Confessions of a Crying Wolf
Confess! Confess! Confess! Hell, the Spanish Inquisition would have a far easier time of it today; back in the fifteenth century, they had to torture in order to grind out confessions; these days, people are queuing up to confess, particularly those in the public eye. It’s as much an element of the modern PR machine as doing something for charity whenever Comic Relief comes around or visiting the local children’s ward at Christmas.
Princess Diana’s famous 1995 counselling session with Martin Bashir, from which I shall not quote the most tediously overused line, was perhaps a first for British television; in the States, Oprah Winfrey had built a considerable personal fortune by presenting the public confessional as entertainment, and though she was not the first US TV personality to utilise it, she was the first whose show received widespread network coverage in this country. The popularity of Oprah’s brand of contrition in Britain created the climate in which a member of the Royal Family was able to give such an unprecedented interview. Neither Princess Margaret nor Lord Snowdon spoke of their own marital breakdown and divorce, for example; they not only seemed above such tawdry tactics, but the traditional British aversion to washing dirty linen in public wouldn’t have regarded that kind of approach as remotely dignified.
Dignity? In the wake of Diana’s legitimisation of the public confessional, famous faces were falling over themselves to view the viewer as a secular priest. Whenever they put a foot wrong, there they suddenly were, not hiding in shame, but brazenly hogging our screens and begging for forgiveness – in some cases, virtually demanding it. Michael Barrymore, Frank Bough, Ron Davies, George Michael and numerous others involved in embarrassing private scenarios saw fit to salvage the wreckage of their careers by attempting to make the public feel sorry for them. They wanted our pity. So much for dignity.
When Kate Moss was caught out snorting coke in a tabloid sting around ten years ago, the fact that she absolutely refused to publicly apologise for something she thought she was indulging in far from the telescopic lens provoked bemusement and surprise. What – she won’t go on ‘Tonight with Trevor MacDonald’ and confess? I remember Max Clifford advocating she follow this path, which suggested he may well have been one of the architects behind the practice. There was no law in place to compel Kate Moss to confess, however, despite the impression given by the media that it was somehow the fallen celebrity’s duty. The tabloid ‘exclusive’ usually accompanies the television confession, just to ensure all bases are covered; and Kate Moss had the bare-faced cheek to not play that game as well.
The Big Brother House became a fresh conduit for the confessional when it started opening its doors to the famous and the almost-famous; Les Dennis bordered on a breakdown when he was a housemate, but the precedent had been set to make such an intensely private moment perfectly acceptable to be carried out in public; it was evidently regarded by many as a good career move, and Les Dennis’s career has certainly picked up a bit since he poured his heart out to a group of largely ambivalent chickens; he is currently recycling his Mavis impersonation on ‘Coronation Street’.
In this atmosphere, a celebrity comes to see the confessional as a convenient tool for another front page. After all, wannabe celebrities desperate to be loved during a singing contest can’t wait to publicise the pain of carrying a dying comrade on their backs when they were under-fire from the Taliban; Karen Matthews picked up on the fact that missing kids made a name for their parents and organised a fake kidnapping to get her face on the telly and have all the public sympathy that comes with it; and how many stories have emerged of those claiming to be dying of some incurable disease, going so far as to start their own charity and organise fund-raising events, before eventually revealing the only sickness was in their heads? Stupid people respond to such stimuli if it’s presented to them as the key to being popular. Therefore, those who have already reached the Promised Land have realised that by speaking of past pain – and emphasising that it continues to cast a shadow over the present – both popularity and sympathy can go hand-in-hand.
‘It’s my view and also that of my therapist,’ said Karen Danczuk this weekend; that telling sample of a statement from the queen of the cleavage selfie formed part of her child abuse claims, which themselves form part of a wider publicity juggernaut the Rochdale councillor has been engineering for the past few months. I’m not in a position, either morally or legally, to question these claims, but a therapist is a crucial element when it comes to encouraging adults to recall certain past events that will inspire sympathy. The client/therapist relationship is supposed to encompass a private conference between two individuals that belongs behind closed doors. Of course, the client has no confidentiality clauses to break; they are in a position to go public should they choose to do so, whereas the therapist has to maintain professional silence. But why go public? What will the client gain other than sympathy? The reward is a hug, a few vicarious tears, a collective ‘poor you’ and the label of Survivor, a label that defines that person in the public eye. He is a shoemaker; she is a secretary; he is a salesman; she is a Survivor. As job descriptions go, it’s not one that radiates much in the way of self-esteem.
