It's been a good week and it's topped by the biggest two gigs of the Talking Cock tour at the Bloomsbury in London. Both nights have been sold out for a while and I am recording my DVD on Saturday. Annoyingly I am still beset with the lurgy that I've been unable to shift for the last month, but I managed to do most of my coughing off stage and it only slightly affected the performance. And I had a really fantastic time with it, with a playful performance of the scripted stuff and a few improvised sections - a man got up (presumably to go to the toilet) towards the middle of the first half, but rather than exit via the doors at the side chose to walk to the front, squeeze past everyone in the front row and exit at the other side. I thought he was coming up on stage to begin with. I couldn't really comment at the time as I was in the middle of one of the more sensitive and serious bits of the show about circumcision, but afterwards I checked with the audience that they has seen him too and that he wasn't a ghost. I mocked his exit strategy and shared my fear that I thought he was coming up to punch me - "How dare you suggest the foreskin isn't brilliant! I'm going to pull mine over your head." Another man interrupted to tell me that the practice of holding your foreskin shut and inflating it with wee is called "a bullfrog". I hoped that he would be on hand for such points of order throughout the show, giving me the names of all the bizarre sexual practices I mentioned. My only fear now being that we've chosen to film the wrong show. But hopefully tomorrow will be just as good, even though it's always nerve-wracking committing a show to DVD. But this is such a terrific venue, especially when full and the staff and crew are also excellent and I am pretty sure it's going to be a top night and if I can nail the performance and am not too held back by my hacking cough this could be my best DVD yet. It will be out at some point in the summer if you can't get to see the show live. Though there are still
31 chances to come (every time I count them up it seems to be more shows left than before - I fear I am trapped in some Twilight Zone nightmare of never getting finished with my cock.
I dipped my toe into the Thatcher "Ding Dong" controversy on Twitter today. I am no fan of the Iron Lady, in fact I would go as far as saying that I hated her and her policies which warped the morality of this country and led directly to the point where disabled people are getting their benefits cut whilst bankers are getting huge bonuses. I hate the selfishness and short-sightedness of her philosophy, I hate to live in a country which doesn't care for its vulnerable citizens (and self-interest alone should make everyone the same because we're all very likely to be vulnerable citizens ourselves one day) and I don't like the attempts to beatify her after all the division and pain she caused in our society. But it's not unusual for people to be polite about someone who has just died and to concentrate on their positive rather than negative aspects (look at Jimmy Savile) and I think there has been a healthy amount of criticism of this woman and some very intelligent and thoughtful comment about why she isn't the greatest Prime Minister we've ever had and why her legacy has more negative than positive aspects.
And much as I love the British spirit of protest I think that trying to get this song to number one is demeaning to all concerned. The worst thing about it is that the spirit behind the campaign is entirely Thatcherite. It's based on plain nastiness, lack of compassion and gloating at the misfortune of others. You don't defeat someone by acting like them or by taking revenge on them by using their own tactics. You become like them. That was the only point I wanted to make, though a few people felt by questioning the promotion of this song I was defending Thatcher (when I think it's pretty clear I wasn't). But it's possible to despise what Thatcher stood for and to not think that encouraging people to buy this track is a good idea.
My main problem is that it is just much too late. Thatcher is dead. She isn't here to hear your protest. The time to do this (if there was ever a good time) would have been when she lost office in the 1990s. Then you could have your celebration and she would have had to deal with the reaction (not that she would have cared - I am pretty sure she would have revelled in this). But she has died and as I don't believe there is a Heaven (or more pertinently a Hell) she isn't up on a cloud or down in a furnace smarting at the implication. She is nowhere so the protest means nothing. If you were the kind of person who wanted her to pay for what she's done then it only makes sense if she pays for it while she was alive. Just like Jimmy Savile she went to her grave without being punished for her crimes. It doesn't matter now if Jimmy's tomb stone has been taken down or the pop charts have a rude song because the people responsible for the crimes have got away with them. They have already won.
Just because someone had no humanity doesn't mean you shouldn't have some towards them - or at least towards the people who loved them - and this campaign just seems to punish the living and the family and do nothing to redress the politics of the situation. It's easy to sit back and click on a link and buy a song and think "Ha ha, that'll show them." But it would be a much more powerful protest to actually get off your arse and try and stop the Tories cutting benefits or even go out and vote for someone else. If this protest did lead to people becoming politicised and then wanting to do more then I'd be behind it, but I don't think it will. It's an unpleasant bullying laugh, an attempt to gloat and comes from a position of defeat and weakness and pointlessness. And it's a distraction. Because look, people are talking about the song rather than any of the other stuff. I am fairly convinced that people won't forget the bad stuff about Thatcher and that she won't become a mixture of Mother Theresa and Princess Diana. But she has just died. It's demeaning to everyone except her that this is happening. I am a childish and petty person but I find this embarrassing.
Also what kind of a precedent does it set? I think you could find enough people who dislike what Nelson Mandela achieved who if they were of a mind to do so could get a song called "Nelson Mandela was a cunt" into the charts on the week he dies. I wouldn't be very happy about that. And I don't think I would claim that free speech meant that it should go ahead. I think that would annoy me. I don't think I can deny other people the right to be annoyed if the same is done to someone they held in high regard. Because otherwise I am becoming what I claim to despise.
What about if your mum died and enough people didn't like her to do something similar? How do you think you'd feel about it then? Assuming you like your mum. That's what's going on here. Mark and Carol might not be your favourite people either, but do they deserve to be put through that? On a basic level of humanity.
Some people said to me that this protest was better than people turning to violence, which is possibly true, although I think a peaceful protest against us paying for her funeral or even having such a big occasion might be a more useful thing to do. And just because you can think of something worse that doesn't make something right. Others pointed out that in Hitler Moustache I had claimed I would wank on Thatcher's grave once she was dead. But I don't think anyone thought I was being serious about that and I made the joke while she was still alive and also pertinently it was made to make the point about the context of a joke. I said I wouldn't tell Carol Thatcher that I was going to wank on her mother's grave because that would be inconsiderate. Jokes are about context and the context of this joke is mean and bullying. I have no problem about speaking ill of the dead. I am speaking ill of the dead here. Thatcher was a horrifically negative force for our country. Let's not trivialise it by saying she was a witch. She was worse than that, because she actually existed.
God Save The Queen by the Sex Pistols was a brave and pertinent attempt to provide an alternate opinion at a time when there was little dissent and importantly where the objects of the satire were still alive to witness them.
It's a complex issue and there is some part of me deep within that is slightly thrilled by sticking it to Thatcher - and we did all dream about dancing on her grave, or pissing on it (not so much wanking on it, though I like the mixed message of that notion which probably speaks a little bit of the confusion that many people feel towards this woman). My main issue and the thing that I am most clear about is that the aggressive nature of this particular gesture is in itself rather Thatcherite. The way to defeat her values (which live on after her) is not to behave like her, but to have humanity and respect for each other, even our enemies. Or at least do something more politically significant than get a dubious song (not sure all these lefties should be happy calling a woman a witch). If we can't make our society more caring and respectful to all then Thatcher has won. I fear she already has.
But the thing you should really take away from all this is that Thatcher is like Jimmy Savile. They both got away with it. All we can do now is to stop other people doing the same. Whilst they're alive.
