I had the misfortune to listen to BBC Radio 4 “Saturday Live” this morning, presented by Rev Richard Coles and Sian Williams. The special guest was Billy Bragg, yeah, I know. He was introduced as an intrepid fighter against “fascism” and the entire tone of the interview as simpering sycophancy. Bragg moaned about the fact that too many posh boys were in the charts these days and he proclaimed that you just had to look at Mumford and Sons “to know” their background. You just have to look at Comrade Billy to see the giant chips he has on both shoulders. Bragg articulates a hard left meme that resonates easily at the BBC…. his cliched anachronistic left wingism fits in perfectly with the State Broadcaster. Here is his bedsit in the frontline in ..erm..west Dorset. Power to the people!
Don’t forget that the Rev Richard Coles was a member of The Communards, “whose second album was entitled ‘Red’, as a nod towards their socialist leanings”, as it says on Wikipedia.
Whilst agreeing that Bragg is a terrible hypocrite, I also have to agree with him about the posh boys in the charts.
In the early 1980s the ordinary backgrounds of pop stars was the stuff of legend. Human League, Depeche Mode, Spandau Ballet, Duran Duran, The Jam, Madness, Bruce Springsteen…largely from ordinary, working class backgrounds. The two female singers in the Human League were famously recruited in a Sheffield disco whilst still at school and had to ask their school’s permission to go on tour!
A bit like saying ‘posh boys’ (signed up to ‘one nation’ Labour yet, has he?) get the best education – surely not their fault if the state system is so crap?
So where have all the ‘working class’ stars gone? Are they all instant fame X-Factor wannabee drones or is it they just can’t be bovvered putting the time and effort into learning an instrument?
As for Bragg and Coles – the perfect Marxist anti-Thatcher partnership. And then ‘there are some’ who say the BBC isn’t biased.
The reason why ‘posh boys’ are so prevalent in popular music may well be down to some degree of of elitism/chauvanism. However you can’t miss the following reasons why they are there:
1. Their parents can afford the instruments
2. Their parents can afford the lessons.
3. Their parents will make them attend those lessons.
4. The boys themeselves will not be hostile to the lessons because all their mates will be doing the same.
5. Their parents make them practice.
There is no secret to success in music – how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice.
Posh boys have the notion of working bloody hard pushed into them at an early age. So they do.
It’s also why they do better at school than working class kids. Not only do they have a culture of education bred into them but they are forced to work at it.
If only state schools would push poorer kids harder …
Understand where you’re coming from, Pah, but try telling that to UB40 (who worked to buy their instruments then went on the dole to finance their practising) and Keith Richards (who lived in almost abject poverty with Jagger and Jones to spend hours a day for months on end to perfect his guitar playing).
Yebbut, that’s exactly my point.
Everyone needs to work bloody hard too to learn how to play an instrument. Your fingers (and feet) need to learn as much, if not more than, your brain. It takes time and hard work but there is no class barrier where effort is concerned. Anyone can do it if they put in the time.
It’s the one thing that is missing from most state schools and that is the notion that success is as much a function of hard work as it is anything else. State school kids are allowed to give up too soon and simply aren’t pushed as much as private school kids are.
And that’s before we even get into the notion of inherited talent.
Agreed. Second hand guitars and drum kits can be bought with money earned from a couple of months doing a Saturday job, or as a present instead of an i-phone or laptop – the rest is hard graft.
By the standards of the day the Beatles and the Stones were posh boys. Art college and university types. They were hardly workin tut mill aged 15.
‘Posh boys’? Jeez, is everybody ‘posh’ now unless they can show their Scargill-approved credentials?
Btw, McCartney came from a council house.
Scargill was posh he went to university.
“80’s – the stuff of legend”? Just showing your age mate. Or lack of it.
No reason why being posh makes you a good musician songwriter or performer, or a bad one. Likewise being “working class” whatever that means (usually people who don’t work) makes you better. By observation, talent is randomly distributed. Unlike bBC performance fees, which are funnelled into the pockets of left-wing comedians, journalists and presenters, or faux-working class millionnaires like our Billy.
Life always viewed through red-tinted glasses; class war never sleeps.
