Author: James Lark

In his latest novel The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, Philip Pullman, who famously pissed off a lot of Christians with the His Dark Materials trilogy, continues his vendetta against Christianity (the source of which remains something of a mystery). And although I suspect this book is rather less commercial, it certainly seems designed to round up any of the Christians who weren’t pissed off before and make sure they’re properly pissed off this time.

It’s not that he re-imagines the Gospel with Jesus and Christ as two people, attributing all the nice things Jesus said to the first whilst Christ takes on the role of tempter/Satan/Judas; it isn’t even that ‘Christ’ fakes the resurrection after Jesus is crucified (though that does seem like the Easter equivalent of a big ‘bah, humbug!’). Most Christians have spent too long enjoying The Life of Brian and The Last Temptation of Christ to be upset by such petty blasphemy. The thing that’s much more likely to get them riled is the suggestion that in faking the resurrection to carry on Jesus’ work, ‘Christ’ creates the church – i.e., the modern church is the spawn of Satan.

Provocative though the wrapping paper is, I can’t help but think that this flogged horse is already a little bit dead. It’s an idea based on two tiresome fallacies: first, the Dawkinsian* [*Just made this term up. Am sticking with it.] idea that the church wields power and influences people, therefore the church is bad. It’s not an idea that stands up to much scrutiny – the government wields power, it doesn’t mean that government is bad. Every teacher in the country has influence of sorts – are teachers therefore bad? Indeed, Dawkins himself ought to be victim of his own criticism, given the numbers in which his books sell – and the same goes for Mr Pullman. It’s not authority that is bad, but the abuse of authority – something which the church clearly has to deal with and be aware of, but so must the government, teachers, Dawkins and Pullman. The solution is not to get rid of the church, or indeed the government, teachers, Dawkins and Pullman (and in the Big Brother house, I’m pretty sure the church wouldn’t be out first, either).

Second, giving ‘Jesus’ all the nice things to say rests on the naïve ideal that Christianity’s qualities hinge around its niceness – the patronising atheist view that what Jesus said was totally, like, yeah, but he didn’t have to go rocking the boat and upsetting people and getting crucified. Well, bollocks to that: Jesus said ‘love one another’, but love is not always the same as nice, as anybody who has loved knows. Jesus overturned ancient traditions and (literally) overturned tables in the temple to make his point, and people got upset when he said he was doing it in the name of God. It’s that ‘arrogance’ that Dawkins rails against now, and I’ll admit it’s pretty galling when an American President invades the Middle East and says God told him to; on the other hand, people got really pissed off about Martin Luther King (and Martin Luther, lest we forget) and I don’t doubt that both of them did God’s work, even at the risk of their lives.

Pullman’s conceit is very convenient, for sure: he’s taking the bits of Christianity he likes and giving them the stamp of approval, whilst continuing his tirade against the aspects of Christianity that annoy him. And wouldn’t we like to do that with everything? I’d happily divide Philip Pullman the fine children’s writer, who has continued a grand tradition of bringing good writing and weighty concepts to a young audience, from Philip Pullman the bore, whose The Amber Spyglass lets said weighty concepts take over and as a result is flabby, overlong and is a hugely disappointing finale to the first two books in the trilogy; Philip Pullman the humanitarian, who clearly has a set of laudable moral values and despises oppression in all its forms, against Philip Pullman the hypocrite, who will proselytise against C. S. Lewis’ ‘Christian propaganda’ yet serve up far more polemic material as children’s literature.

It doesn’t work like that. Jesus Christ, singular, left the church to carry on his work. His message actually doesn’t work without the church, and the church, by necessity, is staffed with human beings. Human tend to fuck up, and yes, when that happens in the church that’s bad. But some of them – a lot of them, God willing – get it right a lot of the time. It’s easy to lose sight of the day-to-day success of the church given that it doesn’t make much of a news headline, but it’s there. Try to take the Christ away from Jesus and you really are left with a very empty bath and a very angry Mother.

