Talk To Rex

Yesterday I did one of the more unusual gigs of my career, at Cambridge’s Pink Picnic 2005 (‘the biggest open-air gay event in East Anglia, ever!’ – would you believe it?)

I spent most of the set ad-libbing around a keyboard which seemed only to want to make Hitchcock-style atmospheric string sounds. Since I couldn’t get it to work, I left it to the techies and entertained the gathering crowd with entirely spontaneous and non-musically oriented chatter. By about ten minutes in, there were six techies on stage all trying to make the keyboard work, and no sign that they were having any success. On the bright side, it was the best warm-up I’ve ever done, and by the time I got started properly I had a far larger audience than I’d had to begin with.

It was just rather a short set.

But to make up for it, they presented me with a parasol, a gesture which nearly moved me to tears.

I did a performance of the increasingly dated Michael Howard song which made a small boy (who surely shouldn’t have been there at all) nearly wet himself laughing. In spite of his youth, it was evident that he knew exactly what the word ‘scrotum’ means.

The rest of the ‘picnic’ (I use the term reluctantly for there was not a hamper in sight) seemed to consist of different tents with peculiar things happening inside them (one of them had two half-naked men picking up litter on stage – was it part of the act? – it had a large audience, in any case) and something called ‘Pink Idol’ which you’ll just have to imagine.

It’s pretty unnecessary for me to say anything general about Mo Mowlam, as everyone’s got there before me, and many of them are more eloquent anyway. But she was the first person in politics who made me think that they weren’t all a breed apart, and that maybe there might be someone there who shares my opinion. (Which isn’t to say that there weren’t others, just that I hadn’t noticed them.) So to the extent that I’m not nearly as disaffected with politics as my friends, it’s down to her.

It also means that if I ever somehow end up in politics rather than just growling at it on under-read websites, it’ll be her fault.

When I was a young whipper-snapper I took part in a thing called a 24-hour famine, where you stop eating for a day in order to raise some money for people who don’t have any choice in the matter.

From what I recall, it was a real struggle. By halfway in I was desperate to eat something, by the end the only thing I could think about was eating.

Only…I’ve just realised, now, that I haven’t eaten for 24 hours. And I didn’t even notice.

Just to let you all know that I’ve come back from a fun-packed few days at the Edinburgh Fringe looking all officious with James Aylett and a pair of press passes. James wore a shirt and jacket like he was from The Scotsman or possibly even The Telegraph, though I think even he looks too young for that. I was dressed like I was reviewing for Time Out, therefore got sneered at more but ultimately I also got more offers of sex.

After rather a long and tedious journey back, during which James Aylett continually demanded chocolate, he parted from me with the words ‘go to bed’.

An hour later, I am still awake and have just written quite flippant replies to most of the emails in my inbox, which I think I shall regret in the morning.

(I got an email from Alex Horne telling me that sewing is not a special skill. Well, what the fuck is it then? It was special enough to earn me a Cub Scout badge.)

Except that it’s invisible. In their search for new ways to feel sexy, a company has invented backless lingerie, so you can wear low-slung trousers without that tell-tale hint of panty to make you look stupid, leaving the low-slung trousers to manage that all on their own.

Since the dawn of time (or at least since the 1920s), women have been making the perfectly simple decision between wearing panties and something to cover them (such as skirts, trousers or bathing machines), and wearing no panties and not caring about what covers them (such as skirts, trousers or nudist beaches). And then recently, for a couple of years, people thought that wearing visible panties would be cool. (Or maybe just sexy, although it’s not really. It makes men think about sex some more, but probably not enough to be measurable.) Now they’ve realised it wasn’t.

What to do if you’re a young girl about town? You have all these low-slung jeans and so on, but it’s not fashionable to show your undergarments any more. Thank heavens for Backless Lingerie, or you’d have nothing to wear when you go out. Which might be fun, come to think of it.

Here’s a thought: when low-slung trousers go out of fashion, but everyone has backless lingerie lying around taking up wardrobe space, will we see low-slung skirts on the market?

