Big scandal around the election of Ruth Padel as Oxford poetry professor. The rival to “Paddle” – as Kirsty Young called her on Desert Island Discs – was the great poet Derek Walcott. Somebody circulated 100 potential voters with photocopies from a 1984 book describing the advances that Walcott made to two women students when he was at Harvard in 1982.
As a result, Walcott withdrew from the election, and Paddle got the job.
In the Sunday Telegraph (17 May) Padel is quoted denying as “ridiculous” claims by a former ~Professor of Poetry (not named) that she had colluded with John Walsh, “a friend and newspaper columnist” to do this. She said: “I used to know John 10 years ago and I see him once a year at parties”.
Walsh is a columnist for the Independent. On 28 April he wrote a deplorably partisan column for the paper. He declared himself a supporter of Padel, and then took a hatchet to Walcott, reprising the 1982 allegations, which were set out in a book called The Lecherous Professor published in 1984. The book is not about Walcott – he features on pages 29-33 and again briefly on p. 36.
Walsh’s cynical column does exactly what the 100 anonymous envelopes did.
So do we have anything but Padel’s word that it wasn’t him?
Some irony was introduced by a Sunday Times piece by the mischievous Sian Griffiths (17 May again), claiming it’s widely known that a Padel poem called “Home Cooking”, which ends with a fuck on the kitchen table after a couple have glazed a Sainsbury’s free-range duck, is about John Walsh. “She did not deny Walsh was the lover”, the ST writes.
Walsh is one of the weaker brethren among columnists, and it’s always been a surprise that he was once literary editor of the Sunday Times. Perhaps that’s why the paper’s journalists are so well-informed about his kitchen activities.
All Sunday’s papers write against Walsh and whoever sent the Walcott photocopies. All, that is, except Emily Dugan in the Independent on Sunday – she contrives to write the story without mentioning him once.
In the Observer Catherine Bennett directs some well-deserved sarcasm towards Walsh (17 May). But she makes a point nobody else has the courage or knowledge to make: Padel is “a mediocre versifier”. That is absolutely right– she’s certainly not in the Carol Ann Duffy class.
Oxford’s decision is a disaster. Ruth Padel is a weak poet – “Home Cooking”, as a subject, suggests that – and she hasn’t got anything interesting to say beyond 600 words. An hour’s lecture won’t amount to much. She’s a conventional thinker, a nineteenth-century leftover. She lives off the boring fact that she is Charles Darwin’s great-great-granddaughter. To her credit, she sounded genuinely upset by Walcott’s withdrawal.
If she thinks the activities of her ex-lover Walsh have “poisoned” her appointment, why doesn’t she just resign?
Come on, Ruth: you’re not going to win the Nobel, as Walcott did. There’s still time to get out.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Thursday, May 14, 2009
No French dictionary at the Guardian?
Monsieur Apache is again dismayed by bad French at the Guardian (see Laura Barton’s efforts with Deneuve, below).
A photo of a Trafigura ship full of toxic chemicals has the words “L’Europe intoxique L’Afrique” painted on its side by Greenpeace.
The Guardian thinks this means that Europe has been “intoxicating” Africa.
“Intoxiquer” in French means “to poison”.
It doesn’t mean you’re making them drunk.
(See 14 May, pages 12-13 – also for a marvellous account of how Trafigura’s lawyers have tried to stifle facts and comment.)
Well, down at the Coup de Poing, we think Trafigura did it.
A photo of a Trafigura ship full of toxic chemicals has the words “L’Europe intoxique L’Afrique” painted on its side by Greenpeace.
The Guardian thinks this means that Europe has been “intoxicating” Africa.
“Intoxiquer” in French means “to poison”.
It doesn’t mean you’re making them drunk.
(See 14 May, pages 12-13 – also for a marvellous account of how Trafigura’s lawyers have tried to stifle facts and comment.)
Well, down at the Coup de Poing, we think Trafigura did it.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
“In a bate”: conservative default culture
You’re a right-wing journalist or blogger in a hurry. You need a cultural reference. You dig down deep, to default culture territory. To all that stuff that’s buried so far down, you hardly know it’s there.
You are Quentin Letts, probably on your third article of the day. And you need to abuse Speaker Martin over his rants in Parliament. You write:
“In the middle of Mr Martin’s bate…”.
His what? Where did that come from?
Rather sadly, M. Apache knows where. From the Jennings and Darbishire books written by Anthony Buckeridge. When form master “Old Wilkie” was angry, he was said to be “in a bate”. Young Apache used to read these books – it all began in 1954 with Jennings Goes to School, and reprints are still being published.
