Talk To Rex

I have already ranted about former-broadsheet-turned-caky-rag The Daily Telegraph‘s increasingly hypocritical, unjournalistic and exploitative content, in a blog post which caused one petulant reviewer to suggest that I have a ‘tin ear for journalistic irony’.

Perhaps I do. It would certainly explain my confusion at the Telegraph‘s apparent pride at what they call ‘disclosures’ that there are some Lib Dem MPs who don’t like all the decisions the coalition government have made, or who don’t necessarily like David Cameron. Is this actually another example of supreme journalistic irony? Perhaps we’re meant to be in tears of laughter at the hilarious suggestion that we could possibly be surprised by such a revelation.

Maybe we’re also supposed to find the breach of MP/constituent confidentiality delightfully ironic. It would make more sense of their laughable use of the word ‘investigation’ instead of ‘stitch-up’, or their use of ‘undercover’ instead of ‘underhand’.

But for me the ultimate irony comes with the news that the four MPs in question have apologised. Apologised for what exactly? They were perfectly entitled to say what they did in the context of a private conversation. The only people who ought to be apologising are the ‘undercover’ ‘journalists’ involved (my use of inverted commas indicates irony, in case you have a tin ear), not to mention Tony Gallagher, the paper’s editor, who presumably condoned their actions (which has incidentally undermined one of the fundamental foundations of trust in our democracy). If Santa dumps a sack full of shit down each of their chimneys this Christmas it’ll be no more than they deserve – and no, I don’t mean that ironically.

The magnanimity and eloquence of the completely unnecessary apologies made by the MPs in question does credit to both the Lib Dems and the government, for which I now find myself feeling both sympathy and respect. After the last few weeks, that really is ironic.

…it seemed too good to waste.

A dolphin who tried to convince
His keeper to let him eat quince
Said “Don’t let it spoil –
You know that I’m royal
‘Cos ‘dauphin’ is Flemish for ‘Prince'”.

I was on a tube train to South Wimbledon not so long ago and found myself preoccupied for some time by the view opposite, as pictured above. Not so much by the tube map as by the notice printed next to it, which I initially thought was one of those wonderful poems on the underground but which quickly transpired to be an advert for a book of poems by a man called Felix Dennis which, if the example printed is anything to go by, I won’t be forking out for this Christmas.

The journey to South Wimbledon was plenty long enough to draft a response to Mr Dennis’ questions.

Viz. your poem about the tree:

Tell me – do they print this crap?

A footnote: I can understand Sir Paul McCartney getting all moist about this poetry, since as a wordsmith he still aspires to such sophistication, and Stephen Fry can’t help but be nice about everyone (though I wish he’d restrained himself on this occasion). But what to say of this?

Really, Tom Wolfe? I mean – really??? Is this statement doing either Kipling or the 21st Century any favours at all?

I wanted to like it. I really did. It’s narrated by Derek Jacobi, for crying out loud. But In The Night Garden is the most depressing piece of television I’ve seen since the-one-where-it-took-David-Tennant-three-hours-to-regenerate.

If you’re not in the know (and believe me unless you have children there’s absolutely no reason why you should be), this is a programme from Andrew Davenport and Anne Wood, producers of Teletubbies, who have said that they ‘wanted to explore the difference between being asleep and being awake from a child’s point of view: the difference between closing your eyes and pretending to be asleep and closing your eyes and sleeping.’ The way in which this pretentious concept realises itself on the screen is with a little girl in bed imagining a character called Igglepiggle sailing in a tiny boat (Igglepiggle is a wonky blue character who could pass for a foetal Teletubby). The stars turn into flowers and suddenly Igglepiggle is leaping through the Night Garden, which is essentially a wooded version of Teletubby land. (Clearly, even when exploring the world of dreams, Davenport and Wood have rather limited imaginations.)

And then… well, things just sort of happen. A train thing called a Ninky Nonk clatters its way over the turf, as Sir Derek giggles ‘oh no, it’s the Ninky Nonk!’ Some wooden animated characters called the Pontipines come out of their house one at a time, then dance to tinkly synthesised music. Some CGI birds on a tree nod their heads in time to some tinkly synthesised music. Igglepiggle comes on and Sir Derek sings (rather badly) to some tinkly synthesised music the following information:

‘Yes my name is Igglepiggle
Iggle-piggle-wiggle-wiggle-piggle,
Yes my name is Igglepiggle
Iggle-piggle-wiggle-wiggle-woo.’

