Sorry for the crap title.
One of the new-found joys of the shift I am working is the ability to listen to anything other than the sneering of Peter Allen on the radio home – for some reasons I am not in a music-listening mood at the moment. While on Fridays this means the excellent Mark Kermode on 5 Live, on the other days of the week it means Richard Bacon.
Now everyone of a certain age knows what this man is most famous, or should it be infamous for being fired from Blue Peter for snorting coke. Now what you get up to in your own time is your business, but when you knew the puritanical requirements of that show, well…. stupidity doesn’t quite define what he did.
I haven’t followed his career much since, it has to be said, but I do remember him getting a newspaper column in which he attacked one of those ill-advised Christmas Specials they made of Only Fools and Horses (it wasn’t up to its usual standards, but was still, by miles the best thing on BBC that Christmas) and I thought – hang about, you got fired from the BBC for snorting coke, you’ve blown your career, and then you can have a go?
Fast forward to the present, and I listen to his show this week on the drive home. I know he is a fan favourite on Biased BBC blog, one I read to sometimes nod my head and more often to see swivel-eyed tin-hattery in full effect. He once raved about how great a comedian a bloke was, advised people to tune into him on youtube. The thing Bacon found hilarious was a skit on a baby with down’s syndrome….only, of course, the baby was a spawn of Sarah Palin, so that was alright…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdFJ-hFFdI8 (NSFW)
Now different strokes for different folks and all that, but the Biased BBC nutters went off the hook on that one. Me? I think jokes about the disabled really are the worst kind of bullying, for someone with a bully pulpit and with right-on folks braying with them. But they ain’t out to appeal to me, after all… but for Bacon to say this was hilarious, summed the bloke up. When the righteously indignant (and remember this towards the end of the piece) organised a bit of a campaign against him on Twitter and such, he wasn’t happy. See this Huffington Post interview in October…
Being pressed further on the issue of complaint to the BBC, Bacon was asked about Twitter and its role.
“You can whip up a bit of a storm and gather some supporters and get them to complain and before you know it twenty or thirty people have complained to the BBC and then BBC will get very nervous.
“It gives people a louder voice than they sometimes deserve,” he added.
That last point is great on so many levels – one on its alarming lack of self-awareness, and two, when you consider the amount of people it took to get a story he could debate on his show yesterday…coming up below!
Back to the present and the drive home yesterday. The story Bacon was droning on about was some student turning down Oxford. ONE student. The student was a state school candidate, who found the process rude, intimidating and believed it placed her at a disadvantage compared to private school pupils. There then came this hoary old picture painted that the non-state sector all resembled Eton or Winchester, with grand halls, books and stuff, and masters walking around like Wackford Squeers or whatever his name was which gave Bufton-Tufton an advantage because he was used to it. BOLLOCKS.
I went to the non-state sector, and Jesus, we had a main builiding where the roof had blown off! We had no cathedral like assembly hall, the Headmaster’s study was hardly huge, the staff room wasn’t all that, and the classrooms not much either. The building dated to the 1960s, I think, and it was not the lap of luxury. They’ve tarted it up a lot now, but it wasn’t old halls and authoritarian, although it did instil discipline and gave me a good education.
OK, so Bacon’s on this one. The student in question, who prior to this article, I had never heard of ironically goes to a school in Winchester! I wonder which particular private school she’s benchmarking against? As with many teenagers (patronising hat on) she clearly thinks she knows the world and has done a jolly old Millie Tant impression. She has the right to do it, she probably thinks she’s exceptionally clever for doing so, whereas, frankly, I think she comes across as an up her own arse brat. Hey, that’s my view. Any 19 year old who has the arrogance to tell a 550 year old institution how to make itself better, as if there is no dispute she is correct, does leave herself open of accusations of being a bit full of themselves.
But this ticks Bacon’s boxes. A bit of lefty, a bit of an attack on class privilege, and a chance to come across as a witty, sharp, clever interviewer.
He first introduced a bloke who said over 50% of Oxbridge applicants came from the State Sector – a figure that surprised me, to be honest. This was then put into context when considering 93% of children are in the state education system. Yes, yes, yes and that issue will roll on until I die, my nieces and nephews die, and probably their siblings too. Rich people and connected people get the breaks. C’est la vie. Come the revolution we’ll change it, but in the same breath we whinge about that, but seem perfectly content to allow the Toffs running this country to destroy public sector pensions while just tut-tutting when the banks use our bailout funds to pay ANY bonuses…..
Then Bacon turned the debate over to the representative of students at Oxford – the editor of the newspaper Cherwell. Given the topic, given the medium, and given the presenter the individual concerned must have been off her bloody head going on the show.
Bacon kicked off – “So which state school did you attend, Sophie?”
The c*** knew her background, new who and what she was, and he thought he’d make a cheap point at her expense. I swore out loud. I know about privilege, I went to a fee-paying school which my mum and dad paid for through sheer bloody hard work as working class parents (my mum worked in a pub, my dad as a printer) did. That would have me tagged alongside the more toffish element in the world, and if Bacon had asked me that question, here would be my response.
“That’s the tone of this then, coke boy. How many confessed criminals work at the BBC? What state school did you attend, Bacon (Wellow House Prep School and independent school Worksop College)? Why is my academic career relevant to this discussion?”
And then I would have said:
“Given you are going to treat this in as even-handed a way as you have indicated, I am afraid I won’t be carrying on with this interview. And if you want to look at the very definition of a working class, state primary school, I attended Deptford Park Junior up until 1980, not some hoity toity prep school you now seem to sneer at, you self-loathing, pull the ladder up, fucked up your best opportunity but still survived through your sneering lefty claptrap tosser.”
They wouldn’t have had me back.
Of course Oxbridge is snobbery. We know that. And all the while idiots differentiate between their education and that from other institutions then it will continue. Our current PM is from Eton and Oxbridge, and he’s doing a bang-up job! So is our Mayor of London, and we laugh at his buffoonery like some end of the pier act.
I switched over the radio to hear Sir Michael Parkinson begging for money. No wonder my eye test showed some deterioration. My desire to constantly scratch them out after listening to the radio is now affecting my optical health.