Letts was born in 1963, so he would have started out with Speaking of Jennings!, published in 1973. Or else he picked it up at Haileybury.
But how extraordinary that Quentin Letts should think that Daily Mail readers are likely to respond to antiquated public school slang.
Then there’s Guido Fawkes. He blogs us with Lord (George) Foulkes’ successful attack on BBC presenter Carrie Gracie, when she admitted to a salary of £92K. But in Guido’s world no politician can ever be right, so he blogs the incident under the heading “Foulkes Doesn’t Like It Up Him”. This is from Dad’s Army, whose last new episode was broadcast in 1977. Foulkes showed no sign of being troubled, so the heading makes little sense.
What is it with rightwing culture and the 1970s?
What is Paul Staines?
Paul Staines – Guido – is not a “fascist”, as Nicky Campbell called him, but a rightwing anarchist libertarian. He is also barely articulate, and not very nice.
Another of the same kind, but all too articulate, is historian David Starkey. He was allowed a free run on the Gabby Logan show a couple-three weeks ago. The studio (Gabby was away) loved it – here was a real Oxford professor slagging off Gordon Brown! You could hear the thrill.
It didn’t occur to anyone to ask him a testing question – this was culture, right there in the studio.
The appalling Starkers only knows about one thing – Henry VIII.
Quite why a libertarian anarchist should go for the authoritarian Henry is difficult to work out. But that’s right-wing culture for you.
You are Quentin Letts, probably on your third article of the day. And you need to abuse Speaker Martin over his rants in Parliament. You write:
“In the middle of Mr Martin’s bate…”.
His what? Where did that come from?
Rather sadly, M. Apache knows where. From the Jennings and Darbishire books written by Anthony Buckeridge. When form master “Old Wilkie” was angry, he was said to be “in a bate”. Young Apache used to read these books – it all began in 1954 with Jennings Goes to School, and reprints are still being published.
Letts was born in 1963, so he would have started out with Speaking of Jennings!, published in 1973. Or else he picked it up at Haileybury.
But how extraordinary that Quentin Letts should think that Daily Mail readers are likely to respond to antiquated public school slang.
Then there’s Guido Fawkes. He blogs us with Lord (George) Foulkes’ successful attack on BBC presenter Carrie Gracie, when she admitted to a salary of £92K. But in Guido’s world no politician can ever be right, so he blogs the incident under the heading “Foulkes Doesn’t Like It Up Him”. This is from Dad’s Army, whose last new episode was broadcast in 1977. Foulkes showed no sign of being troubled, so the heading makes little sense.
What is it with rightwing culture and the 1970s?
What is Paul Staines?
Paul Staines – Guido – is not a “fascist”, as Nicky Campbell called him, but a rightwing anarchist libertarian. He is also barely articulate, and not very nice.
Another of the same kind, but all too articulate, is historian David Starkey. He was allowed a free run on the Gabby Logan show a couple-three weeks ago. The studio (Gabby was away) loved it – here was a real Oxford professor slagging off Gordon Brown! You could hear the thrill.
It didn’t occur to anyone to ask him a testing question – this was culture, right there in the studio.
The appalling Starkers only knows about one thing – Henry VIII.
Quite why a libertarian anarchist should go for the authoritarian Henry is difficult to work out. But that’s right-wing culture for you.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
“The threat to democracy…”
No, not the expenses crisis, but people attaching themselves to it for their own purposes. First, Norman Tebbit, who on 12 May gave an exclusive to the Daily Mail in which he proposed not voting for any of the main parties in the European elections, so as to give them both a shock.
He wouldn’t say who you should vote for – but there are only two real options: the BNP, and the UK Independence Party. He can’t advocate UKIP without being thrown out of the Conservative Party, but everyone knows it’s what he means.
On the BNP, the Mail says that he didn’t advocate them, but it’s not put in direct quotes. The same on the Today programme on the morning of the 12th – Jim Naughtie quoted him as saying this, but you didn’t hear Tebbit say it in the interview.
Tebbit does say between quotes that the BNP is “socialist”, and is “Labour with racism”. This sort of madness is consistent with a twist to his mind that he’s always had – back in 1975 he called Michael Foot an advocate of “pure undiluted fascism”.