And so it goes on. I only watched one episode, though in fairness it was half an hour long (which frankly explains why there’s so much bloody dancing in it – padding, it’s called) but I imagine each of the 100 episodes follows a similar pattern of the same disconnected occurrences accompanied by tinkly music and nonsense words. A sort of story did emerge after 17 minutes involving the loss of Igglepiggle’s blanket (he was too busy dancing to see where it went), but it’s fair to say that this programme is thin on narrative.

And indeed thin on content. The whole ethos of the programme, like Teletubbies, seems to be that the more random, gaudy things there are moving about on the screen, the more distracting it will be for the young people who have been put in front of it to stare gormlessly at a screen for half an hour (half an hour!). Hence the meaningless succession of things happening without any development of ideas – it’s as lightweight and brain-dead as a noisy action film about robots hitting each other.

Children’s television wasn’t always thus.

It’s hard to find an exact comparison in the television of yesteryear, since very little television was aimed at such a young age range (parents still had this old-fashioned idea of letting their children explore real things before plopping them in front of moving pictures; my friend’s mother used to sit him in front of the washing machine if he wanted colourful things moving about in front of him). The makers of In the Night Garden would possibly cite The Magic Roundabout as an influence, and one of their random colourful objects is a rotating pagoda (an homage? Or a rip-off?). But whilst I’m sure any toddler would enjoy the psychedelic visuals and lively characters of The Magic Roundabout, the subtlety of Eric Thompson’s erudite storytelling is probably better suited to a slightly older audience (some would say around the age you go to university…).

A better comparison would be the work of Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate, in particular Bagpuss and The Clangers. These were pioneering children’s programmes and superficially In the Night Garden owes a lot to them: repetition of patterns forms their basis, a variety of colourful characters populate their surreal landscapes, music underscores each event. And yes, there is even dancing in some of them.

So what is it that sets them apart?

Fundamentally, I think it’s this: they tell brilliant stories. Complex, interesting stories involving complex and well-rounded people with characteristics we can recognise in the world around us. Bagpuss is a programme about storytelling, about the tales told by a single object (a shoe, a wooden mill, a ship in a bottle) whilst The Clangers runs the gamut of human experience, from greed to vanity, from friendship to love, from childbirth to attempted invasion. Even when something really surreal happens (and it does), we see the Clangers finding solutions to problems and discovering more about themselves – nothing ever just happens. There was even a special edition of the programme about the workings of democracy.

And of course even very young children can follow this, it’s simply patronising to think that they can only deal with colour and movement and baby talk (‘eh-oh…’); children learn to read body language long before they learn to talk. And of course the other half of the target audience (the parents) are equally entertained on a different level. (I happen to be writing a substantial orchestral work celebrating Firmin and Postgate’s achievements, so I’ve been immersed in both programmes and, at 31 years old, am thoroughly enjoying them.)

In ten minutes, each episode of these programmes packs far more in, in terms of story, character and meaning, than In the Night Garden seems inclined to attempt in three times as long. These are characters with aspirations and dreams – it’s no coincidence that an episode of Bagpuss is about a flying machine whilst the dream of flight is one of the major obsessions of the Clangers. They are looking to learn, to develop, to better themselves. So music is not just there as an arbitrary accompaniment to their actions – in Bagpuss it’s the way the characters communicate and tell stories; the Clangers actually use music to fly! And when Small Clanger dances it’s not just for the sake of it (why are you dancing, Igglepiggle? I mean, why???), it’s always the result of a personal triumph.

It’s not just about the stories and characters, of course – the wit and style of these children’s programmes is arguably unsurpassed to this day. In fact, to list the reasons why Bagpuss or The Clangers or indeed Ivor the Engine and Noggin the Nog are superior is simply to run down the criteria of good television in general: the music is uniformly superb (not the plinky plonky crap that runs through In the Night Garden like a hernia, which is entirely written by one of the producers, though that’s not very impressive since he only managed to come up with one tune), they each have a distinctive look of their own (no Teletubby land lookalikes here) and they are underpinned by the comforting, nuanced narration of Oliver Postgate (better, in fact – and I can hardly believe I’m going to say this, but I am – better than that of Sir Derek Jacobi). And miraculously, they were all filmed for next to nothing in Oliver Postgate’s shed (In the Night Garden cost £14.5 million and still manages to look cheap). Ultimately, the Postgate/Firmin collaborations were made by people who really cared about their characters, about their audience, indeed about the future of humankind. In the Night Garden seems to have been designed primarily to shut kids up and sell merchandise.