Similarly, we’re left with Philip Pullman, singular. A good writer? Sometimes. A good man? Well, he obviously means well. But we all know what the road to hell is paved with.

Pompous fiction, amongst other things.

Those of you who haven’t been paying attention to Sport Relief (which is like Comic Relief with more running and climbing) missed out on a series of what this article generously describes as ‘comic skits’ featuring Gavin and Stacey‘s James Corden.

In what the same article actually describes as a ‘hilarious skit’, Corden is seen with David Beckham wearing fluffy dressing gowns, preening, arranging flowers and sitting in bed crying at the video of Scott and Charlene’s wedding. The joke is that they’re gay.

In another ‘comic skit’, Corden is seen beating Andy Murray at tennis, returning the ball while doing other things like talking on his mobile phone and reading. The joke is that Andy Murray is actually really good at tennis.

In another, we see Corden running a warm-up for the Manchester United squad. The joke is… um… well, I haven’t actually worked out what the joke is in this one; I thought it might be that James Corden is a fat man doing a warm-up, but I think that’s kind of more his comedy gimmick than a joke in itself.

Yeah, it pisses me off that under the guise of charity we’re supposed to find these ‘comic skits’ funny purely because there are famous sporting people involved when none of them rise above the level of Jeremy Beadle’s Hot Shots (you remember, the show where the public sent in their home made films to the delight of the ex-grinning bearded loony) (in fact, I’m pretty sure I remember seeing the tennis skit on that); but I’ll have to live with it because it seems such skits are the staple of any charity event (though why people can’t just give the money to charity and watch proper TV beats me).

But I have genuine concerns about the undertones of the Beckham sketch, especially in a sports-related event basically aimed at children. I’d describe it as homophobic, except that it’s too shoddily put together to be deliberate – but what are we actually supposed to be laughing at, given the lack of actual jokes? Presumably it is simply the fact that two men are acting like they’re in a relationship (two men in a bed? but that’s crazy!!!) and are also being, like, really gay (flower arranging?! but they’re men!!!). Moreover, one of them is a famous footballer – and it’s not like a footballer could be gay, is it?!? I mean, that would be ridiculous!!!

So in the name of a good cause, let’s lazily reinforce a few stereotypes, both of gay people (like flower arranging, cry at Neighbours) and of sportsmen (actually really butch, actually never gay) and on those grounds put it out as a ‘hilarous comic skit’ for the delight of all children except the one who likes flower arranging because he’s going to go through the rest of his school life being called ‘gay’ and not being allowed to join in with games of football.

At the same time, James Corden is praised for his humanitarian efforts and lauded as a comic icon, which probably makes him good for another sketch show as far as the BBC is concerned, when it’s clear he hasn’t got an original idea in his head or a funny bone in his body. And before you protest that you love Gavin and Stacey: when people rave about Gavin and Stacey they invariably invoke Rob Brydon or some hilarious Welsh accent or this really funny thing that a Welsh person did. The Welsh bits are the Stacey bits. James Corden writes the Gavin bits. The Gavin bits aren’t funny.

How many James Cordens would it take to pay for BBC6 music? I’m thinking not many. And that, friends, is a fucking travesty.

Am I the only person that cares that BBC7 broadcast the final episode of the superb In the Chair with the last five minutes missing (and, oddly, substituted with the last minute of a different episode altogether)?

Certainly the BBC don’t care, as I emailed them about it and nobody replied.

And nobody else has mentioned it.

Yet this was the last five minutes of a murder mystery. Which presumably contained some final reveal, an unmasking, a pay-off. It is probably going to drive me mad.

Unless I buy the bloody thing on CD. Which is perhaps what the BBC intended all along.

Alright then, I’ll buy it. But when BBC7 is threatened with closure by the DG, I won’t be signing any petitions.

