Talk To Rex

• “We must put safety before liberty” – Tony Blair, paraphrased by The Telegraph, 24/02/2005
• “Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.” – Benjamin Franklin
• “Liberty is always dangerous, but it is the safest thing we have.” – Harry Emerson Fosdick
• “The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts.” – Edmund Burke

I’m going to have to stop thinking of Beard Clarke as a pitbull, and cast him as something with more nibbly teeth. Like a fascist hamster.

• “There is no greater civil liberty than to live free from terrorist attack.” – Tony Blair, writing in The Telegraph, 24/02/2005

No greater civil liberty? No greater civil liberty? Not freedom of expression, freedom of association, freedom to vote and think and dress and work as I please? No, clearly not. The freedom to not be blown up by terrorists is far more important – let’s ignore the fact that far fewer people are the victims of terrorist attacks than of incompetent government bundling of health, social security, transport or education. Unless New Labour is planning to offer vocational training in terrorism it’s difficult to see how Al Qaeda could ever pose a greater threat to most people than, say, MRSA. Or a seven day house arrest without judicial review. Or Ruth Kelly.

To be completely fair, Cicero disagrees with me. “Liberty consists in the power of doing that which is permitted by the law”, he boldly states. I can hear him now, calling down the years: “Let none listen to Aylett, lest he end up listening to himself!”. But then he was a wuss who would go and sulk every time he lost a case he was trying; and let us not forget that it was also Cicero who said “When you have no basis for an argument, abuse the plaintiff”, something that a couple of millenia later has become enshrined as the way to get elected in America. Speaking of which:

• “This young century will be liberty’s century.” – George W. Bush
• “It is easy to take liberty for granted, when you have never had it taken from you.” – Dick Cheney

(Cheney subsequently making it his life’s work to ensure that no American ever again takes liberty for granted.)

And in case you were thinking that judicial review of cases which (for reasons that have never been explained) cannot be prosecuted will make us all happy, free, safe bunnies:

• “Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.” – Edmund Burke

It’s a growing problem on the streets of Cambridge. I don’t mind people thrusting the Big Issue in my face every 200 yards, and I’ll quite happily buy it from people who are using inventive ways of selling their product – the people who charm you into buying one, or who include a juggling dog as part of their act, or who persuade you to part with your money under the pretence of selling the Radio Times. Quite happy with all of those. (Well, I’d actually be mightily pissed off with anyone who did the last of them to me, but I would also feel a kind of grudging respect for them.)

But what’s bothering me is the people who stand making sarcastic comments to passers by, along the lines of “don’t all push at once” but repeated with dripping irony and loaded with hatred of humankind for its failure to line up and obediently buy a load of Big Issues. I don’t imagine it’s easy standing in the cold selling a flimsy magazine, but to chastise people for failing to line up and buy it is frankly quite offensive. God knows, in Cambridge the chances are that half of them have already bought one just around the corner anyway.

You couldn’t sell anything else like that – “please, Madam, before you walk away from that dress, consider that it at least looks better than the hideous clothes you’re wearing” … “oh, not going to buy that book after all, Sir? Is the writing too small or something?” … “I’d recommend this washing product, because you smell.”

And anyway, there are so many other options. There is a very charming man outside Great St Mary’s who threatens to puncture my tyres whenever I lock up my bike without buying a Big Issue from him – that’s the kind of creative approach to salesmanship I’d like to see more of. And I’ve never dared to say no to him.

In case anybody thinks that I am the kind of person who watches Eastenders, I should point out that I am not the kind of person who watches Eastenders. But last Friday I was polishing my shoes and twas rumoured that there was going to be a hugely exciting hour-long special edition in which “Dirty” Den Watts would get murdered, so I put on the TV and waited to be dazzled.

You don’t have to watch Eastenders to know that “Dirty” Den (played by “Dirty” Leslie Grantham, best known for his role as Kiston in the Dr Who story “Resurrection of the Daleks”) was first killed in 1989. Perhaps one of the reasons he was brought back to life is because the original death was to put it lightly a non-event – the scene, oft replayed on programmes like The Top 3000 Most Thrilling Soap Moments in the World! goes something like this: Den walks along canal, man holding daffodils shoots him, *plop*. So hurrah! when we discovered that he had actually cheated death, swum to safety, had possibly been wearing a bullet-proof vest and at any rate was free to return to Albert Square in 2003 to aid Eastenders’ failing ratings and use the BBC’s dressing rooms for unconventional purposes.