So my heartfelt advice (nay, plea) to parents of children who have reached an age where the washing machine is no longer providing ample entertainment, is to invest in some DVDs; load up on Bagpuss, The Clangers, Ivor the Engine – you’ll thank me, and you’ll keep thanking me, because when your children become too old and too young to continue enjoying those DVDs, they will have grown up with the discernment to drag you along to sophisticated, well-made films at the cinema rather than brain-dead ones about robots hitting each other.

I see sacred cows being given an injection of new life, I see discussion about faith and God in all kinds of media; I see churches sending ordinary people into prisons and praying for people in the street to be healed and I see positive discussion and growing understanding between different faiths. Nowhere at all can I see religion being marginalised.

Just my point of view of course; but then, I don’t travel around behind bullet-proof glass.

It’s with dismay that I read that Cambridge University’s admissions tutors reckon getting rid of AS-levels would be a bad thing, an attitude which suggests to me that they haven’t had much contact with the students in their university in recent years. Dr Geoff Parks’ letter apparently assumes that schools are there to ensure that universities know who to admit; whilst I’m all in favour of fair admissions, especially in the state sector, the responsibility for this lies with universities – they shouldn’t expect the government to run their education policy simply to make things easier for them. What schools ought to be doing is educating people so that it’s worth sending them to university at all, and in this respect the AS-level has done nothing but damage. And it’s not, as Dr Parks seems to think, simply a matter of content; the very presence of AS-levels gets in the way of education, so whilst I find Gove’s ideas about education worrying in many respects, on the issue of returning to traditional A-levels I wholeheartedly agree with him.

It all comes down to what Gove describes as ‘the art of deep thought’ and what Dr Parks calls ‘intellectual development’, but in both cases that’s just a wanky way of saying ‘discovering who you are’. The lower sixth was the year in which I found I loved reading Dickens and poetry, started listening to music by composers I hadn’t heard of, took an interest in current affairs and, with teachers and pupils alike, debated and argued at great length the burning issues of the day. I started scripting and filming silly but competently crafted short films, started composing music with genuine sparks of imagination and wrote a colossal score for a school production of The Tempest, all of which are directly relevant to who I am and what I’m doing now, and all of which was possible because at no point did I feel the pressure of impending public exams. In many ways, it was a more formative year than any that I had at university itself.

I have long felt that teenagers have been cheated of that experience. I watched my younger brother and sister go through the sixth form with a constant presence of coursework whilst the same teachers who had thrown me into a world of creativity and discovery cut back on their extra-curricular activities and threw all the ‘messing about’ out of their lessons to cram factual information into tighter deadlines. I am fortunate enough to work in a school where every effort is made to keep the sixth form as varied and creative an environment as possible, which is largely the reason I have employment at all as a composer-in-residence, yet even I feel the pressure only one term into the lower sixth to hit deadlines and ‘achieve’ (in the least meaningful sense of the word) because these are, after all, the marks that may decide which universities offer you a place. When I do try to broaden pupils’ horizons I’m all too often met with the response ‘do I need to know this for the exam?’

It’s all very well for Dr Parks to suggest the AS exams could be sat ‘in mid to late June and no earlier’, as if that will make all the difference. If he knew how things work in schools he would realise that a public exam at the end of a school year, wherever it is scheduled, massively changes the way teachers approach a course. It requires them to be focussed from day one on syllabus and performance, rather than approaching subjects from the very different angle of education (in its broadest sense). What this means in practical terms is that, aside from the whole issue of students developing as people, certain key skills are overlooked, such as constructing arguments or even constructing a bloody essay. (I’d be interested to know how Dr Parks justifies his claim that performance in Cambridge exams has improved – as a Cambridge superviser I have observed the quality of written work in the first year slipping year after year, whilst as an examiner I have been urged to use ‘the full range of marks’ more liberally, so if Dr Parks has reached his conclusions about performance purely from the marks awarded I fear he is on dodgy ground.)

