppermarkets and they will be very, very popular.

They will be popular because most people understand that, contrary to Platell’s poisonous, egocentric delusions, it in no way diminishes the preciousness of human life to suggest that human beings should be allowed to end it as and when they please. On the contrary, it could even be argued that it is a clear demonstration of that preciousness. In the Julian Barnes novel, Staring At the Sun, suicide has become commonplace and society views it not as something wholly negative, not as something of which we should be ashamed, but quite the contrary:

‘Suicide wasn't self-abnegation. It didn't say: I am so miserable and unimportant that it doesn't matter if I destroy myself. It said the opposite: look, it said, I am important enough to destroy.’

Surely this is an open and shut casket for anyone with even a hint of compassion. If people want to kill themselves, then for the sake of humanity, let them kill themselves. And the option should not be restricted to those who have a terminal disease. The fact of the matter is, some people are simply not cut out for life, and if we care at all for them, it’s our humanitarian duty to allow them, and even to assist them, to shuffle off with dignity.

Thankfully, it’s not and never will be up to some waxy, venomous cretin at The Daily Mail to decree who has to put up with it and who doesn’t.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, Granny and I are off to Zurich. I’ll be back tomorrow. She won’t.

Sorry, Granny.

Shut Up and Feel Good

When times are bad and money is tight and day-to-day life positively sweats anxiety and wrath, ‘feelgood articles’ contrive to appear in a host of crappy rags and mags. Up they pop like tired, moth-eaten meercats, all sloppy jollity and yesterday’s smiles. ‘Reasons To Be Cheerful!’ they might be called. Or ‘Things To Make You Go Aaaah, Life’s Not So Bad!’ This list – if it’s particularly slapdash - might include such jewels of positive thinking as ‘go to a museum’, ‘listen to music’ or ‘loiter in the park staring at children’ (thanks to The Daily Mail for those doozies.)

The problem - apart from the fact that it’s difficult to trot out a bunch of sickly clichés without sounding like a wet, witless Christian - is that happiness is often surprisingly subjective, and one man’s haggis may very well be another man’s heroin. And vice versa.

Suddenly however, my life is sweating. Just a bit, mind, like a meatball in a bathing cap. Most probably perfectly healthy. Even so, in an attempt to invoke the spirit of Pollyanna, I feel the need to fall in line, to accentuate the positive, to count my blessings and celebrate the joyous bounty of our godless existence. Having said that, I must confess, I don’t have a fucking clue what makes you happy, and so I present:

Reasons To Be Cheerful (For Me. Just Me. You Get Your Own Bastard Reasons.)

I’m glad I haven’t got a tumour growing in me, scaring me senseless and eating me away. I’m glad I had my balls checked out and everything seems to be OK. I’m glad a throat like a bomb in a pram is the worst of my physical concerns. I’m glad I’m looking out upon a garden and the sun is shining and every once in a while a nice pair of tits pop out and cheekily peck at me nuts. (They’re not actually tits, they’re finches, but I just couldn’t resist. I’m glad I couldn’t resist!) I’m glad the foxes who hang around here in the middle of the night are having such an unignorably exciting time of it. I’m glad I’ve got a piece of chicken and some cous-cous in the fridge. I’m glad I pronounce cous-cous cuss-cuss. Motherfucking cuss-cuss. I’m glad I’ve been up at 6am every day this week and worked hard on the book all day. I’m glad it’s giving me so much pleasure. I’m glad the slow, steady death of this basil plant is not my fault. I’m glad John Updike lived so long and so well. I’m glad Lily Allen exists, duff telly aside. I’m glad that when I trip over Morag’s shoes and bags and light upon her clothing around the house, my reaction is still one of giddy delight. I’m glad there’ll be more Burns Nights. I’m glad I didn’t think this was real. Nope. Not for a second. And I’m glad the grumbling pain in my stomach appears to be nothing atrociously serious (faecal feedback pending).

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah. That feels better.

Of course it’ll be better still if you follow me.



Everything’s all about the followers these days. Followers are the new friends. It’s like suddenly the whole of the internet’s got a Messiah Complex. I know I have, but I think mine’s more of a Porn Messiah Complex. Yes, I want everyone to get down on their knees and worship me, but I insist that they fellate me ostentatiously while they’re down there.

When I first saw the Blogger ‘Followers’ add-on thing, I pooh-poohed it. Now they’re all over the place and some people have thousands of them. I want some. I feel the dismal crush of petty envy. I seek validation.

Please validate me.

It’s up there on the right. At the time of writing, I only have 26 followers. Pitiful. Even John Beyer has more than that.

Thanks.

Now you. What are you glad about on this sunny winter’s day?

When Did I Become Such A Bitter Little Man? Oh, Yeah.

I apologise in advance for this. I’d love to post wonderful optimistic blackberry jam-making paeans like this little diamond (thanks to Our Glamorous Heroine for the link), but my newfound turbo-charged misanthropy simply won’t allow it.

Ah, well.