What on earth does ones class have to do with whether or not the music you produce is any good, or whether you are considered to be entitled to make your living in such a manner? This is such small minded nonsense – the kind of bitter class resentment and turf warfare that ought to be left to the likes of Bragg and Dennis Skinner and all those other dinosaurs who can’t see past a person’s background. As if touring in a band to earn a living somehow ‘belongs’ to the working class. It’s the same petty attitude that induces people to sneer that opera and classical music are for ‘posh people’. It’s nonsense, designed to exclude and self-exclude respectively.
If those posh boys were discouraged from taking up their instruments there’d be no Queen, Pink Floyd, Genesis, Roxy Music…and even the Clash – Joe Strummer was no ‘working class boy’….and so what!
Here’s some more petty, territorial, class-based prejudice…
http://theefaction.wordpress.com/2012/03/15/mumford-sons-loyal-to-their-class/
Comrade Billy has a gigantic jacket potato on each shoulder. Would he be eligible for mansion tax, I wonder ?
Perhaps, perhaps not. According to the Telegraph, Bragg bought the house for £625,000 in 2000, but I think he has extended the property since. Also, you have to take into account the kudos that a buyer gains having bought the house in which Billy Bragg once lived 🙂
Of course, he need not wait for for any mansion tax, or bother about whether his house value will make him eligible to pay such a tax. He is free to donate extra tax to HMRC at any time.
Extra tax donations to HMRC in 2010/11 were £54,634.36 in total. How much is that per luvvie droning on about poverty etc?
And wasn`t Comrade Billy the bloke who said he`d not be paying his taxes over some lefty cause not being taken up?
Bragg is the new Starbucks then…let`s boycott him
until he pays all those taxes that he said he`d not be paying.
Do tell us Willyboy?…did you strike the pose then pay up?….what a rebel eh?…Woody Guthrie reincarnated!
A boycott of Billy Bragg – been doing that my entire life already! 🙂
me too
The curious thing is just how much the BBC loathes the real working class.
Paxo’s interview with Tommy Robinson is a classic example of contemptuous condescension.
You can see it here in: “Don’t Push It! at:
http://john-moloney.blogspot.com/#!/2013/02/dont-push-it.html
Of course the BBC detest real working class people, they’re just cattle to provide funding.
Farmers don’t get close to their stock you know.
What possible excuse (save his absurd politics) does the BBC have for continuing to give this clapped-out class warrior airtime? Bragg has never been a successful artist in terms of record sales or concert seats.
I heard his bitter whining about ‘posh’ pop stars. I also marvelled at the Dave Spart illogicality of his complaining about the connections and privileges enjoyed by former public school pupils in the entertainment industry, when the record business is in ruins because listeners now make their own choices about what to listen too via t’internet.
Let me guess – YouTube and Spotify etc know who went to Eton and give them privileged treament?
I also loved his nostalgia for the days when former public schoolboy John ‘boring for Britain’ Peel acted as the gatekeeper for who did and did not get airtime in the non-Pop radio slot.
That’s the stuff, Comrade Bragg! Let’s have a Kommisar of popular music!
I bet you could suggest someone, too.
‘What possible excuse (save his absurd politics) does the BBC have for continuing to give this clapped-out class warrior airtime?’
Online too.
They were stuffing twitter with a tweet for every song he introduced.
It’s like he and the BBC has a thing going on.
They were stuffing twitter with a tweet for every song he introduced.
Bless. Just looking the Radio 4 Twitter feed, I counted 19 tweets & retweets connected with Saturday Live, of which five mentioned Bragg.
How devastating for someone of your delicate sensibilities to have to endure…
Sorry for the delay.
I was out with the fam enjoying a rare moment of garden time in the sun.
Leaving you free, apparently, to devote your Saturday to posting on the site that you dislike so much you cannot bear to be apart from it.
Or running checks on data accuracy, for which thank you. Of course, what you can find vs. what is, has as much value as a BBC editorial.
The point you appear to have missed is to tweet each song that is or about to run on the BBC via various twitter accounts is like those who give you a blow by blow account of a sports event.
If you are interested, you will watch or listen, and know anyway. If not, you will find it daft.
But good to know you can count up to nineteen, doubtless using all fingers and toes.
Teabreak over… back to the garden.
put your handbag away
‘What possible excuse (save his absurd politics) does the BBC have for continuing to give this clapped-out class warrior airtime?’