Meanwhile, the continual presence of public assessment forces schools to put limits on the extra-curricular activities they can allow both staff and students to get involved in, as there is suddenly a new pressure for everyone to be seen to perform. Schools will of course run mock exams to prepare students for AS levels, which means they are thinking about revision before they’ve even completed a term. So, most sadly, with the presence of a public exam at the end of one short school year, what could potentially be the relaxed and fertile arena for development that I enjoyed and which produces well-rounded students with varied interests who are capable of complex and mature thought and indeed of writing a decent essay, becomes a pressured machine for churning out results.

Whether or not you call it ‘the art of deep thought’, it’s a big price to pay to keep admissions tutors happy.

I dreamt that I was at a big dinner party hosted by Peter Sellers, who actually came round to each table himself to construct the dessert. I assume it was of his own design as I’ve never heard of the like before, so I shall share the recipe:

Take two pieces of crustless toast and sandwich in between them a generous helping of demerara sugar mixed with dark brown soft sugar. (Peter Sellers mixed the sugars at the table, which was obviously particularly showy.)

On top of the two slices of toast, spoon a generous helping of a mixture of golden castor sugar and white granulated sugar.

Blowtorch the toast until the sugar is melted and golden.

Pour over a generous amount of port.

Add strawberries and cream. (Peter Sellers left his guests to do this themselves, which seems sensible as they could decide exactly how many strawberries they wanted and adjust the cream ratio accordingly.)

Enjoy!

As I recall, I enjoyed it very much. Noël Coward, on the other hand, sat and laughed at Peter Sellers throughout the entire operation.

In the summer of 2007, when Gordon Brown’s government was full of youthful optimism, I enjoyed a brief period of being an on-tap minor celebrity political pundit, of the kind that populated Andrew Neil’s boat of drunk people on the BBC’s election night coverage (on a scale of Joan Collins to Armando Iannucci I’d say I was a poor man’s Martin Amis). This was because I happened to be playing Gordon Brown in a musical about Tony Blair which I also wrote, which in a delightful twist of media logic meant that I was automatically qualified to give interviews to broadsheets about current politics, appear on flagship BBC shows like Today and PM and Simon Mayo’s show on Five Live (though that day Simon Mayo was being played by Colin Murray, which I found hugely disappointing but my little sister told me was very exciting).

I say that like it’s ironic and I wasn’t really qualified to do any of it – in fact, I was about as qualified as anybody else who pretends to know what’s going on and considerably more qualified than Joan Collins so I don’t know why I’m being so apologetic. Indeed, one piece of political punditry proved me to be considerably more astute than the people who are paid to do it professionally.

It was an interview with the Daily Mail for, as I recall, an article about actors-who-were-playing-real-people, and the final question they asked me was ‘do you think Gordon Brown will call a snap election?’

Now, it’s hard to believe in the aftermath of an election that ended with Gordon Brown clinging weeping to the doorframe of number 10 and begging to be allowed to stay until September so he could organise a coalition government, but back in 2007 a snap election was considered something of a certainty which he couldn’t possibly lose. But I was playing Gordon Brown in a musical. In preparation for the role I had researched him, got under his skin, got inside his head, got inside his accent. I knew what he was thinking.

So I confidently told the Daily Mail journalist, ‘absolutely not. Gordon Brown has wanted this job for his whole life and he’s not a gambling man – he won’t risk losing power in a snap election, however unlikely it is that he would. He will cling to number 10 until the very last moment and only call an election when he is required to.’

The journalist sort of laughed at my youthful naivety and pointed out that everybody else disagreed with me, so I shrugged and said everybody else was wrong.

The rest, as they say, is history.

Infuriatingly, the Daily Mail only printed a brief paragraph about Nathan Kiley’s teeth, so evidence of my superior political wisdom was lost forever.

In order to ensure that this time there is record of our prophetic abilities when it comes to current affairs, we at Talk to Rex would like it known that, contrary to popular opinion, Cameron and Clegg’s coalition government is going to last well beyond six months. James Aylett gives it two years – I am prepared to optimistically predict an even longer innings.

I use the word ‘optimistically’ deliberately: if the coalition government works it will be a Good Thing for British Politics. It will show that a cabinet need not be made up of members of the same party, that progress comes through co-operation rather than confrontation and that the petty party squabbling that has come to dominate the House of Commons is as wasteful as all those other wasteful things George Osborne keeps going on about. In spite of the ideological chasm that theoretically separates them, the Lib Dems and the Conservatives are clearly determined to make big changes together to make the country a better place – and good luck to ’em, says I.