Network Rail say that there should be obligatory questions about level crossings in the driving theory test, due to the number of people making last-minute dashes across level crossings every year.

No, Network Rail, no. The drivers doing the frankly terrifying things on the above BBC report are not risking their lives because they don’t know about level crossings. They are doing it because, pure and simple, they are twats.

These are the same drivers who weave in and out of lanes at 110mph on the motorway; the ones who speed onto roundabouts to nip ahead of approaching cars; the ones who drive at 45mph in residential areas and occasionally kill people.

It’s not that I care if they get hit by a train. It may sound heartless, but it is factually undeniable that they deserve to die. It’s the people around them who don’t, and that’s why the solution has bugger all to do with the theory test. The solution is to make it illegal and take people’s licenses off them when they do it – plain and simple, same as drink driving and for exactly the same reasons.

It wouldn’t sort out the idiotic schoolkids featured at the end of the report, but it would be a start.

A Year 7 group went a little off the rails in a composition workshop I did with them last week, so it was pure joy to turn up today to a heap of letters of apology, apparently written under the impression that I might be too upset to ever come back and teach them again.

It is a glorious catalogue of illiteracy and finger pointing, but a few deserve special mention, like the boy who wrote:

I appoligise for talking when you were talking and to prove i can stick to this appoligy i will not make commentes on anything you say and if someone is talking or doing anything inapropreat i will leave them alone and let them get in trouble

Next up, a fine demonstration of laying the blame elsewhere (a future politician, I reckon):

I am sorry for the very childish behavior (sic) of my fellow class mates. They behaved very silly and I hope they will treat you with more respect.

My personal favourite makes reference to an incident when I was trying to demonstrate how a minor key could make a song sound sad:

…I am also sorry about Matthew saying “Emily said thats the sort of thing emos listen to” and am sorry for that disrupting the class what I actually said was “that sound like he’s realy deppresed”. Then to myself “kind of emo style” (as we were thinking about styles)

Finally, a special mention for the girl who signs her letter “many sinful apologies…”. Wouldn’t expect anything less in a faith school.

Lest this blog become a series of rants about Woman’s Hour, and following another road rage incident this morning, I have decided to set up a different blog exposing the horrific gender stereotyping that goes on for an hour each weekday on BBC Radio 4.

It is here.

I realise that, in order for this undertaking to succeed, I am going to have to listen to Woman’s Hour on a regular basis. Deliberately. And yes, it might drive me actually mad. It might even kill me. But maybe, just maybe, I’ll take this evil fossil of a radio programme with me, and I am prepared to take that bullet for the good of humankind, single-issue male stereotype that I am.

Hurray! I’m a man after all.

I know that publicity tends to exaggerate, but companies ought to know that there are limits. Today a brochure for “haart of bedford” (sic) dropped onto my doormat, advertising their services as estate agents; whichever consultancy firm came up with their slogans made an unfortunate miscalculation with this one:

there’s never been a better time to buy your new home. (sic)

Given how widely it has been reported that the exact opposite is true, I think that could be what we call stretching credulity too far…

One of the problems of driving a car is that I occasionally find myself listening to a radio programme that I would never consider turning on in other circumstances but which is so compellingly dreadful that I have to keep listening. Undoubtedly the biggest culprit, which invariably sees me yelling at my car radio and crashing into road barriers, is Woman’s Hour.

What is this programme even for? Is it there because the rest of Radio 4’s heady mix of politics, analysis, culture, drama and gardening just won’t appeal to the poor dears who stay at home to bathe the children and peel the potatoes? Of course, we don’t need a Gentleman’s Hour – we have The World At One in which serious issues of the day are discussed; but thank goodness that Radio 4 have put aside an hour, at least, for those of lesser intellect to hear about more domestic, frivolous concerns.