Tebbit’s move legitimates the far right in British politics. It’s a step towards fascism. We shan’t arrive there, because the far right isn’t (yet) strong enough. But fascism has always needed legitimation from “real” politicians. Tebbit was a minister of some kind from 1979 to 1987.
Oswald Mosley was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1929-1930.
Norman Tebbit was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1985-1987.
Second, airhead journalist Marina Hyde, advertising her new book on airhead celebs who get into politics and like Angelina Jolie go “wandering about Baghdad”, as she put it on the Gabby Logan show on Sunday morning (10 May).
Now that people “literally despise politicians” (is that something you can do not literally?), Marina says that Joanna Lumley gets it right over the Gurkhas, because she is “unsullied by the democratic process”.
Pardon? The democratic process isn’t the problem, it’s what people do within it, which can be sullying.
And Joanna Lumley, talking to Phil Woolas, haunting Westminster, and demanding to talk to Gordon Brown – she’s the one who is committed to the democratic process.
Come on Marina – get the air out of your head and stop saying stupid things about democracy.
He wouldn’t say who you should vote for – but there are only two real options: the BNP, and the UK Independence Party. He can’t advocate UKIP without being thrown out of the Conservative Party, but everyone knows it’s what he means.
On the BNP, the Mail says that he didn’t advocate them, but it’s not put in direct quotes. The same on the Today programme on the morning of the 12th – Jim Naughtie quoted him as saying this, but you didn’t hear Tebbit say it in the interview.
Tebbit does say between quotes that the BNP is “socialist”, and is “Labour with racism”. This sort of madness is consistent with a twist to his mind that he’s always had – back in 1975 he called Michael Foot an advocate of “pure undiluted fascism”.
Tebbit’s move legitimates the far right in British politics. It’s a step towards fascism. We shan’t arrive there, because the far right isn’t (yet) strong enough. But fascism has always needed legitimation from “real” politicians. Tebbit was a minister of some kind from 1979 to 1987.
Oswald Mosley was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1929-1930.
Norman Tebbit was Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, 1985-1987.
Second, airhead journalist Marina Hyde, advertising her new book on airhead celebs who get into politics and like Angelina Jolie go “wandering about Baghdad”, as she put it on the Gabby Logan show on Sunday morning (10 May).
Now that people “literally despise politicians” (is that something you can do not literally?), Marina says that Joanna Lumley gets it right over the Gurkhas, because she is “unsullied by the democratic process”.
Pardon? The democratic process isn’t the problem, it’s what people do within it, which can be sullying.
And Joanna Lumley, talking to Phil Woolas, haunting Westminster, and demanding to talk to Gordon Brown – she’s the one who is committed to the democratic process.
Come on Marina – get the air out of your head and stop saying stupid things about democracy.
Monday, May 4, 2009
John Humphrys: a great mind
On Monday 4 May’s Today, at 8:15 am, interviewing Harriet Harman, JH’s questions implied that Gordon Brown was responsible for the recession and the run on the banks. At 8.55, interviewing Gillian Tett of the FT, he accepts worldwide responsibility for the crisis. For Tett’s brilliant book Fool’s Gold shows how American bankers gave us sub-prime and consequent disaster.
This isn’t something you can be BBC-“balanced” about. Either Gordon Brown did it on his own – the view of everyone from our incompetent cartoonists to Times editorials – or the Americans did it. (Whisper: the second one is right.)
Talking to Harriet Harman, JH said that Brown “actually encouraged – and I use the word advisedly – the sort of crisis we are in with the banks”. Then by continual interruption, and that slightly sinister soft-voiced approach he’s got into latterly, he did his best to stop HH saying that the crisis was “caused internationally”, and was “globally interconnected”.
When Gillian Tett came on at 8.55 he let her say that “In reality the entire system went mad, and we have to fix the system”. Humbly, JH asks: “What’s the first thing we’ve got to do?”
Come on John, you can do better than this! (And I use those words advisedly.)
This isn’t something you can be BBC-“balanced” about. Either Gordon Brown did it on his own – the view of everyone from our incompetent cartoonists to Times editorials – or the Americans did it. (Whisper: the second one is right.)
Talking to Harriet Harman, JH said that Brown “actually encouraged – and I use the word advisedly – the sort of crisis we are in with the banks”. Then by continual interruption, and that slightly sinister soft-voiced approach he’s got into latterly, he did his best to stop HH saying that the crisis was “caused internationally”, and was “globally interconnected”.
When Gillian Tett came on at 8.55 he let her say that “In reality the entire system went mad, and we have to fix the system”. Humbly, JH asks: “What’s the first thing we’ve got to do?”
