Well hello to you all and welcome to another instalment of this fine blog, well I don’t have a right to call it fine I suppose but I enjoy it so I shall declare it as fine. Hope you are all well and superb and enjoying this unseasonably nice weather of late, a rather welcome change from the deluge of wind of rain we have been enduring.
Anywho to important matters, the subject of this weeks blog I have been thinking very hard about what exactly should be my next subject, do I continue my diatribe against the train companies or manners in general being in decline, do I rant vitriolically about the fact that Max Clifford was shown on my tv screen at 10am yesterday morning without any prior warning? Or perhaps an article about everything that’s wrong with the phrase “Britain’s got talent” alas all of these were shoved into insignificance by an article in yesterday’s Mail on Sunday about one of my comedic blogging idols the wonderful Sandi Toksvig.
Now those who are regulars visitors to my bloggy-space (Which sounds a good deal cruder than I intended it to!) will know a few months back I wrote a piece about why the BBC should not be giving in to small-minded middle England bigots who, from what I can tell, sit around watching TV desperate to find something to complain about. In this particular instance the MOS front page (Need I remind you that at the moment people are catching E-Coli across Central Europe from diseased beansprouts and a volcano is going off in South America) carried a banner headline referring to a joke Ms Toksvig made on The News Quiz in October 2010 about “It’s the Tories who put the N in cuts”. Now I am not opposed to salacious tittle-tattle, far from it whenever I have been away from the office almost my first request on getting back is not “How are you?” but “Give me the gossip!”, I often think my life would be meaningless without gossip and bitchiness but it just staggers me that such a non-story that is comprised almost entirely of a tissue of lies was deemed worthy to go on the front page of Britain’s best selling Sunday newspaper.
The joke itself received the grand total of 1 complaint but it transpires that this complaint was from a Daily Mail reader who felt compelled to share this with the paper who genuinely felt this story had legs. So much so that not only was its front page devoted to the unfortunate Ms Toksvig but also a total of 7 pages within the newspaper all aimed at the BBC for rejecting (quite correctly) this complaint. What I find most interesting, however, is their grounds for rejection, the complaint was not turned away on the grounds, as I would have, of the complainant clearly being a mad Middle-Englander who’d eaten too much tweed, but because the word (Which let us not forget was not mentioned, Ms Toksvig could have just as simply meant “Nuts” by her joke) is deemed to no longer cause as much offense as once it did. Now this to me is a very interesting idea, after all the majority of the swearers lexicon now seems positively commonplace, I was at the football a few weeks back and one gentleman on the terraces I’m fairly certain failed to use any adjective other than f***, f***** & f****** all match and at no point was he chastised. For some reason the “c word” seems to have special status as being the final taboo, the word that must never be uttered, and quite right it’s a horrible word but honestly I don’t think I’m offended by it, and genuinely I don’t see what there is to be offended in by a word.
If we bear in mind one of the biggest TV hits of this year has been Danish serial “The Killing” on BBC4 which has done the world of good for Danish TV and jumpers from The Faroe Islands. Now this show is all based around the brutal rape and murder of a 19 year old Scandinavian girl and the subsequent investigation, it’s undoubtedly brilliant but if you’re telling me people will sit and watch and enjoy this but be offended by coarse language in this day and age I’m afraid I don’t understand it. There are plenty of words I dislike like “fistula” or “scabies” but they aren’t offensive I just avoid them in my lexicon because I hate the way they sound. The English language is a beautiful thing and we are so lucky to have it, so lets stand up against these Daily Mail reading luddites and accept that words cannot offend, context can offend and little rocks thrown at you can offend but words should not, after all they’re just a collection of letters. And should any MOS journalist stumble across my words here, go away and work on a proper piece of reporting, make a change from the ridiculous lies and half-truths you usually publish!
This week Matt:
· Started making final preparations for his holiday, packed the straw donkey and the sombrero!
· Went for an “Interesting” meal for Mark’s birthday with sex-mad Japanese chefs.
· Spent Friday teaching Tim to play Cluedo……. and failing.
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