Every August my wife and I go with our younger daughter, her husband and three children to the Edinburgh Festival. They go for the shows, we go for them. There are so many shows that, inevitably, some are good, some bad, some indifferent and some truly awful – performances that make you sorrier for the performers than yourself. It’s a lottery; and, for our daughter and son-in-law, that seems to be part of the fun. This year one of the shows we went to was Miriam Margolyes & Dickens: the Best Bits. It seemed a way to bypass the luck of the draw. Dickens, after all, is Dickens; and Miriam Margolyes is known to be a clever woman and a good actress. Moreover, when I was an Editor and Director of a now defunct publishers, The Brynmill Press, she was one of the few people who bought any of our books – which also predisposed me in her favour. And she’s Jewish, which I am racist enough to associate with expectations of wit and laughter. (There was, as it happens, a good deal of the latter, and not at her expense either.)
The promoters – like good promoters – called it a new show, but whom it was new to, goodness only knows. It couldn’t have been her. The Best Dickens bits, of which there weren’t many and which she must have done hundreds of times, were the most obvious and most familiar bits: Mrs Gamp, of course, Fagin, of course, Scrooge, of course, Flora Finching, of course. Then, to be watching from near the back of the Lennox Suite in the Edinburgh International Conference Centre (17,115 sq ft in area, 23 ft in height and, in its raked theatre set-up option, accommodating 2,000 delegates) meant that, as good as the view and the sound system were, you were hardly placed to appreciate anything going on on stage that might be called acting.
It wasn’t a good sign that she introduced Dickens as the greatest writer in the language. He is, without doubt, a very great writer – perhaps (except for the author of Anna Karenina?) the greatest novelist in the language. But he isn’t Shakespeare; and nobody who has any opinion worth listening to could possibly think he is. It was a worse sign that, having said we all knew who Dickens was, she added – as if spontaneously – “And, if you don’t know who I am, what the fuck are you doing here?” And it was a worse sign still that, at that, the whole audience laughed uproariously. Was this to be the signature note of the evening – fat old lady with posh voice says rude words and audience erupts into laughter? When we got to the second half (or, more like, two thirds) of the performance – Miriam Margolyes Without Dickens – it was.
It was worse. I don’t know whether she had contempt for her audience but she certainly knew it and how to please it, and without putting herself out. No doubt she’d had to work to get up her Dickens readings in the first place, but that must have been years ago. It couldn’t be costing her much to repeat them now, not with the text in front of her. In the second part of her show she answered audience questions – any questions. That ought to have been a tip-off for what was to come but, naively, I expected the questions to be about Dickens and her readings: Why do you think Dickens greater than Shakespeare? Or: Why did you choose those particular passages? You did Flora Finching as if she were just a figure of mockery, but is that all she is? Or, perhaps: Do you think Fagin and Scrooge anti-semitic? But the questions she answered had all been asked in advance, before anyone in the audience had heard her readings. She wasn’t naive and knew her audience wasn’t interested in Dickens. What it had come for was to see her exhibit – ’Er off the telly. So exhibit she would and did.
If she knew her audience, it no less knew her. It had seen her exhibit on the Graham Norton and other shows, and that was what it wanted more of, and that was what she gave it. (The contempt was mutual.) The first question prompted her to retell a story about drug smugglers making a drop at a house of hers on the Kent coast. It was a story worth telling but not to 2,000 people paying £25 a head, many of whom must have heard it before. To get laughs from it, she pretended (or perhaps it wasn’t a pretence) to treat it as an opportunity to advertise the house as a holiday let.
The second question was “What was your best orgasm?”, and from then on the whole point became an old, fat, lesbian saying “shit”, “fuck” and “crap” in a posh voice (while staying within the bounds of decency by not saying “prick”, “bum” or “cunt”) and chatting about masturbation and semen: OK when it’s inside you but very sticky if you get it on your hands from masturbating a strange man on the way back to your digs after doing a late night gig at the Edinburgh Festival.
An essential part of her schtick seemed to be a consciousness that she had never been attractive to men. And this gave a queer divided sense to a performance which, once the readings were over, didn’t consist of someone doing something (like Sleary at the circus in Hard Times “throwing seventy-five hundred-weight in rapid succession backhanded over his head, thus forming a fountain of solid iron in mid-air, a feat never before attempted in this or any other country”), but of someone just making an exhibition of herself. How to see it? Was it a kind of revenge on an audience made up almost wholly of people who, unlike herself, had paired off and mated, or was it a brave attempt to face up to and make something of a fate that most of them would likely find bleak? It couldn’t have been, could it, just professional?