Come on John, you can do better than this! (And I use those words advisedly.)
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Duffers gets it
So Carol Ann Duffy is to be the new poet laureate. If there is indeed a future for the role –and there are arguments in its favour – then it’s high time we had a woman at the helm. That said, is Duffy an appropriate choice? She’s the obvious choice, popular (a relative term, perhaps), somewhat more of an intellectual than the smug and superior Wendy Cope, whose cosy and infuriatingly ‘accessible’ work is nevertheless limited and facile.
Why is Cope so highly considered? Beyond me. Sophie Hannah would have been a better bet. When Sophie ‘slags off men’ she does it with real wit and humour, unlike Cope’s dreadful seriousness and dull verses. Cope is so self-satisfied, doesn’t it just make you want to vent your spleen?
But for my money, the ideal candidate was (and is!) Pam Ayres. I’m being serious – she’s unpretentious, seriously funny, and appeals to a large constituency. She’s also genuinely quick-witted – as is attested by her live appearances on Just a Minute, with comedy giants such as Paul Merton and the late and dearly-beloved Clement Freud in the vicinity. I used to be sniffy about Ayres, partly because I felt annoyed that poetry had to be reduced to one-dimension, but in her field she’s a star and would make a great laureate. Either her, or someone like her – or you hit a different register altogether and go for someone serious and magisterial. Geoffrey Hill perhaps (he might just be interested, but he’s a man), or Denise Riley, whose wit and intelligence, and sheer philosophical depth, is breathtaking. She probably wouldn’t want the job though – or would find mischievous ways to undermine the brief.
So we end up with Duffy. I saw her read a few years back, with the late, great Robert Creeley. She read mainly from The World’s Wife, those oh-so-‘witty’ aphorisms about the ‘other halves’ of famous men. Thin stuff indeed, but the mixed-gender audience – in my recollection – far preferred her work to Creeley’s laid-back delivery and oratorical brilliance.
There is something dry and deliberate about her poems. You don’t quite believe in the people in the internal monologues, and you aren’t too interested when she speaks in her own voice. She’s not big enough. And the first thing you see on AbeBooks is the York Notes for A-level students reading The World’s Wife, now ten years old. This is poetry that has already been institutionalized.
She’s the logical choice, but it’s a missed opportunity. Ayres or Riley are the serious options, at either end of the spectrum. Oh, well, the public gets the poet it doesn’t deserve, I guess. C’est la vie! Down at the Café Coup de Poing we shall not be raising a cognac. Sorry, Carol Ann.
Why is Cope so highly considered? Beyond me. Sophie Hannah would have been a better bet. When Sophie ‘slags off men’ she does it with real wit and humour, unlike Cope’s dreadful seriousness and dull verses. Cope is so self-satisfied, doesn’t it just make you want to vent your spleen?
But for my money, the ideal candidate was (and is!) Pam Ayres. I’m being serious – she’s unpretentious, seriously funny, and appeals to a large constituency. She’s also genuinely quick-witted – as is attested by her live appearances on Just a Minute, with comedy giants such as Paul Merton and the late and dearly-beloved Clement Freud in the vicinity. I used to be sniffy about Ayres, partly because I felt annoyed that poetry had to be reduced to one-dimension, but in her field she’s a star and would make a great laureate. Either her, or someone like her – or you hit a different register altogether and go for someone serious and magisterial. Geoffrey Hill perhaps (he might just be interested, but he’s a man), or Denise Riley, whose wit and intelligence, and sheer philosophical depth, is breathtaking. She probably wouldn’t want the job though – or would find mischievous ways to undermine the brief.
So we end up with Duffy. I saw her read a few years back, with the late, great Robert Creeley. She read mainly from The World’s Wife, those oh-so-‘witty’ aphorisms about the ‘other halves’ of famous men. Thin stuff indeed, but the mixed-gender audience – in my recollection – far preferred her work to Creeley’s laid-back delivery and oratorical brilliance.
There is something dry and deliberate about her poems. You don’t quite believe in the people in the internal monologues, and you aren’t too interested when she speaks in her own voice. She’s not big enough. And the first thing you see on AbeBooks is the York Notes for A-level students reading The World’s Wife, now ten years old. This is poetry that has already been institutionalized.
She’s the logical choice, but it’s a missed opportunity. Ayres or Riley are the serious options, at either end of the spectrum. Oh, well, the public gets the poet it doesn’t deserve, I guess. C’est la vie! Down at the Café Coup de Poing we shall not be raising a cognac. Sorry, Carol Ann.
