I promised myself when I started this blog that I would try and make the entries as anonymous as possible. Mentioning no names of friends and family (the rest of you are fair game) and no attempt at sixth form poetry or diary like soul searching: I did all that crap in my first year at Uni and the repetitious rantings and promises bored even myself . . . eventually.
However, if I am to keep using this blog and if it is to be a bit more than a daily list of favourite current tunes, crisp flavours and colours* then I need to bleed on the page a bit more. Don't worry - not to excess. Too much blood, snot and tears and the words get blurred and unreadable. Just a snippet here and there to give some context and place to what I am doing at this moment in time.
Yesterday I pushed the boat out and sent out shedloads of emails to advertise that a colleague would be featured on a roundtable discussion meeting at midnight on Richard Bacon's Radio 5 show on the legacy of Thatcher, since next month's is 25 years since she was first elected Prime Minister.
It was the usual sort of round robin email that I have sent in the past. Inartfully written, overly self-deprecating (comedy as a defence mechanism, anyone?) and sent to every bugger I could think of - whether they would be interested or not.
Come nine o'clock yesterday evening, I decided to put my head down for a couple of hours to make sure I was suitably refreshed to hear him sucker punch all and sundry on the show. Eleven o'clock I wake up and go downstairs only to meet him, and for him to inform me that we were bumped off the show by the Radio 5 producers 'cos they already have someone else in place. I can tell he is a bit gutted so I shrug it off, and just mouth platitudes along the lines of "maybe next time?"
I then go into a nano-second panic, knowing that I will have to email all those buggers and discussion lists again to mention that our name was not on the list, we are not getting on. Too much self-deprecation in one day is bad for the soul, but it has to be done. Later hear from a couple of colleagues that we have been bumped for a member of the SWP**, and take the plunge of listening to the playback of the discussion on the internet.
The bod from the SWP was Roger Cox - a longstanding leading cadre of that organisation whose membership dates back to the late fifties when the SWP was still known as the Socialist Review Group. He was up against a clown, called Andre Walker, from a Conservative Party right wing think tank organisation. Andre is centrally cast from the 'Tory Boy Agency'. Also sitting in on the discussion a piece of eye candy called Anna Boulter - eye candy ain't much use on radio but for research purposes I looked her pic up on the internet ;-) - who is apparently a journalist and came out with the classic line in repsonse to Roger Cox's subBenEltonroutinefromtheeightiesofwhyitsallThatch'sfault***: "If you hated Margaret Thatcher so much - why didn't you leave the country?" **** And there was you a sentence ago thinking I was a sexist arsehole for referring to her as 'eye candy'. ;-)
The discussion was suitably depressing. Cox couldn't bring himself to mention the C word - capitalism for those of you slow on the uptake, and you just knew that if he had been on in his Respect Coalition guise, he probably wouldn't have mentioned the S word either.
Forty years a politico and it pissed me off how inept Cox was in debate, failing miserably in even dishing out a few low blows to his opponents. He was easily flustered, talked over and was quickly pigeonholed into the role of simply opposing anything his opponents were saying. (And vice versa). It was the usual left versus right type word-fest, and in truth they could have got anyone in, to the left of Peter Mandelson, to play out the role of the token lefty and they wouldn't have said anything much different on the issues from what Cox said during the debate.
I'll need to keep my eye on the SWP press and website next couple of days to see if they mention it and what their take was on the discussion. However, the discussion was small beer, so I'd be surprised if I see any reference to it.
Walker, who sounded like - and was in fact - someone fresh from student politics brayed in capital letters and his debating technique was to speak very LOUD over his opponent and to speak in generalities. My colleague would have eaten him alive. Radioland missed the chance of some bloodsports last night.
It says something when after the show, and its fragmented and bitty discussion which shone no light on the subject, that I felt a modicum of sympathy for the Swoppie - despite his piss poor performance and politics, and thought that Richard Bacon - a bloke I usually loathe - was the most sympathetic person in the studio.
* For the record, Cinnamon's 'World Of Crime' . An old tune from Swedish Cardigan's wannabes, who do it better than the Cardies; Golden Wonder's Sausage and Tomato. It's their scarcity but occasional availability that pushes them up my crisp chart past Marmite and Steak 'n' Onion (which are scarce to the point of invisibility); favourite colour? Who in truth has a favourite colour? Except Barbara Cartland who was as soppy as a box of frogs.
**Socialist Workers Party, otherwise known as Students Waving Placards or the Sad Wankers Posse.
*** Said in a strangulated and fake cockernee accent. The words are deliberately bunched together. The blog is sub-titled 'out of breath' after all. ;-)
**** Loved the comeback from an American comedian to a heckler that I recently read on another blog:
To American Stand Up Comedian
Heckler: "If you hate America so much, why don't you leave the country?"
Comic: "What . . . And become a victim of our Foreign Policy?"
