27th May 1999
ABREAST OF THE NEWS
OK, who bought The Sun yesterday? Actually I didn't, which says less about my integrity
than about the fact I was busy all day. Still, having spent much of the day in the
car listening to assorted news bulletins concerning the status of Sophie Whatshername's
breasts (on Radios 1, 4, 5, WM and Trent FM - believe me I tried to avoid it), I feel
I have enough information for a quick rant.
For a start, the singular nature of the exposed knocker dropped the tabloids' nipple
count by one, and this has to be applauded (newsagents have a top shelf for that sort of thing. Use it). Other than that though,
don't you think something should be done about all this? Well no. We've got a free-ish press, so we get what we pay for and we get what we deserve.
The maliciousness shown by the Number One For Fun reflects how this nation feels about
celebrity. We create it, celebrate it, attack it, redeem it, celebrate it a bit more,
then fuck it over, give it a quick redemption and finally kill it. After that, we
do tributes that go on for months, and in twenty years' time we fuck it over again
just for a laugh. Why is Sophie Thingy-Whatsit famous? Because she is due to be married
to a rather directionless closet homosexual who has the misfortune to have inherited
his father's looks. This is not important. Prince Edward's private life is of much
less importance to me than that of the younger of my two cats (who appears to have
got herself a boyfriend - the tabby from three doors down). If you think otherwise,
you are wrong.
It is becoming a dull cliché to complain about those who are famous for being famous.
But let's repeat it anyway. It is a thorough pain in the neck to have to sift through
Des Lyneham's infidelities and Tara Pumpkinson-Pumpkinson's detoxifications, when
what we really want to know is whether the world is going to collapse before or after
new year. The media has a habit of creating its own news by creating its own celebrities
and then reporting their activities. Supply creates its own demand. Take Jill Dando. The week she was murdered, she was on the cover of the Radio Times decked out in
leather with a cheeky, self-mocking smile on her face - a deliberately ironic statement
about... something or other... which had no resonance to anybody or anything because
it existed within an entirely self-enclosed, self-perpetuating media bubble. And the
poor woman bloody died for it
. The impulse which made people fawn over Jill Dando was the same one that made some
lunatic hate her enough to kill her.
I am pleased to say that I had no interest in who Jill Dando was married to, who she
was sleeping with, or whether or not she liked to dress up in a sou-wester and do
morris-dancing while balancing a spoon on her nose (although that would have constituted
talent and thus justified a certain celebrity). Someone was though, and it was someone
like that who shot her.
"Are you sitting comfortably," the voice on Listen With Mother used to say, "then
I'll begin." That is what 'media personalities' are for - or rather it is what their
jobs exist for. It is to make us feel comfortable while we are concentrating on something else.
Newsreaders have easy, bland voices because they are there to present something
about which we are interested; they in themselves hold no interest at all. The Royal
Family exists in order to make us feel secure whilst we get on with the job of Being British.
At least that's the theory. (Personally I'm for a republic, but that isn't
the subject here). I quite appreciate having a presenter tell me which game I'm about
to see on Match Of The Day, but that is not a reason to care a fraction of an iota
about Des Lyneham. Neither is it a reason to hate him - or Jo Wiley or Carol Vorderman
or any of them. If the media want news, there is enough of it going on in the outside
world, and if they want to create a world of their own, let them write fiction. Some
of them might find they have a talent after all.
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Write to jon@horne.demon.co.uk