Monday, March 2, 2009
Dave Brown – the worst cartoonist in Britain
Dave Brown does big ugly drawings for the Independent. He is their lead cartoonist, and his work is awful. Worse than that, it is disgusting. Currently, he is obsessed by shit.
Last Thursday it was Obama, sinking up to his teeth in a river of shit, waving a toilet roll, and saying “ASK NOT HOW DEEPYOUR COUNTRY’S DOO-DOO IS FOR YOU, BUT … …. GLUG!” At first glance it looks like an attack on Obama (not a good idea at the moment), but you slowly realize it’s meant to be sympathetic towards his economic dilemmas.
He is shown misquoting JFK (“Ask not what your country can do for you…”.), but this is a pretty irrelevant attempt to put a gloss on the basic observation that Obama is “in the shit”. Since that isn’t any truer this week than it was on Inauguration Day, it hardly counts as a revelation. What is truly disturbing is the way every floating turd is drawn with loving care. And there are dozens of them.
On Friday 27th Brown was back again with the brown stuff – but this time it was virtual. The immense back end of a huge cat towers over Alastair Darling, who is saying “…AND TODAY I CAN ANNOUNCE THE CONSTRUCTION OF A £325 bn LITTER TRAY!” The cat’s arsehole is just above his head, with the word “RUMBLE!” next to it. The cat, labelled RBS, is about to pour shit all over the Chancellor.
Can somebody explain to Dave Brown that this is just not funny? There is nothing in it that makes you laugh. No perception, no new understanding of the crisis. We all know what RBS has achieved. If we must follow the ghastly metaphor, RBS, and that nice Sir Fred Goodwin, has already shat on the country, and everybody understands that. The “idea” of the cartoon is that this is a “fat cat”. That is a dead cliché, and D. Brown lacks the wit to bring it back to life.
Go back a few days, and we find Brown attacking Brown. It’s Monday 23 February, and the Oscars were awarded the night before. So here is Gordon accepting an award for “WORST PERFORMANCE IN AN ECONOMIC ROLE” (D. Brown can only write in caps). G. Brown is made to say – á la Kate Winslet – “LEHMAN BROTHERS…BERNARD…SIR JAMES…SIR ALLEN…OH..OH GOD! WHO’S THE OTHER ONE….” and then the dud punchline: “…OH, IT’S ME!”
Again, can someone explain to this deluded idiot that there is a difference between crooks like Bernard Madoff and “Sir” Allen Stanford, and G. Brown? And a difference between G. Brown’s attempts to save the situation, and the way the Bush administration let Lehman Brothers go under?
Cartoons work in an instant of understanding. Anybody following the crisis will instantly register the difference between crooks and incompetence, even if they can’t explain it all immediately. In that moment, the cartoon dies.
D. Brown draws G. Brown as a huge fat sweating woman in a purple dress, with a vast stomach and thighs. There is a reason for drawing G. Brown as fat.
A little while back D. Brown met G. Brown at some event. G. Brown said that he wasn’t really that fat. (He isn’t, either: it’s true, and D. Brown must know it, since he has seen the PM close up.) D. Brown came back with a self-serving little article in the Indy, in which he said that owing to this slight, he would now always draw the PM as fat.
What a sense of humour! What perception! What intelligence! What ego!
(There was a photo of the great artist at his board. He has that flat-faced inexpressive Kevin Pietersen look.)
His first effort after that was about G. Brown’s appearance before a Commons Select Committee. GB is shown leaving the room with his trousers burned away, and his buttocks huge and bare, with a hot-cross bun effect drawn on them. And why? Because he has been sitting in “the hot seat”! Top left, the ever-literate DB has a line about “buns”. This is American for the buttocks. It’s not a word that has ever taken in this country, any more than “butt” has.
Another little problem with DB is that his drawing is so heavy. It’s like a lead weight on the joke (if there is a joke). Truly great cartoonists, like Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman, had a light touch and a line that’s worth looking at. Steve Bell is heavy, but quirky – and of course he’s funny, unlike poor struggling DB, who draws like those amateur artists who have to get in every boring detail.
Worst of all for the supposedly liberal Indy, DB is taking the Tory line on the economic crisis – that it’s somehow all the PM’s fault. Dave, if you can listen and not call us all fat – it’s not true, and people out here know it isn’t.