On Friday night he was killed a further two times by being clubbed around the head with a doorstep. In a lovingly crafted tribute to his first death, this was also filmed in such a way as to make it utterly undramatic; heavy though the doorstep looked, it left very little damage – not even a spot of blood. We witnessed Den’s body lying in at least three seperate positions (a deliberately surreal piece of symbology, I am sure), then we saw him leap up unexpectedly, having already been confirmed as dead and pulseless. What is he – a Terminator?

(Well, no – but as people who have seen Grantham’s outing on Dr Who will know, he is one of Davros’ robot duplicates, which explains why nobody can kill him.)

I understand that the special episode was to celebrate the programme’s 20th anniversary, but I can’t quite understand what was being celebrated – shoddy scripting, hammy acting, or just plain improbable storytelling?

It wasn’t much of a celebration, anyway. They should have done another one like that episode that was in 3D and had Albert Square invaded by the evil Rani’s menagerie of monsters in three different time zones. I’d watch it if it was like that every week.

Who’s Cruz?
At school he will lose:
For his name, they’ll treat him like a churl.

And now I muse
Perhaps out of Loos
Cruz might have turned out a real girl.

[Yeah, yeah, you don’t pronounce “Cruz” like that. But you try rhyming it with anything that isn’t Spanish.]

Hotmail have recently clamped down on security, so every so often I now get stopped from sending an email and told

To continue, type in the following characters:

I am very pleased that interlopers are being prevented from sending automatic random emails using my account, but could somebody tell me how the hell I’m supposed to carry on using it when the only letters I can usually identify appear to be Japanese ones?

I happened to catch a little bit of children’s TV classic Grange Hill yesterday. I was rather shocked to discover that since I last saw it, it has become a) crap and b) Liverpudlian.

The latter seems particularly absurd, since for the last twenty-five years Grange Hill has appeared to be in London and its pupils have all clearly been Southerners.

Perhaps the school’s new Scousers-only intake policy accounts for the fact that it is so underpopulated at present (there are only three people in the sixth form, according the official website). But it is hard to see how Scousers are supposed to benefit from a head of IT who delivers his lines like Tony Blair and is almost as unrealistic.

Something exciting has happened to the front page of the Uncertainty Division website and I think it’s fair to assume that James Aylett has been getting all photoshoppy.

James has clearly decided to combine photographs which he feels illustrate exactly how uncertain the outcome of our improvised narratives can be. As a montage I would say that it does this very effectively, but it has the unfortunate side-effect of prominently displaying a particularly unflattering photograph of myself, tea-towel on my head and Ali Glennon in my mouth.

Visitors to our website may be surprised to learn that I am actually not unattractive to look at – indeed, in the last fortnight alone I have had not one but two text messages from people I didn’t know telling me they thought I was “cute”/”fit”. (Anyone wishing to know the outcome of said text messages can email me privately.) (And does anybody know who has been making free with my phone number?)

But glancing through the photographs from last year’s show, it is evident that none of them were taken to showcase my looks. Perhaps I did too many comedy facial expressions, because generally I look much more like a character actor (specialising in Dickensian grotesques) than a young male lead.

Then again, nobody comes off particularly well in those photos. The pictures of Phil Stott are a veritable collage of different ways to gurn; for a man of great bearded gravitas, Andrew Ormerod comes out of many of his photos looking extremely silly; and in one picture, Ali Glennon doesn’t have any eyes.

In fact, the only person who comes out mostly unscathed is James Aylett himself. History, as they say, is written by the winners. Or in the 21st century, by the people who run the websites.

A number of years ago I rather foolishly left my old college scarf on a train between London and Cambridge. I don’t have a history of leaving things on trains (well – actually I once left a piece of parchment on a train, prompting my great aunt to write to what may possibly have been the Magna Carta exhibition, but might as well have been any London museum, and con them out of another one), and I was rather upset when I realised. I was scarf bereft for a number of years, before finally taking the plunge and buying a couple of rather nice woolen scarves last year. They were scant comfort, however.

Yesterday, Mary gave me a squidgy package that, when opened, revealed a shiny, brand new, Clare college scarf. I am therefore officially the happiest James in the country.

This entry is probably of no interest to anyone other than myself. But I don’t care, because I’ve got a college scarf again. Yay!

The student rags for the University of Cambridge, oh so mute about me in reviews when I was actually a student and it really mattered to me, have finally taken to saying nice things about my performances. This week I have been playing what is essentially a cameo role in the silly but fun new operetta Wetmarsh College and they have made some satisfyingly quotable comments about impeccable comic timing and that sort of thing.

The Cambridge Student also refers to my character as “extremely camp”. Since this term does not appear in the libretto or the publicity blurb, I can only conclude that my performance is the main cause of this perception.

I have not knowingly been camping the role up. Well, no more than an operetta demands.