As I hinted at briefly, curtly, on Friday, it seems that everywhere I turn at the moment, idiots are being paid good money to write the most godawful ordure. Last Sunday for example, I was enjoying a battered Sunday roast in a Burnley pub called The Lynched Black or some such (the battered Yorkshire pudding was particularly good), when I found myself bellowing out blasphemies in response to an article I was reading in the Sunday Times Style supplement. Serves me right I suppose for putting my head in the toilet.

It was an interview with the physically overrated Kelly Brook, written by the intellectually under-endowed Giles Hattersley. I’d never heard of Hattersley before I read that article. Then I looked him up online and discovered that he was everything I despise and envy in equal measure.

Look at this opening to the Brook interview:

‘Obviously, I knew that Kelly Brook was going to be sex on legs. How could I not? She’s been the stunner’s stunner for a decade now. The girl who can make a grown man swallow his tongue. The kind of woman another woman might go gay for (it’s that thrilling combo of carnal sagacity and pathological cleanliness, isn’t it, girls?). And then you meet her and it’s even better.’

Ugh. Jesus. I practically puked up my nuts when I read that. The stunner’s stunner? Does he even know what he thinks he wants to say? Jesus. It still makes me fume. He really is the fuckwit’s fuckwit.

The article continues in the same vein, with Hattersley vacillating between tittering prepubescent public school boy…

‘There isn’t a hair on her head that’s out of place, and – I imagine – if I whipped off her dress, there wouldn’t be a hair out of place there either.’

…and outright idiot…

‘Before feminists write Brook off as a co-dependent sexaholic, it’s worth pointing out she is a shrewd businesswoman....’

I was actually so irritated by this man Hattersley that I ended up having to apologise to Sylvia for screaming out the c-word in her local pub. On a Sunday. Of all days.

Then, as if that wasn’t enough, back in London on Wednesday afternoon I found myself on a train from London Bridge to Peckham sitting directly behind a young lady who’d just come from what must have been the first writers’ meeting for the new series of Scallywagga. I know this because she was braying – nay, bellowing – into her mobile phone, telling her absent friend and writing partner everything he or she had missed. So, thanks to this slip of a girl’s inane yelling, I discovered that, apparently…

* Scallywagga was ‘branded as being by 19-year-olds for 19-year-olds’, but in actual fact Stuart Kenworthy wrote 60% of it and he’s 42.

* Scallywagga has ‘got really good branding’.

* The main reason Scallywagga was commissioned for a second series was because it’s the only Northern sketch show on TV. Furthermore there hasn’t been a sketch show set in the north of England ‘since Les Dawson’. (Which is obviously nonsense. I can’t think of any at the moment but it’s patently nonsense. Oh yes, The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer. There you go.)

* The writers of the next series of Scallywagga are also welcome to have a crack at directing some sketches too, and even performing in it.

* References to popular culture are Scallywagga gold – they don’t have to be exclusively youth-centred references, but if you can squeeze Facebook or Wii into a sketch, all the better. Referencing de rigueur TV shows such as Big Brother and Dragon’s Den is also something very much to aim for.

* Currently averaging 35 sketches per show (a show presumably lasting around 23 minutes), the producers are thinking of throwing in a couple of longer sketches so that viewers can make it to the end of a programme without feeling the need to pour mercury into their eyes.

* The producers are also pleased that young women are going to be working on the show, because they believe that a getting a young, feminine perspective can only be a very good thing. Not that they have to write purely ‘female’ material, but you know, blahblahblah. Keep it northern.

So I listened to this conversation, biting my cheeks to stop myself from shouting out, scribbling down notes and shaking my head at this loud live stream confirmation that television comedy really is just a cynical, soulless mess of marketing and… actually, just marketing. It’s all just marketing.

I have nothing against the young woman on the train by the way. I admit I’m jealous of the opportunity she has to write comedy for such a well-branded BBC product, but I wish her nothing but the very best. I also genuinely wish her the very best of luck with Time Lords. It’s a great title.

When I got home, I checked out Scallywagga online, just to make sure that it definitely was the diabolical drivel I remembered from clips I'd seen. It was. Good production values, great branding, but sadly, and predictably, about as funny as rectal cancer. The least funny of all the cancers.

The next series should be great though.

So yeah, then, as if that wasn’t enough, I picked up a copy of thelondonpaper on Wednesday and discovered that the guest columnist from the day before was an ugly bloke who wrote about ‘Why I visited a prostitute’. Apparently his piece was ‘a very moving read’ and ‘a breath of fresh air’. It prompted one wildly idiotic reader to write: ‘I’ve seen a prostitute three times this year. Not because I craved sex, but because I craved a connection – the connection you get when you are with someone who finds you attractive, that validation that says: “I love you for who you are”.’ Um… do you want to tell him or shall I?

So I got online when I got home and I looked up John’s piece on the trials of being an ugly man in a shallow world and once again, I turned the air blue with violent language.

So I wrote a londonpaper column of my own, a response to John suggesting that if it was love he was looking for, then the blog might just be mightier than the whore.

They didn't get back to me.

I have been rejected by thelondonpaper.

My downward spiral is complete.

I have hit rock bottom.

I am not fit to touch the hem of Giles Hattersley’s hat.

...

A-chillymondo!