A Comment

I started out writing a response to this and at some point in a grindingly awful day here in Manchester, overlooking the 'Ladyboys of Bangkok' pavilion and plotting hotels on a map of Milton Keynes, it became too long to put as a comment.

From the comfort of their well salaried jobs, transgression must seem exciting to academics and critics. It’s a bit of the ‘rough stuff’ to be discussed over dinner with a nice wine. Come live in outer nowhere, they’d meet people leading aimless lives, paying off the debts they amassed buying their big screen TVs which they *simply* had to buy because art to them is spending their nights watching Murdoch’s stream of effluent pumped in for £50 a month. Transgression doesn’t sound that exciting when all you naively want art from art is to be reminded that there’s something better in life. Certainly something better than genital mutilation.

The bus stops around here were recently advertising some ‘extreme’ art event they were holding at the Tate. It had absolutely nothing to do with the lives of the people queuing up in the rain. I don’t know how much the Tate spent advertising their exhibition – funded with EU money, I believe, along with Arts Council grants – but the people directly paying for it through their taxes had absolutely no interest in the art, the gallery, or transgression. You’d hear them talking about it when their bus was late and they had run out of gossip... ‘Look at this pile of bollocks.’ They’d laugh. Nobody would disagree. To them it was a self-evident truth. My mother’s name for Antony Gormley is ‘Antony Gormless’. That is as far as she’ll discuss modern art, despite all the EU grants encouraging her to do otherwise.
Of course, these people don’t understand art any more than I understand art. We’re all too uneducated to really understand the politics of transgression. Screw us. Let the academics share their self-satisfied, mutual-referential theories in their monographs. The rest of don’t deserve to have art in our lives. Except when it comes to being photographed.

Occasionally, I sit for lunch in a local art gallery (usually empty except for staff – there are lots of staff). The walls are covered by photos of disabled people playing sports. The exhibit was paid for by EU money, Arts Council grants, government funds directed to expanding participation in art. Nobody had asked if we really want to look at some 90 year old man in his jogging shorts. Nor did I want to see a close up of a stump, the result of a recent amputation, the product of a lifetime’s alcoholism. However, to the bureaucrat handing out the funds, it was a good use of public money. Art had been supported, supposedly. He doesn’t question whether we need ‘art’ that reminds us that life is full of sorrows; that every human being on this planet suffers in one way or another.

To the politicians, holding the purse strings, art remains a form of remedial social education. It’s the same way they treat literature in schools.

Only I’m bloody sick and tired of art that’s comes at me wielding a baseball bat smeared with dog shit. I tired of grants going to any artist willing to bastardise their craft (if any craft they have) to teach us about what it’s like to live in a sink hole estate. I’m bored with these lofty, pretentious, pseudo-creatives who dress up their high-concept torture porn with a decorous bit of modern typography on the wall of the exhibit.

And the reason I despise them so much is that they are amoral vacuums who suck in what little funding exists in the arts; money that might have gone to interesting artists who are instead ignored or demeaned because they actually care more about craft than they do marketing.

A guy in the office jokingly said to me that he wants to see the empty London plinth used for a ‘f***ing big statue of Churchill stamping on Hitler’s head’. With an absence of real debate about the place of art in our culture, this kind of response is natural. Sadly, it only encourages the critics to tut knowingly. ‘Jingoistic popularism celebrating the barbarity of war. It’s immoral! They know nothing about art!’ Or so the critics would smugly say before going back to their close ups of female genital mutilation.

The Hazel Blears Sketch

I wrote this, along with about a dozen other sketches, for the BBC Radio 7 show, 'NewsJack'. Naturally, it was rejected, or more precisely, ignored. It's hard to tell when your only reply is an automated response.

However, rather than let these things just sit on a hard drive, I'm going to post a few of them here.

F/X CHANTING

PRIEST: We have gathered here in this ancient place to mark the summer solstice and to beg the Gods to bless us with the renewal of our life-force. Approach now, Sister, and state thy name!

HAZEL BLEARS: (VERY BROAD ACCENT) Hello. I’m Hazel.

PRIEST: Welcome Sister Hazel who bears the name of the mystic tree that bears the sacred nuts...

F/X CHANTING: ‘NUTs’

PRIEST: Do you seek renewal at this most blessed hour?

HAZEL BLEARS: I wouldn’t say ‘renewal’ exactly...

PRIEST: Then you seek rebirth? You wish to strip naked and lie in the field to be
one with nature under the ambrosial skies?

HAZEL BLEARS: No, no, not that either. I was hoping to be reselected.

F/X CHANTING STOPS

PRIEST: You want what?

HAZEL BLEARS: I want to be reselected by the good people of Salford.

PRIEST: Are you sure you’ve got the right place? You do know that this is Stonehenge and that we are the ancient order of the Druids?