And do try to get rid of the awful clichés – “hot seat”, “fat cat” and “in the shit” aren’t going to make anybody laugh. Cartoons are supposed to give the person looking at them a new perception in an instant. You haven’t done this for a long time.
Salut!
Last Thursday it was Obama, sinking up to his teeth in a river of shit, waving a toilet roll, and saying “ASK NOT HOW DEEPYOUR COUNTRY’S DOO-DOO IS FOR YOU, BUT … …. GLUG!” At first glance it looks like an attack on Obama (not a good idea at the moment), but you slowly realize it’s meant to be sympathetic towards his economic dilemmas.
He is shown misquoting JFK (“Ask not what your country can do for you…”.), but this is a pretty irrelevant attempt to put a gloss on the basic observation that Obama is “in the shit”. Since that isn’t any truer this week than it was on Inauguration Day, it hardly counts as a revelation. What is truly disturbing is the way every floating turd is drawn with loving care. And there are dozens of them.
On Friday 27th Brown was back again with the brown stuff – but this time it was virtual. The immense back end of a huge cat towers over Alastair Darling, who is saying “…AND TODAY I CAN ANNOUNCE THE CONSTRUCTION OF A £325 bn LITTER TRAY!” The cat’s arsehole is just above his head, with the word “RUMBLE!” next to it. The cat, labelled RBS, is about to pour shit all over the Chancellor.
Can somebody explain to Dave Brown that this is just not funny? There is nothing in it that makes you laugh. No perception, no new understanding of the crisis. We all know what RBS has achieved. If we must follow the ghastly metaphor, RBS, and that nice Sir Fred Goodwin, has already shat on the country, and everybody understands that. The “idea” of the cartoon is that this is a “fat cat”. That is a dead cliché, and D. Brown lacks the wit to bring it back to life.
Go back a few days, and we find Brown attacking Brown. It’s Monday 23 February, and the Oscars were awarded the night before. So here is Gordon accepting an award for “WORST PERFORMANCE IN AN ECONOMIC ROLE” (D. Brown can only write in caps). G. Brown is made to say – á la Kate Winslet – “LEHMAN BROTHERS…BERNARD…SIR JAMES…SIR ALLEN…OH..OH GOD! WHO’S THE OTHER ONE….” and then the dud punchline: “…OH, IT’S ME!”
Again, can someone explain to this deluded idiot that there is a difference between crooks like Bernard Madoff and “Sir” Allen Stanford, and G. Brown? And a difference between G. Brown’s attempts to save the situation, and the way the Bush administration let Lehman Brothers go under?
Cartoons work in an instant of understanding. Anybody following the crisis will instantly register the difference between crooks and incompetence, even if they can’t explain it all immediately. In that moment, the cartoon dies.
D. Brown draws G. Brown as a huge fat sweating woman in a purple dress, with a vast stomach and thighs. There is a reason for drawing G. Brown as fat.
A little while back D. Brown met G. Brown at some event. G. Brown said that he wasn’t really that fat. (He isn’t, either: it’s true, and D. Brown must know it, since he has seen the PM close up.) D. Brown came back with a self-serving little article in the Indy, in which he said that owing to this slight, he would now always draw the PM as fat.
What a sense of humour! What perception! What intelligence! What ego!
(There was a photo of the great artist at his board. He has that flat-faced inexpressive Kevin Pietersen look.)
His first effort after that was about G. Brown’s appearance before a Commons Select Committee. GB is shown leaving the room with his trousers burned away, and his buttocks huge and bare, with a hot-cross bun effect drawn on them. And why? Because he has been sitting in “the hot seat”! Top left, the ever-literate DB has a line about “buns”. This is American for the buttocks. It’s not a word that has ever taken in this country, any more than “butt” has.
Another little problem with DB is that his drawing is so heavy. It’s like a lead weight on the joke (if there is a joke). Truly great cartoonists, like Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman, had a light touch and a line that’s worth looking at. Steve Bell is heavy, but quirky – and of course he’s funny, unlike poor struggling DB, who draws like those amateur artists who have to get in every boring detail.
Worst of all for the supposedly liberal Indy, DB is taking the Tory line on the economic crisis – that it’s somehow all the PM’s fault. Dave, if you can listen and not call us all fat – it’s not true, and people out here know it isn’t.
And do try to get rid of the awful clichés – “hot seat”, “fat cat” and “in the shit” aren’t going to make anybody laugh. Cartoons are supposed to give the person looking at them a new perception in an instant. You haven’t done this for a long time.
Salut!
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