The Evangelical Council of the Church of England has issued a response to the latest statement on Civil Partnerships which yet again states nothing except for their unchanging and inflexible attitudes towards the issue of homosexuality.

‘While individuals are free under civil law to register partnerships, to do so is incompatible with Christian discipleship, recognising that sexual expression of the relationship is implicitly acknowledged’ – so, all that discussion at the House of Bishops over a hugely complex issue is reduced back to a simple ‘we’re not discussing it because gay sex is bad.’ How ironic that they go on to describe the House of Bishops as naïve…

I suppose it’s an easier way of dealing with complex issues. A bit like labelling terrorists as ‘evil‘ and assuming it’s enough to wrap up that difficult topic. So perhaps the Government are also running the Evangelical Council?

Well, that’s one theory. But a more alarming possibility suggests itself in the statement when it uses the phrase ‘morally flawed and societally confusing legislation’.

I’m sorry, morally flawed and…what???

‘Societally’ is not a word that is recognised by my computer. Or my dictionary, for that matter. In fact, it looks more like a word that has been invented by George W. Bush.

Could it be that, in the little spare time he has, George W. Bush is also running the Evangelical Council of the Church of England?

We used to have six and now I can only find one.

If anybody has any idea of their whereabouts I would be most grateful.

A friend of mine yesterday alleged that ‘all children’s BBC presenters are gay’. He went on to claim that Dick and Dom were both gay, something he said he knew because he ‘once kissed somebody who has kissed Dick’.

Hmmm…..

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I’ve just watched Penny Woolcock’s frankly phenomenal film version of John Adams’ opera The Death of Klinghoffer, his dramatisation of the Achille Lauro hijacking in 1985. This is something I feel every schoolkid – or better still every politician – should be made to watch, not least because it demonstrates the power and importance of the arts, but moreso because of its relevance to the times we live in and its unusually rounded approach towards the topic of terrorism.

The opera is still considered controversial because in depicting a relatively recent event it dares to show the terrorists’ perspective. But this is the reason for its importance; without condoning the actions of the terrorists or diminishing the horror of the experience, the opera (particularly in the film version with its astonishing use of archive documentary footage) puts the hijacking into the context of the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, showing the decades of violence suffered by the terrorists from childhood. We see them as people who have lost family and wept in the street for murdered friends; in short, these killers, these terrorists, also become human beings.

What the film demonstrates is the possibility that we can sympathise with and actually understand the reasons why people are led to extremist terrorist actions – and surely understanding them is the very first thing we need to do if we are ever going to deal with the problem?

And yet the government – and I’m talking especially about you, Mr Blair – is apparently yet to grasp that brazenly obvious fact, as it continues to insist on explaining terrorist actions with simplistic labels like ‘evil ideology’.

YES, terrorist actions are evil. But to write off terrorists in terms that imply we are in a basic B-movie ‘goodies’ and ‘baddies’ situation, is to belittle the complexity of the situation and to evade our responsibilities – until we see the government taking any accountability for the circumstances that have caused terrorism to arise in the first place, we will never begin to tackle the problem at its roots.

I don’t mean that the government should give in to terrorist threats, or change its policies at every terrorist whim. I don’t even mean that admitting some responsibility would lead to an immediate ceasing of terrorism and reasonable conversation suddenly breaking out with everyone. But the government’s resolute black-and-white mentality is surely one of the things that is generating extremism in the first place – it’s no wonder people feel that it’s necessary to blow up trains when their whole ideology, which has grown out of conflict and hardships and wrongs going back generations, is labelled simply as ‘evil’.

This afternoon, Osama Bin Laden’s lieutenant Ayman al-Zawahri said that Tony Blair’s foreign policy decisions were to blame for the London bombings. Here’s a little prediction for you: Blair will issue an official response insisting that his foreign policy is irrelevant to the situation because we are facing a far bigger threat from people who are fundamentally evil and we all need to unite in fighting that. Prove me wrong, by all means, but I’m expecting a response in that kind of blinkered, don’t-point-the-finger-at-me, we’re ‘good’ and they’re ‘bad’ vein. Because compared to Woolcock/Adams, it seems to me that the politicians’ approach towards terrorism is fucking immature.