HAZEL BLEARS: Yes , I saw the bumper stickers on your Volvos. ‘Pip if You’re Pagan’. Very clever. But I’m here now and I’m ready to make my sacrifice.

PRIEST: Oh, very well... I mean, if you've prepared a sacrifice...

F/X CHANTING RESUMES

PRIEST: Sister Hazel, what is it that thy wish to sacrifice to the Gods?

HAZEL BLEARS: Well, I’ve brought these lovely curtains. They came with the flat but Michael said they didn’t go with our new Ducati leathers...

F/X CHANTING stops

PRIEST: Hang on! You want to make a sacrificial offering of curtains?

HAZEL BLEARS: And Michael’s brought his Goblin Teasmade. We’ve also got a sofa but we couldn’t get it on the back of the bike.

PRIEST: So, you're seeking ‘reselection’ based on a pair of curtains and a Goblin Teasmade?

HAZEL BLEARS: And a sofa that we...

PRIEST: Couldn’t get it on the back of the bike. Yes, I heard... Only, it’s not really up to me, is it? It’s the Gods who decide and... Well, I’m pretty certain they don’t need curtains.

HAZEL BLEARS: Of course they need a curtains. Every house needs curtains. Or at least, all of mine do...

PRIEST: But these are the Gods. They don't even have windows. They make the very sunlight that ripens the harvest and turns all things brown.

HAZEL BLEARS: Hang on! All things Brown? I’m not sure I can work under those conditions. (SHOUTS) Michael, pick up that Teasmade. And start the bike.

PRIEST: But such is the great cycle of life. The sun blesses the earth and changes the green of summer for the brown autumn.

HAZEL BLEARS: The Brown autumn! I had hoped he’d have gone by the end of summer. What about spring? Will Brown be gone by the spring?

PRIEST: It is the way. Spring is the time for greens shoots, when the timid creatures finally emerge from their burrows...

HAZEL BLEARS: Oh, so it’s Miliband in the spring, is it? Well, you can’t say fairer than that. (SHOUTS) Michael. Drop that Teasmade. We’re staying. (SPEAKING) Now then, if I am staying, we need to get this place looking right. Would you look at these stones! Do you know what I think they need?

PRIEST: They have been standing here for millennia...

HAZEL BLEARS: Curtains. (BEAT) Something in maroon chintz, I think. (WHISPERS) And between you and me, we might even be able to claim them on expenses.

END

Some Old One Liners...

• It was announced this week that head of Apple, Steve Jobs, has received a new liver. The iLiver was chromed and had his name etched on the back. Early reviews suggest that it works no better than a normal liver but spending a penny now costs £1.79.
• This week, disgraced cricket promoter Allen Stanford learned that he now faces 375-years in prison. Reacting to the news, ex-England opening batsman, Geoffrey Boycott, suggested that Stanford spend the first 370 years ‘playing himself in’.
• Sean Penn has abandoned Hollywood part way through his latest film after his children begged him to spend more time with them and their mother. In unrelated news: the world waits for Jack Black’s children to start speaking.
• Concerns mount over Kim Jong Il’s health. Apparently the bugger’s still alive.
• Meanwhile Silvio Berlusconi’s grip on power is slipping. But that what will happen when your fingers are covered in baby oil.
• And as Italy continues to be gripped by the tales of Bacchanalian orgies in Berlusconi’s villa where 18 year old super models apparently parade around the place naked, we ask: how do we ensure our MP’s stop claiming for Jaffa Cakes on their expenses?
• Michael Martin continues to claim that he was hounded from office because of his humble working class background. Indeed, there’s nothing more humble and working class than being crap at your job and having your chauffeur drive you to Celtic matches.
• This week ‘The Observer’ reported that Britain’s nuclear power stations have had 1,750 leaks, breakdowns or other ‘events’ over the past seven years. Thankfully, the leaks all occurred in parts of the UK that don’t read ‘The Observer’. Which is ironic, given all the extra eyesballs they have up there...
• As mobile users in Africa get their own weather forecasts, we get a look inside the high tech software that runs the service: Line 10: Print ‘Hot and dry.’; Line 20: Goto Line 10.
• In the world of coincidence: as Ronaldo admits that he’d decided to leave Manchester United last year, a supporter also admits that it was last year when he decided that Ronaldo was a complete tosser.
• As Facebook launches a Farsi service for people in Iran, we ask: aren’t they suffering enough?
• And, finally, Twitter’s in the news this week as Iranian leaders face a new crisis. They must either stop oppressing their people or Stephen Fry will unfollow them.

Head First Into Shallow Waters

‘You said that you only read the first ten pages of a script,’ said the woman whose head I could only see from the rear. ‘So, would it be okay if I made the font smaller?’