Then a question commanded her to rehearse her political opinions so the audience could applaud them. She rehearsed; her audience applauded. The name Rees-Mogg was a button that had only to be pressed to get the applause of a good joke well told. The name Netanyahu was another – though not either told or applauded as a joke. That she, a Jew, was denouncing the leader of the Jewish state exhibited her seriously concerned side, and that her audience applauded exhibited its, to the satisfaction of both.
But then occurred the one genuinely entertaining moment in the whole performance, and one which, in a way, justified the £50,000 or so the audience had paid for it. Four people, in the middle of a row near the back, all fair-haired, fair-skinned and snub-nosed, rose and awkwardly made their way out. At which Ms. Margolyes told the audience not to mind them. They were leaving because they were Jewish and didn’t want to hear Israel being criticised. To which one of the four responded, unheard, “Not Jewish, Bored.”
Duke Maskell writes Reactionary Essays at dukemaskell.substack.com.
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“Tartan army don’t socially distance”.
Like those Scotland fans at the pub in Aberdeen when Scotland qualified… good for them anyway. Maybe we could learn something from them?
I notice stamping and clapping instead of singing and shouting at footy matches doesn’t seem to have caught on. I wonder if any Scots will take any notice of the nut jobs who said they shouldn’t go to Manchester?
“Bloomsbury staff must be vaccinated”.
Seriously, what jobs will be left for us second class citizens in apartheid Britain? lying government scum. Even plumbers who occasionally do a job in a care home have to comply if they want to keep their job, apparently.
Against Vaccine Passports is a worthy cause, but there seem to be precious few businesses in their directory. Early days.
Anyhow, such things could be a lifeline in apartheid Britain.
There’s a similar site called openforall with a lot of businesses on it, but there doesn’t seem to be a search function, so not easy to use.
“Covid secure wedding”.
I tell you now, we are no way “out of this” as long as such crap continues.
Followed by a socially distanced honeymoon?
I thought that was normal?
I’m due to attend a wedding soon but I’m having severe reservations. The couple aren’t too obsessive but other family members are. I’m absolutely through with all this crap so it’s going to be….interesting.
Go anyway, and when any of the vaxxers get a bit snarky, demand to know what they’re so afraid of if they’ve been vaccinated? If their vaccine works, then they’re at no risk from you, unless they don’t believe the vaccines work, in which case, why did they have a potentially cytotoxic poison injected into their veins?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Du2wm5nhTXY
Spike protein is very dangerous, it’s cytotoxic (Robert Malone, Steve Kirsch, Bret Weinstein)
“One in four Covid patients hospitalised while vitamin D deficient die”.
Tallies with what some of us have been saying for ages, and explains a lot – including why Norway and Finland appear to have done so well.
Sir Simon Stevens as Sancho Panza….his faith in Quixote’s imaginary world clearly wavering……..
So Saint Ardern got the Holy Snake Oil without pain. Amen, O Most Holy One.
Soon all Kiwis will have been jabbed, amen amen.
And then they will open their borders,will they?
Only to other jabberwocks, for sure,
And then we’ll see how effective the snake oils really are.
Or if the shots do snicker-snack!
Hope the cunt dies
Agree.
she got the saline one obvs – lets see if she keels over or gets some hideous rash all over her face within a week of getting it – can’t risk the people in charge of this awfulness not being alive and kicking to be in a position to exert their authority and keep that madness going until the job is done
The risk/benefit analysis is swinging round to favour giving the AstraZeneca jab to people in their 30s, according to MailOnline
Yeah, right. All my friends in their 50s who got covid, and there are quite a few, were all absolutely fine and no-one went near a hospital. If you are in your 30s and get covid, you will be fine and won’t go to hospital. If however you get a blood clot you might need medical assistance, I would suggest.
This is dangerous propaganda and dangerous manipulation of statistics, if ever I saw it.
I wonder if the lazy incompetent journos have read about the record levels of post vaccine mortality among young adults in Israel. Or even care.
Absolutely disgusting and shameful. Why would LS highlight this article except to expose its deceitfulness.
Precisely because it is deceitful?
I’m not upset at seeing this kind of article, except at the politics behind it.