The compulsion to discuss private affairs in the open is perhaps something that has also arisen from the narcissistic belief that everyone has something to say and that everyone has a right to be heard. This extends to sharing the moribund minutiae of life on Facebook or Twitter, as well as exposing strangers to a conversation conducted on a mobile in a supermarket queue, with the person conducting the conversation in possession of an utter lack of awareness that a dozen fellow shoppers might feel uncomfortable at hearing an inane litany of profanities. The inability of such people to modify their language regardless of company is testament to their arrogant perception that the world revolves around them. I can eff and blind like a navvy, but only when in the company of other navvies; I exhibit self-censorship if children or senior citizens are present, or merely do so out of politeness and sensitivity towards those who might not care to hear tap-room slang in Sainsbury’s.
However, when a famous face is so quick to ‘share their pain’ in the hope that it will earn them the public’s pity, not everyone responds in the expected way. Overexposure to the celebrity confessional can cause the cynic to come to the conclusion that there is no truth in any such claim, and all sexual abuse is then relegated to the same sceptic’s ballpark as global warming. Whenever a tearful spouse or parent attends a press conference to plead for the safe return of their missing loved one, they are scrutinised and their sincerity doubted because there has been the odd occasion in which that same distraught spouse or parent has actually murdered their missing loved one and whose upset has been exposed as a sham; the reaction of some is to then apply this to all cases.
Every time a wolf cries, one more person believes that sexual abuse is a mere figment of the imagination; and while the rest are watching a celebrity shed tears on a sofa, nobody is watching a grubby bedroom in a grubby house on a grubby street that hides a thousand true stories.
Petunia Winegum
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February 25, 2015 at 9:54 am -
1) I was so indifferent to Kate Moss until that incident. Her “up your’s” (or, more precisely, up her’s) attitude made me really like her.
2) Les Dennis sent himself up – and the entertainment industry – fabulously in his appearance in “Extras” with Ricky GervaisI trained as a reporter on a local rag when I left school. Qualified and everything (yes, there are qualifications for on the job training for reporters – but this was the 70s/80s). I gave it up after I covered the disappearance/subsequent discovery of the body of a 14 (15? my memory falters) year old girl. I then covered the trial of the “boyfriend” accused of the murder. Afterwards, I interviewed the family. Once I saw what I had written in the paper, I was disgusted with myself and the “profession” – we were using other people’s sorrow and confusion and grief for sales and entertainment.
What was that about “all the world’s a stage”?
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February 25, 2015 at 10:00 am -
All this will continue as long as we enable these losers and cretins. If their fifteen minutes of fame turned into fifteen minutes of scorn, they would not do it, but so long as we buy the tabloids, watch the drivel on the box and think that dross like ‘Big Brother’ has a place in our society it will continue. Pay money to scam artists without raging for incarceration when they are caught – get more scam artists. If some of our ‘great and good’ called out these Survivors for the fantasists they are, they would not be so glad of the publicity; I think the worst thing is the way it draws attention away from true victims, who so often fall through the cracks.
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February 25, 2015 at 12:05 pm -
And that’s the truth – all this fantasy takes away from true victims of crime, whats happened to this country, we need a sea change in attitudes in this country.
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February 25, 2015 at 10:08 am -
The most ghastly misuse of public “confession” is the Jeremy Kyle show. I have, on occasion, watched it, albeit chiefly with some sort of morbid curiosity whilst I used to work out at a gym which had a multiplicity of tv stations on show whilst I was doing my impression of a hamster on a wheel. Exploitative, nasty, cruel and vile.
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February 25, 2015 at 10:11 am -
Just so, but people queue up to get on it and sofas full of losers and oxygen thieves watch it, doubtless dreaming of getting on and being’famous’ in the ‘hood.