So why does my performance warrant the adjective “extremely”?

I have discovered that the best way to feel loved and wanted is to lose all your telephone numbers. Due to an incident with my brand new shiny telephone, this was what recently happened to me; I recounted the tragic details of this loss in an email which I sent to everybody in my address book. It was a good email, so I shall reproduce it below in case you were not fortunate enough to receive it:

At the end of last year I got a brand new shiny flip-top mobile phone which made me feel very superior to everybody else for three whole weeks.

It broke. At least, the screen broke, leaving me unable to see any of the information stored within said brand new shiny phone. For the last two months I have been waiting for it to be repaired, in the hope that it would be returned to me along with the 300 phone numbers it contained. Yesterday I was finally reunited with it, shiny as ever and with a working screen. But the phone numbers were not there.

I think they’ve just given me a different phone. I’m not an expert, but in my opinion it would be odd to mend a phone and then delete everything in its memory. They’ve spent two months not mending my phone and now they’ve just replaced it.

The upshot of this lengthy and difficult experience is that I don’t have anybody’s phone number. So it would be useful if you could email me your phone number, perhaps with a message of support and encouragement to help me cope with the traumatic realisation that technology really is as rubbish as I thought.

The response to this email has literally been overwhelming. I have had wave upon wave of supportive and encouraging emails, or to quote one of said emails “bucket-loads of sympathy” for my “terrible phone-trauma”. The lovely Annalie Wilson advised me to “try and think of it as a clean slate” and one friend told me that I am “a real encouragement” and “an example to all”. Somebody divided his email up into headings of sympathy (“How awful! Poor you”), support (“Be strong, work through it, and it will get better”) and encouragement (“Have a drink”), and even a simple “get well soon” was enough to bring a tear to my eye. Another person thoughtfully included, along with his own number, that of the Samaritans (01223 364455).

The Anglican Church proved its worth as an institution of aid; my Vicar told me “it was with considerable sadness that I heard of your postmodern bereavement. Please accept my contact details as a small token of my support”, whilst a very lovely trainee Priest who I hope will one day be the first female Archbishop of Canterbury sent me the moving message “Wot a shitter!”

The Uncertainty Division also came out in force with words of reassurance – Susie Parker said “that is indeed a most tragic thing to have happened, and I sympathise deeply with the massive crack that must have opened up in your life”; I got a typically succinct Ormerodical “keep yer chin up” and the UD’s fount of knowledge, Mr Aylett, pointed out that technology causes “loss of intellectual capacity“.

An organist I know who now lives in America pointed out how lucky we are not to have American-style mobile phones. Apparently “it’s the whole color (sic) television syndrome. The Americans heard someone else had it, so forced the issue through the technology they had, rather than learning how to make a better version from scratch. We don’t even have sim cards. Video messaging, yes, but if you want to swap phones with a friend for a day – can’t do it.”

Bill Cronshaw, an old friend from the theatre, gave me much useful advice on buying phones: “If you shop around it is possible to get a phone like mine – it has special features such as:- unable to take photos (but I do have alternative arrangements to cope with this eventuality), nothing flips up on it (but if I tire of this I can always buy fags), easy to find as it’s the size of an average housebrick (useful as a weapon when confronted by someone pretending to talk on a mobile but actually taking compromising photos of one).” Sage words indeed.

There were words of advice on how to avoid similar occurrences by using sim cards, bluetooth technology, computers or photocopies (and my brother’s rather less sympathetic suggestion to “make duplicate records you buffoon”).

I am a little more worried about my cousin, who texted me his number then emailed my to tell me he had done so, saying “I have also sent you my number by SMS text message (to quote it’s full title), royal mail, parcelforce, two carrier pigeons of the feral variety and a man named Ed who has the number tattooed on his knuckles- if you see him be sure to have a look, it’s quite impressive! However, don’t tell him that you received this e-mail or he will deem his journey wasted.” Teenagers these days, eh.

Alas, there are always a few people who are ungenerous with their love and support when it is needed. I am sorry to say that somebody who owns a pretty crappy phone himself and who I charitably demonstrated my new phone to just before it broke, told me “I refuse to offer any sympathy or encouragement – what did I tell you about swanky new phones? May that me a lesson to you!” It is sad to see such transparent jealousy in an email.

And the least sympathetic email I got was from a thoroughly nasty piece of work called Aly Murray, who said: “Technology really is as rubbish as you thought it was. Deal with it.”

I would like to thank everybody else for being so understanding. So enjoyable has the experience been that I’m considering sending out spam to random email addresses asking for phone numbers – that way I shall continue to feel loved and wanted, and perhaps I’ll make a whole load of new friends as well.