For the avoidance of being sued, I am not suggesting any illegality in Sir Philip Green’s business practices. What I’m saying is that an environment where those practices are completely legal – and indeed honoured in the same way as the Arthurian Lancelot’s legendary heroism – is the metaphorical unlocked house. If it wasn’t him (and of course it isn’t just him), it would be someone else. Publicly admonishing him is just a distraction.
That doesn’t mean it isn’t instructive to analyse him. He was born in 1952 and grew up in post-war welfare state Britain. The country was, at that time, becoming fairer at a dramatic rate. That’s not to say that it ever became fair, or that it was fairer then than it is now. 2019 Britain, for all its inequities, is a better place than, say, 1959 Britain. But it doesn’t come close to matching 50s and 60s Britain’s rate of improvement. Things are probably getting worse today, whereas in those decades, in terms of social justice, they were clearly improving. The strictures of the Victorian class system were, if not completely disappearing, taking a massive beating. Social mobility was, admittedly from a very low base, sharply on the rise.
This engendered in many of us a notion of Britain as a relatively just place where centuries-old wrongs were being righted, and this notion has outlasted the real improvements on which it was based. That’s the problem with Green and his ilk. They are acting as if the system were fair and able to contain their unfettered self-interest. In a properly fair and well-run society, if people stay within the rules and are successful, they will end up doing good, even if they don’t mean to and don’t care. The system will incentivise societally beneficial behaviour. For too long we have flattered ourselves that we live in such a society, and in consequence the rich and the powerful have been let off the moral hook.
The recent focus on Green as a villain shows that something is changing, but not in the right way. Blaming him personally is effectively calling for a return to a sort of benevolent paternalism, a sense of noblesse oblige. That’s what the Victorians had instead of social justice, and it’s a shit system. If your local lord of the manor is a nice guy, like in Downton Abbey, life is unfair, but you don’t starve – but that’s as good as it gets, unless you’re born into the ruling kleptocracy.
By all means slag off Green, but the solution to the problem he symbolises is not to embarrass him into being nicer, and seeing that as the solution is harmful. He is nothing more than an index of the failures of the system. By putting the onus on him, we’re calling for a return to a society of toffs and philanthropists where, instead of a welfare state, you get crumbs from the rich man’s table. Green is like a sort of reverse canary: while he’s still prosperously chirruping on his perch, we know for sure that we’re in the midst of something poisonous.
My Solution to Everything
Everyone says this is a divisive age, so in that spirit let’s do some dividing! Let’s divide all other ages into two: there are the ages where things are getting better and the ages where they’re getting worse. It’s not always easy to tell which sort of age you’re in but it’s bound to be one of the two. (Unless things are just staying the same, I suppose, but I reckon that would be quite a brief age. More of an instant, a momentary teeter, so we can disregard it.)
What sort of age is this age then, other than a divisive one? Is it an improver or a worsener? I’m afraid I think it’s a worsener – for Britain anyway – and I didn’t think that until recently. So maybe it wasn’t the case until recently? It’s possible that, in my lifetime, we’ve gone from an age where things were generally getting better to one where they’re generally getting worse. I refuse to blame myself, which may be part of the problem.
This conviction is my justification for all the moaning (and Remoaning) in this book. Britain in 2019 is not a terrible place, historically speaking, to live. But if it is a place that is getting worse, and was recently a place that was getting better, that is a bit of a shame. Moral and economic decline isn’t the end of the world (though of course it could lead to it): roughly half the people who have ever lived have done so in declining civilisations, and this one is declining from quite a high point, with freedom of speech, public order and lots of hot and cold running water. But this shift from improvement to deterioration is going to have a marked psychological impact on the community. It’s really depressing, basically. Things getting inexorably worse, even if they’re not by any objective historical measure that bad, is liable to make existence itself feel a bit pointless.
One of the most worrying symptoms of the current malaise is that people often ask me what I think is going on. I am just a comedian who writes a humorous newspaper column, and am therefore the wrong person to ask. But I suspect the people who ask me didn’t ask me first – which means they got unsatisfactory answers from those who might actually know. So now they’re asking me out of desperation. Next stop: the dog. Or maybe they’ve already asked the dog. Why should I expect to be asked before the dog?
Perhaps they’re just trying to make conversation. I am quite an awkward person to talk to, after all. But I still reckon there is a lot of bewilderment around: about Brexit, about climate change, about identity politics, about political extremism, about Strictly. I mean, why are the judges so horrible to the celebrities? No wonder they can no longer attract contestants people have heard of.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe everything’s great, and it’s just that I’m 45. I’ve never been 45 before – perhaps the world always seems like it’s declining to 45-year-olds simply because they are. It’s a bit of a coincidence that I’m coming to this conclusion just as the fact that I’ve passed the midpoint of my likely existence hits home. Perhaps I’m just feeling apocalyptic because I’ve realised I’m not immortal?