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February 25, 2015 at 10:48 am -
Yes, all craving their 15 minutes of “fame”.
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February 25, 2015 at 12:06 pm -
Its Human bear baiting.
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February 25, 2015 at 5:26 pm -
But with willing bears?
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February 25, 2015 at 10:17 am -
It’s easy to see – and now the horse has bolted is there point to closing the stable door? – how an Americanisation of our media has caused us to get where we are by drip-drip-drip normalization of hysterical drama and narcissism. This was triggered -not necessarily caused – by Diana’s demise https://chrisbarratt.wordpress.com/2013/04/16/september-1997-the-beginning-of-the-end/
Celebrities (who are often blessed with unwieldy ego’s out of proportion to their talent) are not the only offenders – reality TV (nonentities behaving like celebrities) and soap operas dictate that those watching them every night grow to think this is how ordinary lives are lived.
It’s now perceived as “normal” for folk to live in this hysterical, indulgent morass of infantilized exaggeration and pitiable confessionals. Instead of working out issues and problems, it’s the done thing to wallow and blame. -
February 25, 2015 at 10:26 am -
‘Tania Head’ is a brilliant example of a fake survivor:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alicia_Esteve_HeadThere was no evidence (from what I read) that she ever helped herself to cash raised for 9/11 families.
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February 25, 2015 at 10:36 am -
Beverli Rhodes seems to have made a newspaper career out of it, even to impersonating a 7/7 survivor
http://jimcannotfixthis.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/newspaper-colossus.htmlWhat is most telling is that the media never expose her, and continued to use her, when she became a Savile survivor.
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February 25, 2015 at 5:44 pm -
If so, she’s certainly not the only fake 7/7 “survivor.”
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February 25, 2015 at 8:55 pm -
There are plenty of fake “survivors”; Wikipedia has a list of them.
The most brazen of them has to be Lauren Stratford who first claimed to be a victim of satanic abuse; when that story was exposed as fake, she went to ground for a few years before emerging as a self-styled Holocaust survivor, complete with a clumsily-inked number on her arm.
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February 25, 2015 at 10:50 am -
I have come to the conclusion that you are writing these scripts from Lambeth Palace or the Vatican. My reasons for drawing this conclusion is the use of the word confession.
Should I inform a person I know who was abused for a number of years by a Roman Catholic priest now deceased that he should confess his sins to the worlds media instead of the confession box to another priest. He committed no sin, so why confess in the first place? Or should he sit in his bedsit buying yet another bottle to drown out the past, and when his liver packs in the church that will not apologise for their covering up of the priest will then perform the last rites and ask him to confess his sins on his deathbed for the acts he had to perform on the so called priest.
So, why should he not be allowed to go on television not to confess but to expose the priest and those who covered it up. The answer is that the Media apart from odd exceptions is only interested in the City, Westminster, the economy and most of all the cult of celebrity. It is also the reason why I use foreign broadcasters to get my news. As long as the British news media churns out stories on people they classify as celebrities. As for Karen Danczuk which was the real target in this article, her husband did a good job on exposing Cyril Smith, pity he had to wait till Smith was dead. in fact the Young Liberals exposed him in the 1970’s and no-one did anything.
If you want a decent story I will give you one or two but I need to vet them with your employers-
February 25, 2015 at 11:03 am -
Well old stick, since you seem to be taking this to heart, why not tell your abused friend to go to the Police and report an actual CRIME; that is after all what they are for. If SOME priests have commited despicable acts, nail them to the wall, but do not tar all with the same brush. As I said previously, all these fake claimants and publicity nutters take away from the real victims.
As for ‘exposing’ Cyril Smith, a true investigator would have done it when the man was alive to either confess or refute, I have no time for all these heroes and other arseholes who only come out of the woodwork when the grave has been safely sealed; go through Annas stories and investigations re. the lying scum and shysters making money off a safely dead Saville.-
February 25, 2015 at 12:13 pm -
OK… I had a friend who was abused from pre-pubescence til slightly after by his music teacher who was also a family friend. The child reported it to the police when he was an adult in his early 30s. The police were great, very thorough and professional and empathic. The file was passed to the CPS who declined to prosecute because his mother dismissed it all – because of that family “friendship.” Where is he supposed to get his justice? Yes, media celebrity witch hunts are bad, people faking it are bad, but as you say yourself “do not tar all with the same brush”. Not everyone wants Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes because they were buggered as a 9-year-old.
