Jump on the Brand-wagon

Oh, hello again!

You just caught me in the middle of writing a strongly-worded letter to Her Majesty the Queen, demanding that Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand be immediately rounded up and locked in the Tower of London for crimes against comedy, England, HRH Andrew Sachs and the Very Rev. Georgina Baillie.

You see, I didn’t hear Russell Brand’s Radio 2 show when it was broadcast on 18th October, but, like the other 27,000 members of British society who have subsequently and retrospectively thought it fit to complain about Brand and Ross’s stupid and childish behaviour, my detachment from events comes as no obstacle to my fiery, wrathful rage. I’ve already sharpened my pitchfork, and once rent-a-mob turn up I’m off for a bit of burning and looting. You see, I am very offended, and I will not stop until I see justice blunderingly and knee-jerkingly done.

What’s most worrying about the ‘furore’ is that it represents head-burying at its absolute worst. I’m not saying what they did was ok, but having a go at them while the world goes to hell in a handcart seems like something of an overreaction.

While the world still (apparently) faces financial meltdown (the BBC must be shitting themselves, having wasted god-knows-how-much money on the new DownTurn logo which accompanies every financial scare story), fighting rages in the Congo and the US prepares to elect their new president, it is nice to see the British public, true to form, focusing on the grotesque pointlessness of celebrity. Even Gordon Brown has taken a timely break from saving the world economy to have his say on this diplomatic crisis shaking the country to its very core.

And the situation keeps getting worse and worse – heads rolling all over the shop. It’s like a particularly bad wedding reception round Henry the Eighth’s place. Brand has subsequently resigned from his Radio 2 job, and Jonathan Ross’s Friday night chat show, which presumably justifies the enormous £18million he costs the public each year, has been canned until further notice. Lesley Douglas, controller of BBC Radio has also handed her resignation, saying: “The events of the last two weeks happened on my watch. I believe it is right that I take responsibility for what has happened."

When celebrities do something wrong, we are very quick to complain that they don’t get treated in the same way that we do. Yet this situation has been allowed to quickly and dangerously spiral out of control, setting an ugly precedent for what can and cannot be broadcast and what can and cannot be done in the name of comedy. Because, hurtful or not, it is very important to remember that Brand and Ross’s behaviour was not malicious – stupid, certainly – but not malicious. The punishment has, in this instance, far outweighed the crime.

There were two, that’s TWO, complaints about the show following its immediate broadcast. The number quickly spiralled once the papers got their greasy hands on it and milked it for all its worth. The public, whether actually offended or not, realised that they perhaps ought to be and subsequently complained in their droves. After all, a national treasure has been humiliated on national radio (a national treasure, mind, and I apologise for being flippant, who is best known for taking the piss out of Spanish people and being knocked about by John Cleese). Complaining to OFCOM, the regulator of communications and broadcasting in the UK seems particularly rich, when the vast, vast majority of those complaining hadn’t heard the show in the first place. It’s the equivalent of deliberately searching for a nudey pic on the internet, only to then complain that the sight of nipples has offended you.

I understand why Andrew Sachs would be upset – what right-minded person wouldn’t be. But even his reaction to the entire affair has been, at best, sanctimonious and pious beyond all reason. Accepting their apology, tut-tutting and moving on would have been a far more dignified and appropriate way of dealing with the verbal wankery of two silly little men. And in the spirit of fairness, much of what they said was actually true, if Sachs’s fulsome granddaughter, Georgina Baillie’s delightful kiss-and-tell exclusives to The Sun are to be believed.

I, for one, would be able to take Georgina Baillie and her fame-hungry cleavage slightly more seriously were she not quite-so-obviously relishing every single moment. While I am sure that she is royally miffed that these two over-paid gonks have called her granddad and spilt details of her sex life messily onto his answering machine, it’s a bit rich that a self-styled ‘Satanic Slut’ (NSFW) has decided that she can and will take the moral high ground.

It must be amazingly difficult to look both offended and sensual at the exact same time, but Baillie has persevered; her expression like a porn star who’s just noticed her car’s been clamped in the middle of a double-penetration scene.

Calling yourself a slut and then parading around like the Madonna leaves something of a bitter taste in the mouth, and quite how the sight of her tits splashed across the pages of The Sun every day this week is less humiliating for her poor old granddad is an absolute mystery to me.

What we have witnessed is an act of childish stupidity. Prank calls are always annoying, often hurtful and occasionally frightening, but we must be cautious in considering what Ross and Brand have done, to use Miss Baillie’s own words, as ‘beyond contempt’. Her delight at their mutual suspensions in particular smacks more of gleeful hand-rubbing at the fact that they are being punished for airing the dirty laundry that she now takes such glory in. As we increasingly see these days, the media are becoming more and more proficient at not merely reflecting public opinion, but actively influencing it. Brand and Ross are shamed and deplorable, whereas Baillie’s Nazi-esque burlesque routine is branded ‘tongue-in-cheek’. Quite.