I think it’s the ‘absurd politics’ bit.
That’s odd because Billy’s hero Joe Strummer was the son of a diplomat and an ex-public school boy so it’s a bit odd that the ‘one man Clash’ as Billy used to be known has got his knickers in a twist over public schoolies supposedly dominating the charts.
Billy Bragg is popular with the Radio 4 crowd because he is seen by them as being in some way representative of ‘ordinary people’-he’s their token ‘working class bloke’ who validates their left/liberal mindset on behalf on the entire working class.
Ah well, you see Wah Billy has learned how to use a knife and fork and the R4 types do love a performing monkey …
I hate the working class like the rest of my comrades.
They abandoned the Marxist cause years ago and must be punished for it.
David Preiser won’t be happy to see you here.
OMG he doesn’t want anyone here that ruins his daily mail, Islam is to blame for everything even more that the BBC cashcow.
don’t encourage this IQ 32 trolling cretin
it’s blatantly obvious he’s a yawn inducing untrained monkey let loose on a keyboard
Try to resist feeding trolls, not always easy.
That’s perhaps the most disgusting aspect of the Left-wing evangelists: they pontificate to the rest of us about the hardships of the proletariat from the comfort of their West End residences or country piles.
I always remember listening to some unkempt Left-wing prat on the BBC News, outside St Paul’s; he had the obligatory dread-locks and oversized woolly jumper etc, and was spouting off about humanity and the evils of capitalism; he became a sort of spokesperson for the shabby ‘Occupy’ movement. Amusingly, though, the reporters later claimed that when they went back to speak to this person later on in the night, his comrades reported that he went home at night to stay with his parents as the tent was too cold!
Sums up the self-loathing liberal movement; spoiled rich-kids who’ve never had to live in the real world of work. Scum!
AS stated on the open thread. Comrade Billy will never appear on my community radio show. And when some of my co-presenters have played any of his “work”, I always take great delight to comment on his military career and his coastal residence. I really can’t stand comrade bragg.
“his military career” Please expand
‘Bragg became disillusioned with his music career, and in May 1981 joined the British Army as a recruit destined for the Queen’s Royal Irish Hussars of the Royal Armoured Corps. After three months, he bought his way out of the army for £175’
‘Hearing DJ John Peel mention on-air that he was hungry, Bragg rushed to the BBC with a mushroom biryani, so Peel played a song from Life’s a Riot with Spy Vs. Spy although at the wrong speed (since the 12″ LP was, unconventionally, cut to play at 45rpm). Peel insisted he would have played the song even without the biryani and later played it at the correct speed.’
It has also, on occasion, occurred to me to go rushing to the BBC bearing gifts after listening to the casual personal comments of their presenters. However, I’m guessing the apparent former open door policy has been tightened.
Thank you
We`re ALL disillusioned at Braggs effort at a music career, but we`re not queueing up to join the army now are we?
Bragg is but the fag end of Woody Guthries dimp.
Wanted to be Dylan…but hey, if you can nick Bobs songs(Chimes of Freedom) and pass them off as your own with additional context/your own tripe(Ideology), then you`ll win a folk award thirty years later.
And not one folkie having the balls to shout “Judas” at him either…not even “Julian”!
Would like to have been Strummer or McGowan…but didn`t go to private schools like they did( any thoughts on that Billy boy?)
Now then-Colplay, Mumford and Sons, Keane..hardly genius, but,…unlike Bragg….writing relatively original songs, and getting a living out of their music…not from the f***in BBC and Guardian who are as derivative, spiteful and talent-fee as he is!
As prone to fantasy and fashion, as confused and self-defeating as Tom Robinson-who(funnily enough) is also beloved of the BBC linen suits and shaker bakers of Radio 4.
Bragg is a brass plated tin pot general of a lefty think tank, where no thinking is allowed….all paste medals and rainbow wristbands….and personifies the BBCs idea of what a working-clarss chappie ought to be!
One empty guitar case…and presumes to tell prisoners how to bluster in Red Wedgie bellicose squauks…
Worrafake!…Kinnocks washcloth!
Since you mention Red Wedge I thought I’d compare Billy Bragg with his fellow Wedgie, Paul Weller. Paul-as I’m sure many people will recall-had similar left wing leanings as Bragg during the 1980s but for Weller being involved in politics brought disillusionment and a sense that the politicians he was trying to elect were just out for themselves. Paul moved on and Billy didn’t.