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February 25, 2015 at 12:25 pm -
* The child reported it to the police when he was an adult in his early 30s. *
The child within you mean?
Why didn’t he just go round to the bloke’s house and kick his fucking head in? he must have been pretty wobbly on his pins by then, the filthy old bastard.
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February 25, 2015 at 12:37 pm -
The filthy old bastard had moved abroad. The CPS would have had to extradite – more complications. Filthy old bastards aren’t stupid.
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February 25, 2015 at 12:51 pm -
What is it with Music Teachers I wonder.
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February 25, 2015 at 1:04 pm -
There is a general drive to target music teachers – the culture of ‘real music’ being very much annexed back to the ‘elite’, and the establishments concerned funding more (pardon the pun) ‘class action’ from disreputable law firms – but that doesn’t alter the fact that some of these cases are genuine. Though I do think in most of the real cases, those affected by it would be better off to deal with it positively, forgive their trespasser and not let the bastards affect their lives any longer.
The cynicism observed on these pages is a testament to the damage caused to genuine victims of CSA by cynical operators like the Danczuks.
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February 25, 2015 at 2:27 pm -
They like to fiddle
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February 25, 2015 at 3:52 pm -
From the Spectator:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/arts/arts-feature/9388362/the-dark-side-of-el-sistema/
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February 25, 2015 at 5:44 pm -
“Baker’s allegations feature prominently on the website of Ian Pace”
OMFG!
Factual innacuracies abound. The Speccy says Francis Andrade made the complaints? She didn’t. She was pressured into becoming a corroborating witness by the cops, against her better judgement. Her family has since refused to be involved in a “review” by the authorities of “what went wrong”. Read between the lines. This is terrible stuff.
“Baker writes: ‘She claimed that …young musicians regarded the trading of sexual favours as an unremarkable, even humorous, subculture within the orchestra. She mentioned so-called niños bonitos (pretty boys) appearing with brand-new, expensive instruments: “you think, there’s something more going on there than just talent”.’
Pretty boys… herein lies the agenda.
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February 25, 2015 at 5:56 pm -
Well, there’s a thing – Cliff Richard allegations have multiplied…..who’d’a’thunk it’…http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-31630793
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February 25, 2015 at 7:13 pm -
The SYP letter shown in that item states in Para 6 that ‘the MET have confirmed to SYP that they have not been able to trace the original source of the leak and have concluded their investigation’.
Does that mean that, as might reasonably be implied, the original info passed to the Beeb maybe did actually originate in Yewtree, or some other related MET entity? If it does, if I were SYP, I’d be seriously pissed off to be having to chase up some 30 year old allegation plus, now, others, if the MET can’t even solve a local case of foot and mouth from last year and have then, seemingly, just bunked off
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February 25, 2015 at 1:05 pm -
A motto of mine: “I pay my debts. I collect them too.”
Sometimes interest will accrue over a period of years, often at an extortionate rate! But sooner or later, that debt will be ‘called in’.It’s not for everyone, of course, but individuals need to face the hard reality that their 100% certainty that a crime was committed against them – they were there, after all, and know what happened – can not always be shared by society at large & the criminal justice system in particular. If convincing evidence is unavailable & a jury can not be persuaded then that, at least as far as the courts, is it.
At this point they are faced with two choices – either to ‘move on’ & try and forget about it, or, if they are unwilling or unable to do so, to seek justice elsewhere. I have some sympathy for the latter group but it’s a decision only they can make, that may well carry devasting consequences, and may well not provide that elusive sense of “closure” they were seeking after all.
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February 25, 2015 at 12:34 pm -
But thats the problem isn’t it? If we abandon the procedure, fallible as it is, of taking an issue to court , presenting actual evidence and letting the ‘twelve good men and true’ decide on the demonstrable issues, what are we left with? My problem with these ‘historic’ witch hunts (and the thing with Saville and Smith is no more than that) is that the passage of time blurs memory, that evidence as such is no longer available, that it becomes a matter of guilty until proven innocent and lets bang him up anyway because he’s ‘creepy’.