But maybe I’m right and things are going wrong. And, if so, I know exactly what to do to fix them. Genuinely. I reckon the following would do it – or at least cause a marked upturn. Ready? It’s nothing to do with Jesus, crystals or any secret conspiracy, I promise. It’s on the dry side, to be frank, but I reckon it would be worth a shot:
Introduce proportional representation so that the two-party grip on power is broken.
Pay MPs loads more, while simultaneously putting enormous constraints on their extra-parliamentary activities, not just while they’re MPs but for the rest of their lives, in order to undermine the malign influence of lobbyists.
Put a tax on carbon so that commercial activities carry a financial cost equivalent to their environmental one. Some say we need to totally restructure our economy to deal with climate change, but I reckon channelling capitalism is a better plan than attempting to replace it. If we want people to find ways of emitting less carbon to save the planet, let’s harness the awesome power, dedication and inventiveness of the human urge to dodge tax.
I’m afraid I don’t know what to do about the internet except wish it didn’t exist. But maybe that might help in itself. At least we’d stop having to celebrate it as if the stratospheric enrichment of a bunch of Californians who go to work in flip-flops was some sort of boon for humanity.
But, basically, do all that and I’m pretty sure the country, and the world, would become a better place. I reckon it would reverse the worsening. Apologies if you think it’s presumptuous of a comedian to offer this sort of trite manifesto, but I figure it’s the least I can do if I’m going to keep on moaning. And my resolve to do that is unshakeable.
The only big problem I can see with My Solution to Everything is that I have absolutely no idea how to make society do all of it – or, actually, any of it. I think they’re policies that would work, but there’s absolutely no way of making them happen politically. Knowing what to do but having no idea of how to do it is worthless – like a penguin who’s invented fire. “Rub two sticks together! It’ll really warm us up!” he says to the other penguins, who look at their flippers and look at the endless snow. And then one of them says: “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
I suppose I could always try convinc
ing people that it’s the right thing to do by using reasoned argument and then it might happen by democratic will. And there’ll be other jokes later in the book.
The subjects covered include (in no particular order) TV, board games, advertising, Boris Johnson, Nurofen, religion, farting, cinema, corporate greed, champagne, fashion, art, smoking and roads with rude names. I have put them in groups and an order, but your statutory rights are unaffected. Read this book however you like. Mix it up, dip in or read all the prepositions first – it’s up to you. You do not, strictly speaking, have to read it at all – but I would be rather hurt if you didn’t. I mean, come on – you’ve got this far.
Despite all the hand-wringing above, this collection of columns is as often glass-half-full as glass-half-empty. There’s still plenty of lovely liquid in our national metaphorical glass (though I’m hoping it’s metaphorical Pyrex rather than metaphorical crystal as I’m putting quite a lot of metaphorical pressure on it in this sentence), but however much is currently in it, I’m pretty sure it’s being emptied, not filled.
1
Popular and Unpopular Culture
A look at some high arts, such as opera, some slightly less high arts, such as photography, and some other stuff that you may or may not think of as arts, so let’s just call them non-sciences.
Let’s start by addressing a properly big question: what are things?
You know, things? Pens and tomatoes and motorcycles and daffodils. And I don’t just mean objects: also chess and Valentine’s Day and ants and poetry and Somalia. They’re all things.
A newspaper is a thing, and so is the Observer newspaper, and so is the particular edition of the Observer that published this. But an individual copy of that issue of the Observer is also a thing – and a different thing from the institution of the newspaper itself, or the concept of a day’s individual edition, but somehow linked. But then you might be reading this on a phone (a thing) or computer (a thing), either way via the medium (a thing? A person? A lady with a turban?) of the Guardian website (which is also a thing). Or in a copy (a thing) of a book (a thing) in which this thing (a column) has also been published.
I have a feeling I’m stumbling along a path already trodden by those more learned and with more time on their hands than I. I vaguely remember listening to an episode of In Our Time in which some hapless boffins had to explain all the knots Bertrand Russell had got himself into trying to prove that numbers were a thing, while Melvyn Bragg got so cross and bored you could actually hear his irritated glare.
So, things: it’s a broad church. Or they’re a broad church. And a broad church is, as well as a metaphor (itself a thing) for things, also a thing. Such as might have a magnificent tower or spire, perfect for bell-ringing. And the practice of bell-ringing is also, of course, a thing.
But what sort of thing? Now we’re getting down to it. Well, it is not, currently, a sport. (A sport is a type of thing.) But Robert Lewis, editor of The Ringing World, says it should be. Because he thinks it is. I mean, he thinks it should be classified as a sport, which must surely mean he believes it already is one. He can’t think that the classification alone would be enough to make it one, like a fairy godmother’s wand. He’s not hitching mice to a pumpkin and calling himself princess.
“Ringing is … a healthy mental and physical workout,” Lewis says. “We would like many more people to have the opportunity to try it and identification as a sport could help achieve that.” I wonder why it would help. It would put me off. Because books about it would be in a different section of the library? Next to old Wisdens and the novelisation of Rocky? Funding probably, isn’t it. It’s always bloody funding. That’s definitely a thing.