One recent edition that nearly made me throw my car off a motorway bridge had Emma Thompson’s mother telling a truly horrendous anecdote about a time she inserted a clove of garlic into her bottom to cure her piles, but – my! – imagine the dreadful smell when she passed wind! Is that really suitable subject matter for daytime radio? Is it? IS IT?

But it’s not the sheer randomness and silliness of the content that drives me up the wall. It is the fact that this programme is habitually sexist in a way that even Jeremy Clarkson couldn’t get away with; even if the programme’s very existence didn’t implicitly reinforce a gender stereotype, its discussions regularly take a whole load other other mythical gender distinctions and shamelessly repeat them as if they’re scientific fact.

I was pretty damn cross about last week’s “why women want a bigger kitchen” discussion (why, pray, am I not allowed a bigger kitchen too?) but yesterday went a whole step further in a discussion of “why women don’t write as many letters to newspapers as men do”.

First up with a neat answer was Sarah Sands of the London Evening Standard, who explained that “time is a big issue”. Apparently, women don’t write letters to newspapers because “they’re just too busy”.

Doing what, exactly? At no point did Ms Sands stop to explain what it is that means that men are so much less busy than women, except in a vague sentence that seemed to imply that all men are students or retired. She clearly has an unquestioningly Wodehousian world view in which women do all the work while men sit around writing letters to the Telegraph.

Without pausing to justify her illogical theory, she went on to add that with women “there’s this innate modesty” which means they’re less prepared to mouth off about things which annoy them. Which is so laughably inaccurate that I might have chuckled heartily, but for the fact that the Observer‘s Stephen Pritchard leapt in to agree that “women have a natural desire to be more considered and reflective”, a brazen fallacy compounded by the patronising edge in his voice which suggested that he was prepared to tell the little ladies what they wanted to hear if it kept them out of the way while us men got on with running the country.

Not one to make a sweeping generalisation about women without modestly dragging his own gender through the mud, Pritchard added: “men are single-issue people… we tend to be incredibly blinkered!” Unlike, presumably, Sarah Sands of the London Evening Standard who believes that women do all the work in the world. In the same simpering tone which, horrifically, seemed calculated to forge a path into Jenni Murray’s knickers, he went on that “women have this tremendous ability to do half a dozen things at once which men certainly don’t share!”

How bloody dare he!!! I couldn’t do my job if I wasn’t able to do half a dozen things at once! Besides which, if women are able to do half a dozen things at once, why aren’t they writing letters to newspapers at the same time as doing all those other things they’re so busy with?

I’m the last person to advocate equality as sameness and know that, broadly speaking, men and women have important physical and emotional differences. But if you were to believe the sweeping, self-contradictory, discriminatory, patronising crap spouted about men and women on Woman’s Hour you would form a view of gender that was last fashionable around the beginning of the 20th century, the very thing that women chained themselves to railings to escape from in a brave yet apparently uncharacteristically single-issue manner.

The feminist in me is half-inclined to chain myself to railings outside Broadcasting House until Radio 4 pull the programme from the airwaves, but time is an issue as I’m so busy, so instead I have written a considered, reflective blog about it (I’m too innately modest to write to the Telegraph).

Shit – I’m a woman.

I am not entirely surprised by the success of Fox’s celebrated, Golden Globe-winning series Glee, merely rather depressed. For those of you who have been spared it so far, the concept is this (imagine it scribbled on a napkin): a Spanish teacher takes over the school’s Glee Club (that is what Americans call a school choir) which includes a group of misfits who argue, make up and then, to round off each episode, sing.

The same napkin would certainly also have had space for the everso predictable character breakdown – there’s the cool kid who plays football but deep down would rather be singing, and the pretty girl who’s a bit individual so gets picked on by the sporty girls; then there’s the sassy, streetwise girl and the nerdy-boy-who-gets-bullied. And just to make sure a few minorities are covered, there’s disabled boy and Asian girl (“what’s your skill?” asked cool kid at one point; “er…” she stuttered in broken English. “Never mind,” he interrupted with a patronising grin, “we’ll find something!”)