We now live in a sick society which positively revels in banging up old men, preferably current or former household names, for supposed offences commited forty and more years ago, no possibility of refuting such a claim as there is no evidence. We produce insanely violent films, with quivering body parts in full living technicolour, top shelf magazines that would do duty as gynecological textbooks (so I’ve heard *ahem*) and yet the huge issue for our prod noses is whether or not to air brush out Winston Churchills cigar!
Yes, your friends music teacher is not filling a cell at Pentonhurst, do you think the world will be made right by filling the other cells with former childrens entertainers who are accused of patting a bum in 1966? I do not pretend to have an answer, would that I did, but I am very sure that filling the airwaves with screaming shitheads who, according to them, where knobbed on an hourly basis by everyone who appeared in a telly show from 1960 to date is not the answer. Until this nonsense is knocked on the head in a big way, true sufferers will be failed by the system.
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February 25, 2015 at 11:03 am -
It’s a strange linguistic twist that, in their search of so-called ‘closure’, so many resort to this form of openness.
If I ever wanted to close a stable, I wouldn’t start by opening the stable-door.-
February 25, 2015 at 12:15 pm -
I know. It’s like people won’t go to the doctor because they are too shy/embarrassed but will go on “Embarrassing Bodies” to show off to the whole country something that could have been dealt with by basic hygiene.
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February 25, 2015 at 12:47 pm -
I seem to recall one where the woman had some sort of offset fanny that was ruining her life; she was afraid to get a serious boyfriend in case he was put off by it! Program had medi-bods prodding said fanny and going over how and were they would cut and trim to bring it back in line. God knows I’m not the squeamish sort but I had to go out for a taste of Mr Smirnoff’s oblivion juice!
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February 25, 2015 at 11:20 am -
If you look in the ‘Shorter Oxford Dictionary’ at the definitions for Sympathy and Empathy respectively, you will notice a huge number of variants for the former, and only one for the latter; yet the terms are often used interchangeably.
Consider whether it is possible to ‘sympathise’ with something or someone in the future tense? If not, then ‘sympathy’ is a phenomena of the past and present only, whereas ’empathy’ can refer to future tense.
One can sympathise or empathise with the accuser [personal victim]; but only empathy is available for the accused [State victim], until they too become a ‘victim’ of the full violence of the law. The difference is in the tense.
When a society loses its collective hope, then it loses belief in the future, and corresponding atrophy of empathy, leaving only the sympathetic baying of the sheeple, that live in the perpetual present. Is this so different to the state of hypnosis?
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February 26, 2015 at 7:06 am -
Reminds me of company disciplinary procedures from some decades ago, i.e. when conducting a disciplinary hearing, listen with empathy, not sympathy. Easier to move on to retribution then of course.
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February 25, 2015 at 11:30 am -
Before we all crashed into these strange times, I made an attempt to find ‘closure’ myself – not of trendy sexual abuse, but of my own hang-ups and bad character triats. In what feels like a lifetime ago – 2002 – as part of this voyage of self-discovery I decided to take myself down to London and invested in a 4-day seminar ‘event’ called ‘Unleash The Power Within’, written and hosted by Tony Robbins. I found it so cathartic I did it again in 2004. Robbins is American, and a big believer in ‘closure’ – but REAL closure. And very good he is too, even for me and I normally don’t go for any of that overly “American” kind of thing.
He promotes the closure where you stop dwelling on things and allowing them to hold you back and damage your present – postive neuro-linguistic programming. Forgiving people instead of going after them – not far removed from the philosophy of, say, The Dalai Lama.
It is a subversion of that philosophy that is being promoted now – instead of leaving trauma behind and moving forward, you embrace (and even) implant trauma.
What has been happening is in actual fact the reverse of ‘closure’-
February 25, 2015 at 11:41 am -
February 25, 2015 at 11:58 am -
But it’s been the way of the world since time immemorial and is the reason this species survives. If you read the tales of woe in today’s tabloids, of inappropriately fondled breasts that led to a life of shoplifting and alcohol abuse you would think victims are a modern day invention.