This was one of the better questions asked at the BBC’s Writersroom event but even this hammered me deeper into my seat and caused my right eyebrow to begin The Dance of Brutal Honesty.

I could feel it rising: the urge to say something monumentally arrogant. I could see myself standing up and launching into my best Peter Finch impression, shouting: ‘I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!’

But, thankfully, I wasn’t the one answering the questions. I was in the audience at the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool. Another prospective writer, or, as I increasingly saw it, another sick fantasy wrapped in a fragile ego wondering why the hell he’d travelled at that way.

Yet, too that point, the day had been going so well. I’d reacquainted myself with the best book shop in the North West: Blue Coat Books, which in my student days was housed in the Bluecoat Galleries but has now been relocated to Hanover Street. I had enjoyed the frothed ice of ‘summer berries’ in Waterstones, where I’d also bought Graham McCann’s book on four of the finest comedy writers of the twentieth century: Spike Milligan, Eric Sykes, and Galton & Simpson. I’d then made the tiring slog up a hill I hadn’t trod in about four years and felt strangely nostalgic about the exhaustion.

I’d made that walk, from Lime Street to the University, for about a decade, only to find at the end of it that a doctorate in English Literature made me well qualified to despise criticism and critics. Wanting only to write, I’d quit the offered life of academic papers, lectures, tutorials, and marking, for the uncertainty of poverty, low self-esteem, and creative obscurity. I’d not been back to the University since.

Only, now I was back, I found I was being nothing but critical.

The truth is that I despise being around writers. Or, should I say, ‘would-be’ writers. I’ve worked with academics who have published dozens of books and, on the whole, they are flawed, troubled, and occasionally crazy. Yet they are also people that labour under no pretensions as to what they can or cannot do. They go about writing in a professional manner. It’s normal folk who take up the pen that worry me.

Aspiring writers tend to have a crazed look in their eyes, like dogs that spent their formative years with abusive owners and are damn sure that they’ll never be locked in another shed for another long hot Summer. The stench of desperation hangs on them like some primal musk. Everything is easy to them. Writing is not a struggle. They say things like: ‘I’ve got a script here, and one at home, and I finished one this morning, will write another this afternoon... Or do you want me to write something new?’

I felt ashamed to be among them. I could feel the eyes of the theatre staff on me, as though marking me out for special pity. ‘He thinks he’s a writer! Bless!’ And how could they think any different? Like every writer’s group I’ve ever attended, I end up surrounded by people driven by the post-Romantic urge to ‘express themselves’. These are those writers that gather in the local library on a Thursday morning and get their pictures in the free newspapers posted through our door.

‘Me and my friend are going to write a comedy’ asked some young girl at the back. ‘Do you want us to write the whole series first?’

‘Have you written the first episode?’ asked the professional script reader.

‘No, we’re just about to start.’

My other eyebrow began to dance. The opening act to a ballet was being performed above my nose and I knew it was going to end with a tragedy.

Then the guy sitting in front of me raised his hand to ask a question. On his lap: his script. The laminated cover had been reflecting the stage lights into my eyes for the whole presentation. His raised arm allowed me to see the title: ‘A Sample Script For “Doctors”’. He’d written his own version of an established show. But he wasn’t the only one.

A few moments later a hand goes up on the far side of the theatre: ‘Could I send you my script to “Eastenders”?’

Another person asked a question I didn’t hear but the reply suggested they’d asked about a show on Channel 4.

But by that time, I was all out of eyebrows. So my heart just sank. My heart sank and sank and sank.

Yet now I’m home, preparing for two days in my own private Manchester hell, I find that a quite different feeling is enduring about the event. In a perverse way, it has changed me.

I’ve always been hesitant about the purpose of the Writersroom. I’ve suspected it enabled the BBC to appear to be listening whilst going on doing their usual tricks of commissioning work from friends and those already inside the industry. The standard of BBC comedy is such that I’ve believed that no other explanation is likely. My recent attempts to write for ‘NewsJack’ has only increased my cynicism. I would have been happy if my sketches and one liners had been less funny than those broadcast but when I’m sure that my material is strong and still gets ignored, then I have to look for explanations. Perhaps I’m not funny. Perhaps my funny is not a mainstream funny. Did my work even get there?

Yet listening to head of the Writersroom North and the script reader, I did start to have faith in the system I had come to doubt. I believe they believed in the project and that belief now convinces me to believe a little bit more than I did before. I found that I wanted to ask questions, to beg for mercy before them, to say that I’m not like these people with their musicals set around the world of soft cheeses, the reheated episodes of Dr. Who, their questions already answered a hundred times on the Writersroom website. Yet I wouldn’t know what to ask. Not when others have more pressing issues to raise:

‘Can I include real music in my script?’

‘Does it have to look like a script?’

Somebody wise once said: writers write. To which I would add: would-be writers ask stupid questions about fonts.