Catty Comment

Late last night I switched on BBC1 in the middle of a mesmerisingly tasteless kinetic version of Heat Magazine, called “See you in Court”

What do George Galloway and Danielle Lloyd have in common, apart from both being remorseless self-publicists?
You got it. They’ve both been contestants on Big Brother. Appearing on Big Brother may be an instant, if sad way of increasing your public profile, but contestants must be aware that in doing so they sacrifice all, and I mean all, privacy.
Now this ill-matched twosome have turned to the courts of Justice to seek damages from corporations they claim have intruded upon their privacy. Ms. Lloyd had some images stolen by Carphone Warehouse during a phone-to-phone data transfer. The subject of the images in question happen to be the very things (another twosome) she is famous for, and she considers these particular images private because they show some scarring, due to a recent operation after a cancer scare. She claims. She has hired a respectable, expensive-looking lawyer to handle the case, whilst at the same time acquiring, courtesy of the BBC, some nice useful publicity for what she calls her career.
This is what we have come to expect from the BBC, and to be fair, this country. Cause and effect, effect and cause.
Much more unwelcome was the sight of George Galloway, the dandified publicity-seeking former Respect MP who seems to have nothing better to do than lead a camera crew around London, onto a train, and to the Guardian Offices to meet his good friend the Marxist Islamo-phile associate editor of the Guardian, Seaumas Milne, I can’t remember why.
Mr. Galloway feels he has had his phone tapped or bugged, but he’s not quite sure, by the Newspaper that Andy Coulson was in charge of.
These cases are very lucrative for the lawyers and possibly the winner, but in the scheme of things not particularly relevant to the advancement of all mankind. George Galloway is enjoying publicity, free, gratis, and to no benefit to you, me, or the man on the Clapham Omnibus, for his sickeningly hypocritical vanity project. A man who purports to be a politician, i.e. beyond reproach, who willingly, without duress or coercion, appeared on what they call ‘National Television’ wearing a red leotard while impersonating a cat in a most unsettling fashion, is claiming huge amounts of money, on the bandwagon of discrediting David Cameron because he once employed Andy Coulson, in the celebrity phone hacking mountain out of a microscopic molehill.
And the BBC adds insult to injury by beaming this repulsive trashy saga into our homes, pitched, needless to say, firmly on the side of the protagonists, and against the defendants, at our expense.

Not Amused

For me, humour can overcome certain political views if it’s funny enough.

The assumption that everyone will automatically agree is still irritating , but I can put that aside if there’s a good laugh in there.

Did anyone see how miffed that Mark Steel fellow was when Ian Hislop called him a Stalinist on HIGNFY ? He was definitely bovvered.

The thing I’m not so sure about is the stupid Anne Frank joke from the ubiquitous David Mitchell who I usually quite like. His attempted joke drew a complaint on Feedback which was briefly and peremptorily dealt with, below several letters praising other programmes.

He thought an amusing example of something very ridiculous was the idea that someone whose need to keep quiet was a matter of life or death – would ask for a drum kit. Ha very ha.

The fact that we all know Anne Frank’s terrible fate makes this not one of the occasions where the humor justifies the content.