The Today programme’s love affair with the counterculture continues. Sarah Montague interviews the widow of Neal Cassady (aka “Dean Moriarty”) on the 50th anniversary of Kerouac’s “On The Road“, the hippie handbook written in the Beat Age.
“It must have been quite a life to be part of this amazing gang” she gushed.
Carolyn Cassady seemed less starry-eyed.
“Well, it was hard for Neal to see Jack drinking himself to death, because his own (Cassady’s) father was a wino, and it was hard for Jack to see Neal killing himself with drugs.“
Even Neal Cassady was more in touch with reality.
“Twenty years of fast living–there’s just not much left, and my kids are all screwed up. Don’t do what I have done.”
I’m not sure if the impeccably middle class Ms Montague would have found the gang quite so amazing at close quarters.
Next week on the Today programme : “Why are levels of drug abuse and sexually transmitted infections rising ?“
It doesn’t surprise me. At the time of John Prescott’s brawl with a demonstrator who threw an egg at him Sarah Montague admitted on the Today programme that when she was a student at Bristol University she had also thrown eggs at a visiting politician.
I have always had a sneaking suspicion that it must have been a Tory MP visiting Bristol. She never let on who it was.
Listening to her bellicose interviews with conservative spokespersons, it amazes me that this genetic bias, if I may call it that, has never been questioned, or, indeed, that politicians never remind her of this youthful trait. Listening to her cantankerous voice on the Today programme and those insufferable prissy tones I can still see her (in my minds eye) attempting to lob eggs towards people that she dislikes. Indeed, the BBC has institutionalised her abrasive discourse, when she does “Hard Talk” on BBC News 24, it is always referred to as “Hard (Egg) Talk” in our house!
The Today programmers made a big mistake when they took on Sarah Montague; she shouts into the microphone; puts on various silly voices, depending who she talking to; and generally asks fatuous and childish questions. Real BBC air-head.