But it isn’t the cynical, school-drama-plus-music-by-numbers formula that depressed me. It is the fact that the series has not one iota of wit or irony. For example, in an early scene we saw the Spanish teacher sit up in bed with a big grin as he had a flash of inspiration for the Glee Club’s new name – “Of course!” he gasped, “New Directions!” – and I laughed out loud because I thought it was a deliberate joke that the character had just uttered a name unfortunately close in sound to “Nude Erections”. I was already imagining the hilarious results that were about to ensue when the hapless teacher announced his Nude Erections to the football team.

But no; having no sense of irony (and in this instance self-awareness), the programme evidently expected us to share the teacher’s eureka moment and gasp in delight at his perfect idea. Gee! New Directions! How… fresh!

In another scene, the newly-reformed and unfortunately-titled Glee Club performed a pretty decent rendition of Sit Down You’re Rocking the Boat; as it finished, nerdy kid announced without irony, “we suck”. And instead of leaping in and reassuring them “no way, most schoolkids would kill to be able to sing that well together, in tune and with so much energy on no rehearsal!” the Spanish teacher just nodded with a wry, disappointed smile and said that they would get better.

How were we supposed to know that their runthrough was, within the non-ironic, sugary world of the drama, a disaster? All became clear when, in a totally unforseeable development at the end of the episode, they all sorted out their problems and learned how to sing in a way that didn’t suck. Because then we heard what good singing is meant to sound like: backing harmonies close-miked and compressed to the point that they cease to sound like human voices and undoubtedly supplemented by several professional singers, lead vocals auto-tuned, given an artificial acoustic and mixed as flatteringly as possible with the professional backing group which had miraculously appeared to replace their earlier lone pianist. The kind of sound no school ensemble, however good, would EVER make.

In another context I might have thought it was a deliberate moment of high camp, suspension-of-disbelief silliness and it might have been funny, or at least bearable, but naturally I was meant to be in floods of non-ironic tears and it was all I could do not to choke on my scowl.

No doubt in future weeks the Spanish teacher will find true love, the cool kid will realise there’s more to life than football and get it on with the pretty girl, the nerdy kid will be accepted for who he is, the Asian girl will learn to speak English and the disabled boy will learn to walk. (The sassy girl will stay exactly the same.) I’m going to give it a miss – if I want to watch a genuinely moving people-taught-to-sing drama I’ll watch Young At Heart, and if I want the camp version there’s Sister Act.

And anyone who thinks I’m being snobbish should know that I watched Legally Blonde the Musical last week and loved every second.

I awoke to this rather depressing story about a man who was arrested under the terrorist act for tweeting the message “Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together, otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

Good work, South Yorkshire Police. At least we know that our airports are safe from Mr Paul Chambers in Doncaster. And that police are being paid to interrogate his kind of scum for seven hours. Who needs intelligence when you’ve got the South Yorkshire Police? Good old South Yorkshire Police.

When I read the story, I decided that I would have to leave the country unless all charges are dropped against Paul Chambers – because, cliche though it may be, if we can’t tweet jokes about terrorism, the terrorists have won. Indeed, in a sense the state (and the South Yorkshire Police) have become terrorists themselves.

I was about to tweet something to that effect when I realised it would be much funnier to tweet the following: “Unless all charges against Paul Chambers are dropped, I’m blowing Robin Hood airport sky high!!”

And then it occurred to me that if I did tweet that, the South Yorkshire Police might come down in force to Bedford and lock me up under the terrorist act. I dared myself to do it all the same, because that would be funny, and would certainly draw attention to the sense-of-humour failure that threatens to destroy our country. But I’m a busy person and it would be really bloody inconvenient to get arrested; also, I expect my family would disapprove.

So I didn’t tweet at all. Because I was scared of being arrested.

Darn – the terrorists have won already.