Don`t Wellers kids go to private schools too?
Eton Rifles notwithstanding, of course.
And-to be fair-Weller has written some fine songs, and is perfectly entitled to grow up…even squirm at what a hypocrite he can be, or a red oaf that he once was.
Boy…I understand that one.
oh…and don`t those scallies of Burnage, the Brothers Gallager….send their kids to private school too?…at least they`re not hypocrites-never having ever had an original song in their bonces, but so what…good luck to `em!
They never get asked by the BBC do they?…might only invite some retaliation after all.
Everybody grows up eventually – well, nearly everybody.
There’s hope for Scott yet.
Ahh I spent 6 years in an Royal Armoured Corps regiment from 1977.
Did you meet Brag?
No sadly I didn’t. Also I’ve never seen him perform and in my music library of 3,000 plus items I have nothing he made.
How come an aging man still wants to be known by a childish diminutive of what one supposes to be his actual name?
Just how old is this chap Bragg? He’s described as a fighter against fascism – I thought that lot petered out in a Berlin bunker circa 1945. Or is he fighting the Islamist Fascists of the Middle East? Presumably not, as the Left considers them to be allies.
For Fascist here, read anyone to the right of Tony Benn.
Regarding his house, I’ve never seen anything quite like it, it’s something out of the Great Gatsby. Done White Flight I see, does he not like multicultural London then ? Hypocrite !
http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/celebrity/billy-bragg-has-absolutely-gigantic-house-201101063402
My Islington mansion is much bigger.
Is that you?
Yes I am trying to be a lefty for a while to see how the other half lives.
COMRADE
“THE BARD OF THE BBC”
I thought that was Benjamin Zepha Zapha Zephyr … oh, never mind.
Or is it Roger McGoff, er Mcguff, er McGouf, you know who I mean…
dominating the charts???
It’s been many years since I cared what was on the charts but aren’t they based on sales? The Beatles were at the top of the charts because they sold the most records. Mr. Bragg wasn’t because he didn’t.
Isn’t chart success the people (working or otherwise) voting with their pockets?
Dominating the charts?….surely not a phrase even sickofant Coles would dare use in any context re wee Willy Bragg.
(Yes i know it`s sycophant Dez, but there you go!).
Bragg is a Patrik Fitzgerald homeopathic dilution…he`s been wasting carbon now by way of electric guitar thrashes sine the mid-80s…any chance of the Climate change monkeys getting on his case…empty guitar one that apparently kills Fascists.
Go on Bill-drop a guitar by Anders Breivik will ya?
“Isn’t chart success the people (working or otherwise) voting with their pockets? ”
Yes, but Billy doesn’t recognise such hegemonic, exploitative constructs as the capitalist free market… except when the proceeds derived buy him an enormous house somewhere really nice.
Capitalism is dirty, but if you self-define as a socialist the piles of cash in your account are automatically cleansed. It’s those other rich people that are evil.
Ain’t that right, Mr. Moore…
Yes and no. It used to be rigged because it was all based on what retailers did, not consumers. That’s all changed since SoundScan and, more recently, iTunes and digital sales. Now digital sales really are consumer success, although what physical sales still exist still aren’t technically believable until a fixed period after release date when they start auditing returns. If some major company gets the retailers to order a ton of something, then it’s officially a big seller when it hits the streets. But if they somehow get everyone to hold off for a while returning the product that didn’t sell, the sales figures still stand. Not exactly kosher, but it’s not anywhere near as bogus as it used to be.
I absolutely loathe Saturday Live. Have done ever since it replaced the late John Peel’s Home Truths (which had it’s faults but was infinitely better to listen to).
The self-satisfied smugfest that is Saturday Live sets my teeth on edge. Especially the slimey ‘reverend’ Coles.
Their guest list overwhelmingly favours lefties. Recently we have had Baroness Scotland and the insane scribbler Martin Rowson, and now St Billy of Bragg.
To think Excess Baggage was cut to make room in the schedule for an extra half hour of this sick-making dross.
You are much better off listening to Danny Baker’s Sausage Sandwich Game on a Saturday morning.
Billy Bragg is what all working class people should be like.