I recall asking my parents who fled Germany to the UK in the late 30s what happened to other relatives, most who seem to disappear. I was warned not to grill surviving aunts & uncles as they “wished to forget” as a survival mechanism and as most seemed particularly happy I did not bother them.However one very aging aunt & uncle were persuaded to tell all to an enterprising and persistent journalist who wanted details of how some Jews survived the Nazi era intact. They finally agreed to a dozen interviews after much pestering.
But by the final interview so many awful memories were dredged up they were arguing with each other about certain incidents & recollections they split up in their mid-70s and never spoke to each other again so I’m not sure public admission and discussion via The Sun is either ‘heroic’ or helpful especially for victims.
And what is this ‘closure’ business so often spoken about ?
We had one family friend who had her teen daughter murdered in fairly sensational circumstance and she never once spoke to the media and only ever conversed with the retired copper who had tried to solve the crime/
If you had mentioned the word ‘closure’ to her she would have thrown you out of the house.-
February 25, 2015 at 10:20 pm -
…the reason this species survives
Just so – if we had something real to worry about, like the prospect of bombs dropping on our heads or the Black Death, all this would be of far less concern to the general population.
While you were considerate enough not to badger your relatives, the new generation of ancestor-hunters which has emerged thanks to the internet is busy unearthing every bit of scandal and vicarious pain to be scoured from the family archives and from unwilling eye-witnesses.
My family experienced this first-hand with a distant and previously unknown relative repeatedly angling for details of the violent death of a youngster in the 1930s. While the death is clearly the object of gleefully morbid curiosity for the amateur genealogist (and potential lucre – I understand she wants to write a book), it represents a deeply traumatic and long-buried unhappy memory for the victim’s siblings, the resurrection of which has caused a great deal of distress.
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February 25, 2015 at 11:30 am -
Perhaps the context and how people behave/speak goes some way to helping establish the truth. If most decision-makers are not operating like Jeremy Kyle, it’s hard not to wonder what they might make of someone who behaves like one of his guests.
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February 25, 2015 at 11:37 am -
Karen Danczuk: can’t say I like the cut of her jib. Nor her bowsprit either.
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February 25, 2015 at 11:46 am -
I thought it was most helpful of Karen Danczuk- after tweeting thanks to supporters of her shocking “100s of rapes” ordeal as revealed in The Sun- to follow it up with another tweet announcing who her new publicist was with contact details.
Yesterday I note she has been ‘overwhelmed’ with the many media outlets now available to her.
It will all end in tears.-
February 25, 2015 at 12:19 pm -
Yes, but whose?
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February 25, 2015 at 12:36 pm -
A cogent question….
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February 25, 2015 at 1:20 pm -
“I’m not in a position, either morally or legally, to question these claims…”
We should have no moral qualms in questioning the manner in which those claims have been made (via the media, not the police) & also the language used to make them. Before finally having no choice but to name the alleged culprit – named to The Mail BEFORE the police – Karen Danczuk quite deliberately led people to believe that the alleged culprit was an adult by referring to him as a “paedophile” and “friend of the family”.
No sensible person would describe a 10 or 11 year old boy in this way.When I was 10 years old Tracy S. offered to show me her ‘bits’ if I’d show her mine. I agreed, but she had to go first. And I then reneged on the deal – like a pre-pubescent Max Clifford! – and am now wondering if I was a ‘Primary School Paedo’. And those occasional games of ‘Truth, Dare, Kiss Or Promise’ have a whole generation trembling…
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February 25, 2015 at 2:01 pm -
100s of rapes/assault would mean this boy–because 11 would have been his age when these supposed attacks started IF she is telling the truth–must have spent a lot of time with her in her own home. If so –did she protest about what was going on –allegedly–for 5 solid years? I might be more inclined to consider her claim if she had started with the police and not the Sun. And was not an attention seeker before any of this farrago started.
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February 25, 2015 at 3:33 pm -
I just don’t believe her story, at no time before did she say the ‘rapes’ and assaults were by a child, that would have spoiled her tale. Just hope yet another mans life isn’t ruined.