This farce has provided nothing more than a scandalous distraction against the constant impotent raging against the bigger issues facing the country today, and, frankly, while Ross, Brand and Douglas’s moral compass may have been somewhat skewed, I’d argue that it was the judgement of the British public that was altogether more Fawlty…

Whatever, Heather

And so the Heather Mills Anger Circus trundles ever on, reaching yet-another pseudo-conclusion outside court today, with the perpetually-outspoken Ms. Mills (appearing somewhat appropriately as a fashion-conscious power-dressing clown) declaring her intention to appeal not the generous award of £24.3 million with which she will walk away from her four-year marriage to Paul McCartney, but rather the publication of the full ruling, claiming she is doing so due to security concerns for her daughter. Call me cynical, but considering that dear old Mucca was originally angling for £125 million of Thumbsaloft’s widely-overestimated £800 million pound fortune (the real figure according the court is closer to £400 million, which more than explains his widely rumoured stinginess…), I find it extraordinarily hard to believe that she is ‘very, very happy’ with the decision to award her only a fifth of what she believed she was rightly due. And beyond this, considering that one of the reasons cited for the 2002 Mills-McCartney marriage split was media intrusion into their private lives, it smacks as a tiny bit hypocritical that Heather so lengthily lapped up the media scrum as she left court earlier today.

Try as I might, there’s something about Heather Mills that makes me completely unable to feel in the slightest bit sorry for her. I can happily accept that Paul McCartney was not a particularly wonderful husband, and that the continual media intrusion into their marriage may have contributed to their split. But even with these facts in mind, it is almost impossible for me to view her as a sympathetic character. The much-viewed and talked about GMTV interview, which I am convinced Ms. Mills believed would drum up enormous amounts of sympathy for her and her obscenely rewarding divorce settlement, made her look exhausted, yes; fed up, certainly; but a victim? Not on your nelly. The problem with Heather-as-victim is that she’s too gutsy for the role she seems determined to cut out for herself. We know that she’s done tonnes of work for ‘charidee’ for the last ‘twennyeer’, and we know that the media would have us believe that she is a wicked, grasping old witch trying to wring the last pennies out of good old ex-Beatle-national-treasure Paul McCartney, but for the love of god, woman, give it a rest! Do not rattle on about the enormous amount of charity work you do, and then go on to complain that the £35,000 a year your divorce settlement grants for your daughter’s upkeep means that she will no longer be able to fly first class. Be annoyed by all means that you might not have got as much dosh as you wanted, but crikey Heather, don’t be such a hypocrite!

We all know the uncomfortable duality of womanhood in the media – you can be a virgin or a whore, a bitch or a victim. That’s just how it works. I’m not saying it’s right, but it’s how it is. And unfortunately for Heather, you can’t be both. You can’t spend twenty years acting the all-action heroine, the model doing charity work in the face of her own personal tragedy, raising awareness for landmines, for animal welfare and for disability to then turn around and cry in the face of the big bad media for depicting you as an evil, money-grabbing whore. What on earth did the woman expect? The UK media have a certain fondness for the aging rocker and a perverse fascination with the kiss-and-tell gold-digger – just look at the rose-tinted way tree-bothering Keith Richards is portrayed in the press in comparison to the way Pete Doherty (disgusting and shiny though he is) is demonised. Or the way the papers saw to it the spud-faced trollop who shagged Ashley Cole despite his vomiting all over her at the terrifying prospect was financially rewarded for ruining his marriage, only to guiltily wring their hands at poor Cheryl’s resultant plight. The media is a cruel mistress, and it is courted at your peril.

No one is going to believe Heather Mills when she claims that she is happy about the decision to award her a meagre £24.3 million, why would they? She spent eighteen months building up a portfolio against the media, the press, the paparazzi who hound her, her neighbours and the dog they accused her of killing, but she seemed to overlook one thing – she wasn’t in court against them – she was in court against mean old McCartney, all deep pockets, short arms and rigor-mortised thumbs. If they lie about you, Heather, expose the lies, but do not go into histrionics on breakfast television; it is unseemly, and it gives those that are more than happy to present you as a raving, lying lunatic only more ammunition. Where has all the class and dignity gone? The Heather we saw in between the bit where you got your knockers out and the bit where you went a bit Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction? If you really are happy with how things turned out in court, then have the balls to let go of it all. Go back to your daughter, and your charity work, and move on with your life. Start making good use of the money your apparently joyless marriage earned you, and enjoying the comfortable lifestyle you now have the luxury of.

The gagging order on the personal trivialities of the case will see to it that the press will never stop Heather being presented as the woman who tried to gold-dig a Beatle out of his hard-earned fortune and lost, the woman who advocated drinking rats’ milk (though the quote was taken ludicrously out of context), the liar, the mad fantasist who bit off more than she could chew, overly-confident in her own abilities. Not, that is, until she makes a turn-around. Come on H, change from a bitch to a real victim – chuck out your ring-binders and marry a young slip of a thing, who in four years’ time will divorce you, blaming press intrusion and fleece you to the tune of £1.5 million (which translates, roughly, to about the same proportion of Paul’s money she will soon be enjoying). Or, more appealing, just go back to being a gutsy bitch. No more raving, no more tears. Not even you can put a positive spin on what has been the most unnecessarily drawn-out, speculated-about and rumour-mongering divorce of recent years, so stop trying. You’re the villain in this soap opera, so maybe it’s time you switched channels.

Crikey, I got through all of that and didn’t make a single shitty Beatles pun… I won’t even try to squeeze one in – I’ll just Let It Be… oh bugger.