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‘All right, Ed?’ Was Jeremy Paxman trying to make Miliband cry? ‘All right, Ed?’ Was Jeremy Paxman trying to make Miliband cry?
(35 minutes later)
The election campaign is into its first week, not quite out of the phoney war stage yet, with Thursday’s seven-way TV debate promising to be an atonal chorus of evasion and conceit. Opinion is divided as to the most awful phenomenon we have seen so far. The pronouncements of Katie Hopkins? Labour’s immigration mug? For my money it is the strange behaviour of Jeremy Paxman, reportedly paid an audacious fee for last week’s interviews and hosting the Channel Four election night special. After a rousing and entertaining start, Paxman’s performance finally became creepy, due to something I can only call Alrightgate. Ed Miliband took the second interview, and got a very hard time (though no harder than David Cameron) on a range of points, including being a “North London geek”. Miliband finished in subdued quiet. But as the lights dimmed, Jeremy said, with mock concern, and quite audibly to viewers: “Are you all right?” Now it could have been that Jeremy genuinely thought Miliband was suffering some urgent health crisis that needed to be addressed right away, and which justified saying this publicly. But I suspect it was simply an insult, perhaps in retaliation for Miliband’s mild earlier gibe at Paxman’s importance. He was saying: “You are looking upset, you know! I really got you! Well done me!” And isn’t that what school bullies say and text to their victims, needlingly, sneeringly, to get them to cry? “You all right? You all right? You all right?” Politics is a rough game, all right. But I do hope the interviewing style for tonight’s seven-headed debate is a bit less smug than that. The election campaign is into its first week, not quite out of the phoney war stage yet, with Thursday’s seven-way TV debate promising to be an atonal chorus of evasion and conceit. Opinion is divided as to the most awful phenomenon we have seen so far. The pronouncements of Katie Hopkins? Labour’s immigration mug? For my money it is the strange behaviour of Jeremy Paxman, reportedly paid an audacious fee for last week’s interviews and hosting the Channel Four election night special. After a rousing and entertaining start, Paxman’s performance finally became creepy, due to something I can only call Allrightgate. Ed Miliband took the second interview, and got a very hard time (though no harder than David Cameron) on a range of points, including being a “North London geek”. Miliband finished in subdued quiet. But as the lights dimmed, Jeremy said, with mock concern, and quite audibly to viewers: “Are you all right?” Now it could have been that Jeremy genuinely thought Miliband was suffering some urgent health crisis that needed to be addressed right away, and which justified saying this publicly. But I suspect it was simply an insult, perhaps in retaliation for Miliband’s mild earlier gibe at Paxman’s importance. He was saying: “You are looking upset, you know! I really got you! Well done me!” And isn’t that what school bullies say and text to their victims, needlingly, sneeringly, to get them to cry? “You all right? You all right? You all right?” Politics is a rough game, all right. But I do hope the interviewing style for tonight’s seven-headed debate is a bit less smug than that.
Diabolos … the horrorDiabolos … the horror
Britain is sleepwalking into a diabolo crisis. Schools in north London are on the verge of slapping an outright ban on diabolos. The word is perhaps unfamiliar to you? The diabolo is the juggling toy which consists of a brightly coloured object like two cups stuck together at the stem which is twirled and spun with what might otherwise look like a skipping rope. Professional buskers in jester hats do it all the time. These competent grownups launch their diabolos up into space – and then walk on their hands or juggle with kitchen knives – before catching them on their ropes as they come down. With schoolchildren it’s a different situation. You drop off your kids in the playground in the morning and, all too late, hear a faint cry and whoosh, as a stray diabolo hits you in the face. Pupils themselves are increasingly caught in diabolo friendly-fire incidents at break time. Can it be long before solicitors start posting flyers through your door: “Have you been injured in a diabolo incident that wasn’t your fault? Have you had to take time off work due to diabolo injury or stress? Call 1-800-DIABOLO-HORROR.Britain is sleepwalking into a diabolo crisis. Schools in north London are on the verge of slapping an outright ban on diabolos. The word is perhaps unfamiliar to you? The diabolo is the juggling toy which consists of a brightly coloured object like two cups stuck together at the stem which is twirled and spun with what might otherwise look like a skipping rope. Professional buskers in jester hats do it all the time. These competent grownups launch their diabolos up into space – and then walk on their hands or juggle with kitchen knives – before catching them on their ropes as they come down. With schoolchildren it’s a different situation. You drop off your kids in the playground in the morning and, all too late, hear a faint cry and whoosh, as a stray diabolo hits you in the face. Pupils themselves are increasingly caught in diabolo friendly-fire incidents at break time. Can it be long before solicitors start posting flyers through your door: “Have you been injured in a diabolo incident that wasn’t your fault? Have you had to take time off work due to diabolo injury or stress? Call 1-800-DIABOLO-HORROR.
Burgess’s blue plaqueBurgess’s blue plaque
In common with many friends and colleagues, I am a great fan of the late Anthony Burgess, that gobsmackingly prolific author, critic and composer. Our sister paper the Observer sponsors an arts journalism prize in his memory. I especially like his Elizabethan fantasies, Nothing Like the Sun and A Dead Man in Deptford. Then of course there’s A Clockwork Orange, filmed by Stanley Kubrick. So it was with some chagrin that we learned that English Heritage has turned Burgess down for a blue plaque on the house in Chiswick, west London, where he lived in the 60s. Apparently “his overall significance and profile were not yet strong enough”. Ouch. Well, he only died in 1993. Perhaps his reputation must be given time to grow. Or perhaps it might fade, as literary reputations sometimes do. I can only hope that it matches current blue plaque luminaries such as Alfred Bestall, illustrator of Rupert Bear (Surbiton), Sir Edwin Saunders, dentist to Queen Victoria (Wimbledon), and John Christopher Smith, Handel’s friend and secretary (Soho).In common with many friends and colleagues, I am a great fan of the late Anthony Burgess, that gobsmackingly prolific author, critic and composer. Our sister paper the Observer sponsors an arts journalism prize in his memory. I especially like his Elizabethan fantasies, Nothing Like the Sun and A Dead Man in Deptford. Then of course there’s A Clockwork Orange, filmed by Stanley Kubrick. So it was with some chagrin that we learned that English Heritage has turned Burgess down for a blue plaque on the house in Chiswick, west London, where he lived in the 60s. Apparently “his overall significance and profile were not yet strong enough”. Ouch. Well, he only died in 1993. Perhaps his reputation must be given time to grow. Or perhaps it might fade, as literary reputations sometimes do. I can only hope that it matches current blue plaque luminaries such as Alfred Bestall, illustrator of Rupert Bear (Surbiton), Sir Edwin Saunders, dentist to Queen Victoria (Wimbledon), and John Christopher Smith, Handel’s friend and secretary (Soho).
@peterbradshaw1@peterbradshaw1