Just driven back home along a rainy and windy A55 after a day of moving stuff around the country - with a bit of luck, the last one for a while.
On the way I was listening to Any Questions on Radio Four. Tonight's panel was Chris Huhne (Lib Dem, and a pretty reasonable bloke); Jacqui Smith (Labour Chief Whip, quite nice, but a lover of dull platitudes); Quentin Letts (urbane fascist) and Boris Johnson.
Ah, Boris. If they made you leader of the Tory party you'd win by a landslide. The resulting government wouldn't last more than a week, but it would be a very memorable week. I like people who manage to appear a lot more stupid than they actually are. BoJo is the acme of the type: few manage to conceal such a sharp brain behind such a buffoonish exterior.
He was the star of AQ. Although he's not as articulate as Huhne or Letts, he puts passion and sparkle into his arguments. If he has a problem it is that he's sometimes too funny, searching for gag openings when he could be scoring serious points.
He deserves to be listened to. For a start, the bloke is clever: I've just finished the book he wrote as a tie-in to his TV series, The Dream of Rome - it's clear, carefully argued and passionate. In fact, I'd say that passion is one of the (carefully concealed) marks of the man. He has the faintest whiff of idealism about him. In the introduction to the book he talks about the duty and necessity of standing for public office if you want to do something about the "thugs and barbarians" who so often achieve power.1
OK, he offends Scousers and people from Papua New Guinea, but he at least seems to say what he thinks, and also to have a mind and moral direction of his own. That's more than you can say for most MPs. I'm reminded of an old cartoon I saw reproduced recently, depicting Churchill and Nye Bevan as giants. They squat across rows of tiny benches on opposite sides of a Lillipution House of Commons, surrounded by their small, faceless colleagues. I'm not suggesting that BoJo has quite that stature, but we should see him as more than just a figure of fun. He has his own mind and he is not afraid to use it. That, alone, makes him a giant in the current political landscape.
After AQ was another bloody awful I've-lost-my-teatowel-oh-there-it-is2 Radio Four "drama". I submitted a play to R4 ages ago and it came back unread. How do I know they didn't read it? I heard a rumour that the BBC Writers Room rejects any new writer who seems to be white, male and European. So, using a Pritt Stick, I stuck together pages nine and ten with a little dollop of glue - just enough so you'd have to make a tiny effort to pull them apart. They were still stuck together when the script came back. Talking to contacts I've subsequently made at the BBC, it seems I made two mistakes:
(a) I failed to call myself Ahmed Akhbar Ali al-Khazi, or, even better, an equivalent female name, and include a cover letter explaining how the play was an exploration of the "issues" I "experienced" as a lesbian transexual growing up in Jalalabad;
(b) I wrote a play in which stuff actually happened, right from the start - i.e., it had a character-driven plot. Fatal mistake.
So, a message for Radio Four: less tea-towel drama about people "exploring" relationships and life-choices and more BoJo, please. Or, failing that, more comedy, which you actually do quite well.
1. I think that's the phrase he used, though I don't have the book in front of me. The particular barbaric thug he was referencing was Charles Clarke. Yes, him. The bloke who thought studying Classics and medieval literature was pointless. I think it's in poor taste to crow when people fall from grace, but I made an exception for Clarke. In fact, I'm still crowing now. I'll only stop crowing when John "Stalin" Reid gets his comeuppance, an event that will be marked by champagne and a small firework party in the Earthman back yard.
2. Not so long ago The Now Show produced a parody Radio Four play in which a woman loses her tea towel and then finds it again. Somewhere on a hill farm in mid-Wales there's a middle-aged radio dramatist banging her head against her desk and mumbling "tea towels...brilliant...why didn't I think of that?"
tags: Boris Johnson, Radio Four, writing
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Published by Earthman
on Friday, September 22, 2006 at 2:40 PM. On the way I was listening to Any Questions on Radio Four. Tonight's panel was Chris Huhne (Lib Dem, and a pretty reasonable bloke); Jacqui Smith (Labour Chief Whip, quite nice, but a lover of dull platitudes); Quentin Letts (urbane fascist) and Boris Johnson.
Ah, Boris. If they made you leader of the Tory party you'd win by a landslide. The resulting government wouldn't last more than a week, but it would be a very memorable week. I like people who manage to appear a lot more stupid than they actually are. BoJo is the acme of the type: few manage to conceal such a sharp brain behind such a buffoonish exterior.
He was the star of AQ. Although he's not as articulate as Huhne or Letts, he puts passion and sparkle into his arguments. If he has a problem it is that he's sometimes too funny, searching for gag openings when he could be scoring serious points.
He deserves to be listened to. For a start, the bloke is clever: I've just finished the book he wrote as a tie-in to his TV series, The Dream of Rome - it's clear, carefully argued and passionate. In fact, I'd say that passion is one of the (carefully concealed) marks of the man. He has the faintest whiff of idealism about him. In the introduction to the book he talks about the duty and necessity of standing for public office if you want to do something about the "thugs and barbarians" who so often achieve power.1
OK, he offends Scousers and people from Papua New Guinea, but he at least seems to say what he thinks, and also to have a mind and moral direction of his own. That's more than you can say for most MPs. I'm reminded of an old cartoon I saw reproduced recently, depicting Churchill and Nye Bevan as giants. They squat across rows of tiny benches on opposite sides of a Lillipution House of Commons, surrounded by their small, faceless colleagues. I'm not suggesting that BoJo has quite that stature, but we should see him as more than just a figure of fun. He has his own mind and he is not afraid to use it. That, alone, makes him a giant in the current political landscape.
After AQ was another bloody awful I've-lost-my-teatowel-oh-there-it-is2 Radio Four "drama". I submitted a play to R4 ages ago and it came back unread. How do I know they didn't read it? I heard a rumour that the BBC Writers Room rejects any new writer who seems to be white, male and European. So, using a Pritt Stick, I stuck together pages nine and ten with a little dollop of glue - just enough so you'd have to make a tiny effort to pull them apart. They were still stuck together when the script came back. Talking to contacts I've subsequently made at the BBC, it seems I made two mistakes:
(a) I failed to call myself Ahmed Akhbar Ali al-Khazi, or, even better, an equivalent female name, and include a cover letter explaining how the play was an exploration of the "issues" I "experienced" as a lesbian transexual growing up in Jalalabad;
(b) I wrote a play in which stuff actually happened, right from the start - i.e., it had a character-driven plot. Fatal mistake.
So, a message for Radio Four: less tea-towel drama about people "exploring" relationships and life-choices and more BoJo, please. Or, failing that, more comedy, which you actually do quite well.
1. I think that's the phrase he used, though I don't have the book in front of me. The particular barbaric thug he was referencing was Charles Clarke. Yes, him. The bloke who thought studying Classics and medieval literature was pointless. I think it's in poor taste to crow when people fall from grace, but I made an exception for Clarke. In fact, I'm still crowing now. I'll only stop crowing when John "Stalin" Reid gets his comeuppance, an event that will be marked by champagne and a small firework party in the Earthman back yard.
2. Not so long ago The Now Show produced a parody Radio Four play in which a woman loses her tea towel and then finds it again. Somewhere on a hill farm in mid-Wales there's a middle-aged radio dramatist banging her head against her desk and mumbling "tea towels...brilliant...why didn't I think of that?"
tags: Boris Johnson, Radio Four, writing
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