Does he wear a Che t-shirt?
Does Billy Bragg wear a Che T-Shirt? I suspect if he looks more closely he’ll find the image is of Jim Morrison – so easy to confuse the decadent rock star with the vicious child murderer Che. You just need to squint.
Bragg moaned about the fact that too many posh boys were in the charts these days
…and was immediately challenged on that by the BBC presenters. I’m sure it was an oversight on David Vance’s part that he omitted that bit. That neglecting to mention it plays in to his attitudes about the Corporation is surely just a coincidence.
The question is not whether Willy’s statement was “challenged”, Scott, but why he was on the BBC in the first place. Nostalgia for student union bar politics?
I get the impresion he wasn’t brought on in order to ridicule and mock him, had he been EDL/BNP shoutie boy rather than UAF with a guitar.
Well it is clear Billy Bragg will be paying Comrade Ed Miliband’s Labour mansion tax. Serves him right. The pigs walk on their hind legs!
Posh boys and girls from the public schools are vastly overrepresented on the BBC’s staff of presenters.
Doesn’t seem to stop Billy popping up on its airwaves with great frequency.
But Billy is their pet working class hero.
To the meejha lovies, he embodies their ideal of the tame working class everyman.
The fact that he has no talent as a musician (his tunes and lyrics are banal in the extreme) has nothing to do with it.
The fact that he is a millionaire (how, for God’s sake?) also has nothing to do with it.
He’s a cosy, rosy, idealised lefty icon – and that’s all that matters at the end of the day.
Man the barricades comrade Billy. Your hour has gone.
Mockney Billy Bragg comes from lower middle class, not working class, roots. According to Wikipedia his dad was an assistant sales manager to a Barking cap and hat maker. You can guess his petit-bourgeois background by his vulgar, ostentatious-looking house. If he hadn’t scored with the BBC he’s be living in a fake Tudor semi and quoting the Daily Express to his fellow golf club bores.
Funny how the more time Bragg has spent away from Barking the more ‘geezerish’ his voice becomes.
Aththeendofthedayavingsaidthadyerknoworrimean.
I believe Billy attained a first with honours in Geezer at Chelsea Art College.
An aggrieved lefty of my acquaintance once told me that Bragg’s own kids went to the local state primary and then, at his wife’s insistence, private secondary school. Many on the left have never forgiven him.
Re: the references to Woody Guthrie – contrary to popular belief, he wasn’t raised in poverty. He was the son of a middle class real estate agent. An old folk singer once told me he thought Woody’s image of the shiftless singing hobo was adopted after reading “The Grapes of Wrath”.
Rather than being the dour, joyless troubadour we are now told, judging from recent recordings released of his live act, he was very funny and (the killer indictment to the left) he was extremely entertaining. Left wing folk concerts , usually performed by inner city college lecturers, are extremely boring. Here’s an example of the stuff they do. See how long you last before clicking “off”. Listen to comment about large house at 1’45”. (ref Billy Bragg)
Woody himself never joined the communist party because they considered him too eccentric. He did not support the hard line brand of Marxism imported from Europe. The real damage was done by his “discovery” by the Stalinist Pete Seeger who used popular culture and “folk music” to serve the ends of the USSR. (Seeger portrayed himself as a pacifist while the Hilter-Stalin pact was active. When it broke down he withdrew his pacifist material and replaced it US war propaganda) Seeger used Guthrie’s material to bolster his own message and inspire a generation of Guthrie wanna-bes.
Bob Dylan took his lead from Seeger, though I don’t think Dylan was never a communist, just one of the talented singer/songwriters who used “protest” as a useful vehicle. Former commie Ron Radosh tells the story of Dylan watching Elvis on TV in the late 50s and saying, “One day I’m gonna do that!”
Guthrie, Seeger and Dylan are the three icons who were lionized by the British folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
The ironic thing is that the young radio and TV producers are afraid of the real radicalism of the ultra British left. To them, I’m sure, Billy Bragg’s comfortable lifestyle offers them a loophole. After all, you don’t have to live it – just sing it.
Billy Bragg is harmless. He is part of the Labour establishment. A tame trot with a mortgage. If he were truly dangerous, he would share the fate of the American Phil Ochs and never be heard on the airwaves. But, I agree, his self-righteousness is incredibly annoying.
