This piece comes with no notes. It's totally unscripted and therefore transparently sincere. It represents what I believe needs to be done to improve culture, society, media and politics, and importantly what my role will be in this. I intend to present these thoughts to open forums throughout Britain, accompanied by a life size cut out of Robert Wadlow and Maxine Carr's French football shirt with the witty and memorable 'I've Scored' slogan. It helps if you read this in the voice of James Earl- Jones or Winston Churchill.
I promise I will continue to do all in my power to slam the doors of opportunity in the faces of those who might have given me a break in developing a career in the media, theatre or publishing world. I promise to bite the hand that feeds from every literary agent, manager, editor and to remove any scrap of hope they may offer me. If only to save the disappointment of the inevitable. I will do this and more, safe in the knowledge that I will pledge to TRY and not mock soft, easy targets like the Daily Mail, Britney Spears or Vernon Kaye, but have the courage to make unpopular decisions, necessary for the growth of enlightenment among billions of disadvantaged people who have not been challenged or stimulated for many years now. I will be only too pleased to hold Mother Teresa or Martin Luther-King to account. If it's simple bitch slapping and idle uninspired gossip you want, you are welcome to visit the weak Perez Hilton clone sites. I do this because I care. Of course I do.
I want a Britain (and indeed a world) where the term 'aspiration' should no longer go hand in hand with rewarding stupidity, presenting emaciated models as being an acceptable size, owning child killing SUV's as an acceptable mode of transport which best defines your upwardly mobile status, no longer compete with other mediorce people to attain mediorce aspirations, fame and celebrity, absurd hairstyles, saying the word 'Carbon footprints' or emissions because you think it makes you look great, commissioning and transmitting 'aspirational' US teen shows...and Hollyoakes. But one in which your contribution to a progressivley intelligent society not a devolving Britain, part of a devolving world. Becoming a singer or a dancer on some bland talent show is not a credible aspiration. Lots of people sing and dance but with the added bonus that they create their own material not mimick it from the television or radio that transmits the substandard originals. The current elite needs to be dismantled in order to create the new elite. So you better listen up Peaches Geldoff and Nigella Lawson, it ends here. Equal rights for the experimental, for the ugly, for the poor, for the aesthetically challeneged, for the bitter!
I yearn for a Britain where concepts and ideas such as alternative medcine, spiritualism and religion whenever mentioned in polite society are treated as if you've anally abused a pigeon or a pike that has died of old age.
I want to live in a Britain where the very word 'Britain' is not continually misused in the tabloid media, when what they are really referring to is right wing England, and not the whole of the Isles. I want a Britain that is proud to be pedantic, and yes, to some extend proud to be patriotic, but not one where the media constantly patronises its subjects by asking them 'What does it mean to be British?' It's such a daft question anyway, like asking what does it mean to adore cheese spread or what does it mean to hate Gary Linekar?
You know something else? I'd stand for a Britain that is proud to be controversial. What often gets presented as controversy often is no more than a storm in a teacup. In our climate of never ending hypocrisy how are we supposed to have rational, gleeful sometimes, debates about difficult and real subjects for fear of being treated as the non-existent anti-christ? Leave the social construct 'morality' out of the argument, then we'll talk. Being offended isn't a right restricted to the few and it doesn't exist to cloud the subjects underneath. Let's stick a knife into the heart of the matter and twist it a few times. Twist it.
It's time we had a Britain that defines 'chavs' not as the middle-upper classes in society who have questionable dress sense and taste but quite rightly the working class scumbags who haven't the awareness or mentality to realise that the mismatched knock off's they wear look truly ridiculous, before being hi-jacked by style glossies and watered down to look even more comical. And let's not get into the cheap rent-a- limo culture! Come on, the middle classes are embarassing enough without trying to manufacture a cool sub-culture for themselves. Which leads me onto my next point.
I want to contribute to a Britain that doesn't apologise for dysfunctional families and deprived areas as an excuse for criminal activity or the loss of morals in society. This excuse can never wash when many people have come from similar backgrounds, have been abused, have been deprived of opportunity but have gone on to better things. Something else must be at work among these indivduals who defile our world and make it an unbearable place to eat on public transport without having to put up with the tinny tones of shit music, as an advertisement for how boring and shit some people are. Being unwashed really is the least of our worries.