I have a number of friends who I know will vociferously object to all of that, and I willingly invite them to be as vociferous as they like. On this condition: in two years’ time, when our economy is more stable and our government still happily co-operating away, I will absolutely say ‘I told you so’.

More than any previous election – much more – the General Election last week was defined by strong, vocal public opinion. There are lots of reasons – the TV debates, the economic crisis, and most of all the internet. Social networking sites were awash with sweeping statements and twitter was atweet with downright irrational feeling on all sides (or does it just seem irrational in 140 characters?). For once, the negativity displayed by the public actually outweighed the negative advertising of the actual parties.

Which, on the whole, is no bad thing. If it got people interested, if it got people passionate, if it actually got people down to their polling station (and the turnout suggests that it did), then hurrah for the internet. If it meant people were better informed (a bigger if, certainly) then also hurrah. People exercising their democratic right to have a point of view and encouraging others to engage with politics is most definitely a Good Thing.

Only… some people haven’t realised that the time for that has now passed. That the election is over and, however thrillingly ambiguous the result, the role of the public has now ended.

So there are vociferous groups popping up on Facebook declaring that ‘if 100,000 people join this group then it proves David Cameron should never be Prime Minister!’ and hashtags across twitter presuming to tell Nick Clegg what decision he should make about a coalition – and Lord knows what’s going down on the BBC’s ‘Have Your Say’ pages, I haven’t dared to look. Invariably, the people who are being most militant in their anger are those who voted with the expectation of something completely different happening. They wanted an unexpected Labour win. They wanted an unlikely Lib Dem majority. And, ad nauseum, they are determined that the Conservatives can’t possibly have any say in the running of the country. Because it looks like the Conservatives might now have that chance, people are beating the walls and screaming ‘my vote has been ignored!’

Well, actually your vote was not ignored. (Unless you’re one of the people who got turned away at 10pm. But on the telly they all looked a bit mad and wet so maybe that’s okay.) Every vote was counted and, whilst the Conservatives didn’t get a majority government, they got the majority vote by quite some margin, which would be true even under proportional representation – so if anyone can make a coalition work, it’s them. You might not like it, but that’s democracy for you.

So 40,000 people on Facebook are against a Lib Dem coalition with the Conservatives. Why do they think that means they should be given special attention? They should try fighting all the people who voted for the BNP. The BNP lot would win – partly because they’d fight dirty, but mainly because there’d be over ten times as many of them. Getting together a-lot-of-people-what-reckon-the-same-as-me does not demonstrate that you should get your own way, and for the sake of keeping the BNP under control we must be extremely grateful for that.

By all means write to your MP about the unfair voting system. Sign petitions and go on a protest if you really care. There’ll probably be another election later this year so you can vote out your MP if they ignore you. We are privileged to live in a country where we are allowed and encouraged to make our voice heard in these ways. But the system requires a government with decision-making power to enact any such changes, and the people who are in the best position to form one are doing their best to make it work – and indeed, the grown-up way in which they’re going about it is the first positive sign that those of us who hoped for a hung Parliament were right about its possible advantages for our political system: it has forced parties to work together, to stop bickering and look for common ground in the hope of finding mutually satisfying solutions to problems. That’s democracy.

So we may end up with a Liberal/Conservative coalition – and if we do, it will be because a lot of very clever people have found a way to make it work. You might not like it, but using the internet to build up an artificial sense of majority feeling is not only undemocratic, it’s actually not your place. As John Finnemore pointed out in his excellent From Fact to Fiction play None of the Above, the reason we elect other people to do the governing is that they know a lot more about it than we do. Even with a hung Parliament, the decisions about what happens next lie with People Who Know More About It Than You. Do you think Nick Clegg’s going to see the #dontdoitnick hashtag on twitter and suddenly think ‘oh my GOD, there are people out there who think I shouldn’t do it – I’d better NOT do it!!!!’?

He’s not.

So sit back and enjoy the drama and complexity of what’s unfolding while the people whose job it is to sort out the mess get on with it. Unless you’re one of them, you’ve had your say – now go back to tweeting about more important things like Doctor Who.