A generation of trendy BBC producers, sipping Chablis, eating at posh restaurants, living in fashionable homes, was brought up with Bragg and his ilk. They sucked at the teat of faux protest. But in the end what Billy Bragg represents is Show Biz Socialism. And when the curtain falls and the applause dies away, the comfortable life of gentry socialists will continue. The revolution can wait.
Billy Bragg represents is Show Biz Socialism
One quite well supported by free PR across the land from a pervasive broadcast monopoly.
Which likely explains the mansion.
Now if such support from a £4Bpa broadcast entity can drive his brand when few can see much in his body of work of value, imagine if that same capability was dedicated, say in the political arena, boosting one party (especially one whose interests in no way conflict with the BBC’s) whilst undermining foes.
Makes you quite worry for how free speech and democracy could be seriously messed with.
Great final three paragraphs, Louis – sums up Bragg and his ilk perfectly!
Seconded!
Would recommend “Unisex Chip Shop” by Bill Bailey that skewers this fatuous fake…Lord Bragg of Burton Bradstock before too long, no doubt.
Sadly, the chump shows up to sing with Bailey on one YouTube clip….probably thought it was about Kirsty McColl.
I once heard a rumour that the reason Bragg left London to his mansion on the coast was because he couldn’t stand living in an area with so many immigrants!
He is a truly odious hypocrite of the worst kind, someone who believes in ‘do as I say not as I do’.
In George Orwell’s ‘The Road to Wigan Pier’, the poor man is droning on about Socialism and ‘Socialists’. He desperately wants Socialism to be imposed but feels he must play devils advocate to explain why so many people don’t want it. In it he describes just the kind of hypocrite that Bragg is, a Leftist who just can’t bear to mix with the proles and does his level best to avoid bumping into any. Hence the mansion.
His claims to be a supporter of England is fraudulent too.
He’s a supporter of his kind of England, which sounds nowt like England to me.
Spot on.
I’ve always been a fan of Orwell and have been reading a lot of his essays again lately.
The left claim him as one of their own, but the more you read him, the more your realise that he became sickened by the left and he parodies the liberal-left chattering classes mercilessly.
He was afterall an Old Etonian who served in the military police in the last days of empire. Orwell was, in short, a ‘toff’ and an innate conservative.
Also, he was an employee of the BBC and his concepts of Minitrue and Memory Holes originated there.
Still, Orwell remains an idol of the left, mostly because they don’t have the wit to read between his lines.
i wonder if Bragg has private health care?
What an absolutely awful programme. Firstly we had the ghastly, self satisfied and patronising Richard Coles and then they bring on pseudo socialist Billy Bragg. A smug leftie love-in that you and I are paying for. Bragg has no musical talent that I can discern. He’s still fighting battles that are decades out of date and when he “sings” it’s like someone farting in drainpipe. If Billy boy wasn’t a leftwing luvvie he’d be busking on the underground.
Don’t forget that Billy Bragg was the man who in August 1989 (the date is hugely significant) said how much he envied the people living in the Soviet satellites of Eastern Europe, because they were “free”. Yeah sure, Billy, that’s why thousands of them fled across the Berlin Wall three months later. Funny how the BBC never mentions this, but keeps on referring to him, laughably, as an “intellectual”.
Photo by Adrian Boot, from “Billy Bragg, Midnights in Moscow” (1989)
Nice T-shirt, Billy.
Oops. Something wrong with the code. Billy in his T shirt here
http://corfublues.blogspot.co.uk/2011/01/billy-bragg-burton-bradstock-hate-mail.html
I’m still waiting for that twit with the glasses to justify Bragg’s vast acreage of free publicity.
That’s the nub of this – not how many twits twitter – it’s the BBC’s rampant pro-socialist bias exposed by the endless promotion of this toytown polemicist..
Billy Bragg – sounds like a character from Viz.
Er, hang on…..
Billy Bragg’s purchase of a large house by the coast at Burton Bradstock may have seemed like a bargain at the time, but was likely ill-advised. The active coastal erosion adjacent to his land was doubtless reflected in the asking price. Cliff falls and slumping there or nearly was serious in 2012, and will continue. The coast path My feeling is that continued erosion will irretrievably damage his house within a few years, rendering it uninhabitable.