…or maybe it needs a little manipulation, why bother with the other man’s point of view?
Sitting, or rather lying on the sofa today, feeling rather sorry for myself following an intense bout of food poisoning and drifting in and out of sleep, my mind wandered to events of the past week, both personal and topical. I am not often moved to analyse, or perish the thought, criticise fellow historians of the Holocaust, (please see my next blog entry) but something got the train of thought going and that something was the now infamous Brand/Paxman interview so widely shared on YouTube. It popped into my inbox last Wednesday evening and having nothing else to do at that time, I pressed the link.
Have you seen it? Something like the anger which was directed at Messrs Brand and Ross after the Andrew Sachs ‘phonecall by many who had not even listened to the tape seemed to be echoing around the dinner tables of middle England and as I have never really felt comfortable with the curtain twitchers and whisperers, I felt it my duty to give it the once over. And very interesting it was. Brand is not a revolutionary…wait, he is a revolutionary! Paxman hectored and twisted in his seat with the usual bombastic style escaping him at times. Brand appeared to have swallowed a dictionary, the contents of which were occasionally vomited in the direction of the camera, no doubt delighting his publishers and tour promoters alike. Russell Brand is a wealthy man. Good for him, I say. Not for me the traditional British hatred of the successful. Oh, no. Yet there is something of the old left about him. Smug, self-opinionated, with all the answers yet with none of them at all. Lenin would have loved him for a while, Stalin too, until he tired of the boorish behaviour and then he would have been painted out of the picture, shunted off to a gulag and into the hard Siberian earth.
Paxman’s prejudice and dislike of anyone he feels unable or unqualified to talk about politics shone through like a selfie-induced mirror flash, bright, yet fleeting. Why he thinks that only politicians have the right to talk sensibly about politics beats me. After all, several of them were proved to be cheats and liars and many more of them should have joined us at HMP Ford or perhaps Holloway? Anyone can and should comment on politics if it is genuine, but please don’t do it just to make more money out of the easily influenced and stupid. Come off it, Russell. You’re a bright lad. Now f*** off and make some money.