Britain must not be afraid to be ashamed of itself from time to time. We do get it wrong, we do have poor taste, we aren't what we were, and even that was nothing to be proud of. Our public transport is a disgrace, much of our infrastructure is in a mess and the European counterparts which our rags spend so much time dissing have better services, and can speak our language when we can't be arsed and expect to be treated like colonial rulers. When you live in a country where some quarters actually takes seriously Boris Johnson for the candidtate for London Mayor, who feels that his bumbling and winning humour on 'Have I Got News For You?' is enough to get him by, then you know you're in trouble. I'm sure we can all have fun imagining what a London September 11th might be like with him in charge but the issue here is that as with everything else I've mentioned, Boris is almost like the symbol of stupidiy and mediocrity that we've come to rely on too much in this country. It's there in our middling sporting achievments, which accounts for the mass hysterics on Lewis Camelot, sorry Hamelton. Let's get this house in order.
I want a Britain that really stands by equal rights and carries it through to its logical conclusion. One day I'm sure we hope to see someone with special needs or mental illness stand for a member of parliament or even Prime Minister. It would bring great peace of mind to consider that we live in a world where literally ANYONE no matter your circumstances can be the head of the government. Imagine that for a moment.
I demand a Britain that fully realises and understands that Peter Kay is not the comic genius you think he is but a substandard, substitute for the end of the pier acid porridge that spews from the mouth of Roy 'Chubby' Brown, the sort of kid you enjoyed bullying at school, someone who should be laughed AT for his blindingly obvious weak and lazy observations and gags which are older than Jimmy Tarbuk's mid-60s rent boys. I know you will join me in destroying his mother's bungalow and that the good will you once had will be consigned to no more repeats of his show at Blackpool Tower, and placed back in the care of Dave Spiky and the Christmas Crackers he nicked his gags from. Same goes for Jimmy Carr and Alan Davies. No longer should we put up with lame jokes on QI, and the sweeping looks of affection and attention aimed for Stephen Fry's sympathetic approval.
What about a Britain that recognises Pete Doherty not as the misunderstood musical genius who has yet to realise his potential, but as a drug addled fuck up who wastes every chance offered to him, and if he was anyone else he would be rotting in prison? Can we really stand by as we allow this poor, inoffensive victim, with his inoffensive songs be promoted and fed drugs by the media in the hope he will go to an early grave? Can he really be compared to the excitment and talent of Alex 'Hurricane' Higgins, who really did piss and gamble his life away and survived to tell the tale? We must have a Britain that denounces his followers as car crash chasers and not give them the satisfaction that they desire in the effort to tearfully tell the grandparents 'I was there when Doherty burned! I lit candles, played Libertines demos, smoked a spliff with my mates as we all looked at each other and said, 'Mm, Ian Curtis, again.' We must put him in a pullover, forcibly put him in the care of the Val Doonican estate and allow him time to develop his craft as a storyteller, so he is able to give decades of pleasure to our children as a raconteur of nursery rhymes.
We must we live in a country that celebrates the death of Guy Fawkes as the hero that never was, rather than a villain. I know many of you would have more fun burning the stealth murder Dick Cheney or Rumsfeld. Or even Linda Barker for that matter.
So in all my endeavours I will continue to legally I should think, burn the bridges that may have led me to opportunity in the hope that you won't have to, and if during my endeavours, success does come my way again, you can rest assured that I will stand by my views and use my position to carry forward this awareness, which is being neglected by the current figures in entertainment and politics, so pre-occupied with fame and charity and engaged in the stuff that is geared towards inflating their image. Never again do you have to be disappointed or unfulfilled. I accept that this may not have been a speech that will have made Alison Pearson's granny knickers wet nor will it play to the sensibilities of many political commentators or coloumists who got off on the gimmicky speech that David Cameron gave at the Tory conference a couple of months ago, nor will it stop the likes of Russell Brand, Lily Allen. Mika, Kate Nash and publications such as the NME continuing their devolution but it's a start and I know that with your support we can spread the word.
In the words of Luther-King, 'I may not get there witcha.' But I will be watching...Britain is safe in my hands. I thank you.