Indeed, the stats they’re trying to push in that article are amazing. Looking at the comments it seems no one is being taken in by them. For a start the figures don’t take into account the comorbidities of the ICU/hospital intake.
Trying to make a case using data points of 1.5 vs 1.9 per 100,000 is crazy. Approx 9m 30-39yo in the U.K. so 1.5 equates to 135 people and 1.9 171 people.
How many of those 171 would be morbidly obese? How many of those 135 would be perfectly healthy?
As predicted in April.
Ah but now they claim they can treat the blood clots. So that’s all right then.
Andrew Lloyd Webber backing down in the face of mild bullying from the govt is disappointing if predictable. Businesses rebelled in Italy and I believe largely got away with it, and Italy is a much more heavily policed country than the UK.
As I am apparently as ‘dangerous as a drunk driver’ I don’t really care what this twat does.
Spineless weirdo
the obvs bought him off with some kind of a bung or something – way they have bought off the bulk of the UK population with their furlough, business grants [which will never be repaid] and eat out to help out etc
He wanted to help the government by using the ‘passports’ as a show of ‘defiance’ but obviously not go enough tickets to push that one
Fat old cuck without testicles is all mouth and no trousers? Say it isn’t so !!!!
The hand wringing about the Tartan Army from the Daily Fail was hilarious. More of this please !
Was quite interesting also that the Daily Fail is now trying to scare under 40’s into taking the shot and doing the Governments dirty work for them.
How can an increase from 0.8 to 1.9 every 100,000 cases be regarded as significant? I’m amazed they didn’t have a headline claiming over 100% increase !!!!
Number of healthy people, aged 0-40, who died within 28 days of a positive test in the past 10 weeks I hear you ask? 2 !!!!!
OMFG
Clownworld !!!
supposedly “healthy” people. As was broadcast to the world last weekend, just because you appear to be in peak fitness doesn’t mean there’s not something potentially fatally wrong with you.
Relative risk reduction is their playpen. The zombies are all in the playpen, unaware that there’s a world outside the barrier of lies.
Have “dipped in” to GB news on and off since it opened and perhaps I’ve been unlucky but I was expecting a albeit more moderate tv version of TR, but, oh dear, it comes over as a “all day breakfast tv” station featuring the usual “brain dead” content you would expect from daytime tv and the one show.
What do my fellow sceptics think?
Sadly I agree, had high hopes but the presenters talk over each other all the time and it’s just irritating to listen to and the content while less biased than that if other outkets us pretty much drivel.
Haven’t heard that they’ve had any of the alternative experts on regarding lockdowns or the vaccines, but then, as you say, I only dip in and then pretty quickly dip out.
Lozza Fox was on in the evening a couple of nights ago – good interview – made good case, plus Andrew Neill the other evening also made the case well and concluded with “so the public health emergency is clearly over” which was heartening, but otherwise would tend to agree – less biased than other MSM and the talking over each other and low production values are a bit irritating
Yes, I have occasionally hit an interesting bit, but overall it is pretty dire so far.
Agreed. I had to retune my Freeview recorder to get it and soon realised I needn’t have bothered
I’ve been similarly unimpressed so far. Their only plus point is to have proper interviews with people who’d never get invited onto other MSM news channels except to get shouted over and accused of being some sort of -ist.
Dan Miller’s piece in the CW is a must read, as ever.
The image about who is really in charge is also worth sharing….
best article I have read yet
I thought the country was already thoroughly trashed by the government and gullible arseholes.
“Brits in 30s now more risk of Covid than blood clots from AZ jab” – The risk/benefit analysis is swinging round to favour giving the AstraZeneca jab to people in their 30s, according to MailOnline”
There we go. Right on time.
Who could possibly have predicted that?
Just a basic observation. Nothing particularly new, but illustrative.
I’m sitting in a pub, waiting for a meal.
I was challenged about a mask on entry. Well – I guess they have to.
“Exempt”
But – then – ”Have you anything to prove it?”. A year on, FFS.
I restrained myself – I have every sympathy with serving staff. But I think that the steam from ears was noted.
Two things :
– The sheer absurdity of the interior mask regulations (putting on masks for a piss, otherwise no masks etc etc) are so absurd that anything with a brain would fall about laughing rather than observe them.
– The reactions of my companions : “Don’t make a fuss” as I (quietly) fumed.
We are truly fucked.
WEF twitter page promoting books the other week.
I wonder if Bloomsbury will be selective, under instructions what to publish.