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February 25, 2015 at 4:28 pm -
Note that the newspaper reports now say ‘a man has been arrested’- nobody pointing out that he was a child at the time of the alleged offences.
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February 25, 2015 at 4:40 pm -
Yes, I only saw it once a couple of days ago, it’s all gone quiet since then. I thought it must be a mistake at first but the silence suggests it was right or they would have been only too keen to publish.
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February 25, 2015 at 7:27 pm -
perhaps she only realised she’d been “raped” when she got into therapy. Previously she’d considered it playing doctors and nurses with her first love…
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February 25, 2015 at 7:50 pm -
Makes more sense to me than her story.
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February 25, 2015 at 2:03 pm -
February 26, 2015 at 3:47 am -
same happened to me but in reverse. The girl reneged after I had dropped my shorts. A few days later I trod on a large nail in her back garden and had to get it removed in the hospital.
Who has the best case here? She who may have never recovered from my exposure (I was 5 so magnifying glass needed) or me for breach of contract with added injuries from that nail which surely happened after the stress of the ordeal?. Where is Liz Dux when you need her.-
February 26, 2015 at 8:26 am -
So let me get this right, soon after you’d dropped your shorts, the girl had a large penetrating nail in her back garden. Sounds like some sort of euphemism to me.
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February 25, 2015 at 1:21 pm -
” wouldn’t have regarded that kind of approach as remotely dignified”
Such good manners, and appreciation of them, does not just belong to the distant past.
Quite a lot of us regarded it as not remotely dignified at the time, when the sainted Diana demeaned herself in that vulgar way.
She revealed then, that she was in fact no better than an awful lot of us had feared she was not.
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February 25, 2015 at 1:38 pm -
She was getting her own back (fair enough) and showing that the aristocracy fart just like us commoners. I liked her for that, if little else, and never saw her as sainted.
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February 26, 2015 at 3:48 am -
She was the Queen of the Chavs and started a trend. Queen of The Selfies etc
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February 25, 2015 at 1:44 pm -
Pedantically, “Every time a wolf cries” is not at all the same as crying wolf, but the power & reach of this fine website will make it become common parlance.
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February 25, 2015 at 1:55 pm -
Maybe it could be a Prince song?
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February 25, 2015 at 2:12 pm -
“as well as exposing strangers to a conversation conducted on a mobile in a supermarket queue,”
What was once whispered in the Priest’s ear, is now SHOUTED into a cell phone. Where once Latin, now Anglo-saxon terms are used.
While once Flagellants paraded in public , now they sit in the Green Room awaiting , not Salvation, but the the salivation of the masses.
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February 25, 2015 at 7:03 pm -
“The salivation of the masses.” BD, quote of the day. Good one.
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February 25, 2015 at 9:24 pm -
Or even the Savilation of the masses.
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February 26, 2015 at 3:49 am -
Thought the same. It’s a beauty.
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February 26, 2015 at 7:12 am -
Was just standing outside having my 3rd cig of the morning when the Paper Boy delivered *my wife’s* Daily Mail.
This morning’s DM headline: “Cliff’s agony as police investigate new sex abuse claims”
Oh tie an aged celeb to an old yew tree, it’s been 3o years….
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February 26, 2015 at 8:15 am -
Nothing to add save to say that I agree with every word.
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February 27, 2015 at 8:15 am -
I remember trying to talk to both my Grandfathers about their experiences in the First World War. One was highly decorated, the other was invalided out after being wounded on the Somme. Neither ever wanted to talk about it, except for the occasional comment. The same was true of my Fathers experiences in WWII. My wife’s people were the same.
At a dinner party last week I met a man whose Father had got out of Poland in 1946. For family history purposes he tried to record an interview with his Father about his background. His Father broke down in tears and would not discuss it. In the past I have worked with American Vietnam veterans. They would not talk about their experiences. I have even worked with a German who was drafted into the Wermacht in 1944 at 16. Same situation.
The lesson I take from these experiences is that these sort of traumatic happenings are best left buried. Revisiting them revives pain and suffering that these people have tried very hard to forget.
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