Anyway, in this case the fairy godmother, or rather the organisation in charge of saying “It’s no good putting that in a pie, it’s got an axle,” is Sport England. It decides what’s a sport and recently told the game of bridge it wasn’t one because it didn’t entail a “physical activity”. It’s a lot stricter than Card Game England, which let in Twister on the basis that it’s “all played on a single large card”.
I reckon bell-ringing’s case is fairly persuasive. It’s clearly a physically strenuous activity that requires skill, and there are hotly, indeed sweatily, contested competitions between different bell-ringers. Shooting, darts, quoits, angling, yoga and ballooning are official sports, so why not?
The main reason is that its governing body, the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers, doesn’t want to apply. “The primary object of the council is to promote and foster the ringing of bells for Christian prayer, worship and celebration,” it said. “We enjoy and rely on an excellent relationship with various church bodies and we would not wish to risk prejudicing this.” What a weird difference of opinion among the campanologists. They don’t disagree over what bell-ringing involves, what they should all actually do – just over how the activity is classified.
This reminded me of the fuss surrounding the nomination of The Martian for best comedy at the Golden Globes, an award it then won. Many felt that not only was the film not funny, something which wouldn’t necessarily make it stand out among comedies, but it wasn’t even meant to be. A post-structuralist might argue that the film-makers’ intentions were irrelevant. Others considered them cynical and accused The Martian’s producers of muscling in on the comparatively cushy comedy category in order to grab an easy award and add to the pre-Oscars buzz surrounding their film, without having to take on heavy hitters like The Revenant in the more competitive best self-important-three-hour-slog category.
But how could an unfunny film be judged the winner of the comedy category? I suppose the judges must have liked it better than the films with jokes. They can’t have thought it a better comedy; just a better film, a better thing. It’s like a bacon sandwich winning the “tastiest apple” award at a farm show. Comedies aren’t as easily defined as sandwiches and apples. I’m sure there’s some deliberate humour in The Martian, so maybe that means it is a comedy. And the award, after all, is for best comedy, not funniest comedy. Maybe all that funny stuff in the other films made the Hollywood Foreign Press Association feel cheap.
But all of these problems stem from trying to divide things into meaningful groups: sports, calls to prayer, comedies, tragedies, films, YouTube clips. What is a call to prayer but a noisy sport without a scoring system? What is a drama but an unbelievably long comedy without any jokes? What is an awards ceremony but a strange and inefficient distribution system for vulgar knick-knacks? Well, some would say it’s a comedy, some a drama, some, what with all the getting up and down, a sport. And it’s certainly a call to prayer for many nominees.
A spoon is just a very ineffective fork with a single blunted tine. A fork is only a spoon with annoying holes that inhibit soup consumption. What is soup but a liquid mousse? And isn’t steak and chips just a very hearty, lumpy consommé? Or a hot and greasy weapon? Or a work of modern art? Or a weirdly meaty non-dairy cheese?
So does the big question I posed have an answer? No. But actually “No” is an answer. And a word. And a thing.
* * *
Apparently some people are capable of lucid dreaming. In a dream, they can control what’s going on – direct the actions of themselves and others in ways that please, excite, arouse or interest them. That would be my worst nightmare. Worse than my worst nightmare to date, which, though terrifying, was at least not of my own conscious (while unconscious) invention.
I’d rather be tormented by ghouls, have to take my A-levels again while wearing Speedos, appear on stage in an incredibly lifelike Donald Trump mask which I can’t remove even with a razor, fall off a cliff edge into impenetrable darkness or offend my mother-in-law by weeing and weeing and weeing in her face (these are just a few from last night) than be in control of it all. I hate being in control – it means that, when things are horrible, it’s my fault. And things are going to be horrible – that’s a given.
Another reason the prospect of steering drea
ms makes me glum is that deciding what happens in things that aren’t really happening is part of my job. So the thought of having to continue to do it even while asleep is exhausting. I’d rather unconsciously process planning applications, issue parking tickets or work out VAT. But perhaps a planning officer, traffic warden or accountant would be refreshed by getting to show-run their own inert imaginings of living in a gold palace, eating their way out of a maze made of cake, having sex with a film star or whatever else constitutes a lucid dreamer’s dream dream.
Don’t get me wrong: deciding what happens in things that aren’t really happening is nice work if you can get it – indoors and the money can be decent – I just couldn’t do it in my sleep. I’ve been involved in making many TV programmes depicting events that almost certainly didn’t occur. The hope is that people will find watching what happens sufficiently entertaining that they won’t mind that it didn’t (just as, I suppose, the tedium of watching football highlights must be mitigated for some by the fact that it did).
Of course, with something like that, you can never be completely sure it’s going to work. Which leads to a lot of fretting and analysing, and dozens of discussions of how things should be: “Should the scene end like this or like that?” “Should we say it this way or that way?” “Should we use this hat or that hat?” Even after the scripts have been redrafted for the tenth time, it’s all still an agony of small decisions, like people always complain when they’re planning their wedding, though, in that instance, the only people they really have to please are themselves.
Dishonesty is the Second-Best Policy Page 2