1 00:00:02,600 --> 00:00:05,040 This programme contains very strong language. 2 00:00:05,040 --> 00:00:06,280 TYPEWRITER KEYS CLICK 3 00:00:06,280 --> 00:00:08,840 TYPEWRITER BELL 4 00:00:08,840 --> 00:00:11,720 FRENETIC MUSIC PLAYS 5 00:00:19,200 --> 00:00:22,960 According to Jonathon Green, the incomparable scholar of the 6 00:00:22,960 --> 00:00:25,680 language which fell off the back of a lorry, 7 00:00:25,680 --> 00:00:28,760 slang is the poetry of the gutter. 8 00:00:28,760 --> 00:00:31,160 It's the poetry of the disenfranchised, 9 00:00:31,160 --> 00:00:32,920 the poetry of the have-nots. 10 00:00:37,840 --> 00:00:42,840 Poetry is also, as Housman noted, the straightest way to starvation. 11 00:00:44,240 --> 00:00:46,680 Not much future there, then. 12 00:00:46,680 --> 00:00:48,720 And not much future in the gutter either. 13 00:00:50,920 --> 00:00:54,840 We're looking at an OG and an OD. 14 00:00:54,840 --> 00:00:58,200 It doesn't stop poets writing. SIREN WAILS 15 00:01:00,080 --> 00:01:04,560 Gore Vidal described irony as the weapon of the impotent, 16 00:01:04,560 --> 00:01:07,600 and so it is, always has been, 17 00:01:07,600 --> 00:01:09,920 always will be - it doesn't change a thing. 18 00:01:09,920 --> 00:01:14,720 Peter Cook recalled how the doughty Weimar satirists prevented Hitler 19 00:01:14,720 --> 00:01:16,880 coming to power in 1933. 20 00:01:18,600 --> 00:01:22,040 They both might as well have been talking about slang, 21 00:01:22,040 --> 00:01:25,160 which is euphemised as unconventional usage, 22 00:01:25,160 --> 00:01:28,080 though of course it is not particularly unconventional, 23 00:01:28,080 --> 00:01:31,840 it's just kept out of the puritanical media which ignores 24 00:01:31,840 --> 00:01:34,000 whatever trespasses beyond the 25 00:01:34,000 --> 00:01:35,600 limits of decency, 26 00:01:35,600 --> 00:01:39,240 whatever is outside its self-prescribed boundaries. 27 00:01:39,240 --> 00:01:44,120 Wall-to-wall witlessness and unbelievably low IQ fodder for 28 00:01:44,120 --> 00:01:48,400 slow learners is OK. The language of the street isn't. 29 00:01:49,600 --> 00:01:51,440 We're not children. 30 00:01:53,920 --> 00:01:58,680 Satirical exercises may be as politically and socially impotent 31 00:01:58,680 --> 00:02:03,640 as Vidal reckoned, but is corrective change really the point of them? 32 00:02:03,640 --> 00:02:08,680 The real satisfaction is to be had in the creation of texts, 33 00:02:09,360 --> 00:02:13,840 of slang which will be deemed offensive, and of satire. 34 00:02:13,840 --> 00:02:16,600 Satire need not be funny, 35 00:02:16,600 --> 00:02:21,560 but it must be mordant, vicious, aggressive and hurtful. 36 00:02:22,080 --> 00:02:24,440 Unless it's hurtful, it's no use. 37 00:02:24,440 --> 00:02:28,200 These, then, are the weapons that the weak possess. 38 00:02:28,200 --> 00:02:33,160 So what if they - we - use language which is reckoned bad, 39 00:02:33,960 --> 00:02:37,600 or unsuitable for polite society, whatever that is? 40 00:02:37,600 --> 00:02:40,640 FRENETIC MUSIC PLAYS 41 00:02:43,840 --> 00:02:46,360 RELAXED MUSIC PLAYS 42 00:02:50,200 --> 00:02:53,840 The self-interested actions and irresponsible actions of the 43 00:02:53,840 --> 00:02:58,920 powerful are infinitely more damaging than words 44 00:02:59,040 --> 00:03:03,040 which are reckoned unseemly and fit to be spoken or written in public. 45 00:03:07,000 --> 00:03:11,200 Further, the powerful targets of the voices from the gutter are 46 00:03:11,200 --> 00:03:15,280 frequently incapable of recognising that they're being 47 00:03:15,280 --> 00:03:17,800 held in contempt - they just don't get it. 48 00:03:19,040 --> 00:03:22,240 Because they speak a different language, a language which, 49 00:03:22,240 --> 00:03:26,600 as the late Geoffrey Hill observed, they hold in contempt. 50 00:03:26,600 --> 00:03:27,920 They don't value it. 51 00:03:29,240 --> 00:03:33,720 So they don't acknowledge its venom, its loathing, its barbs, 52 00:03:33,720 --> 00:03:36,680 which are hardly noticed. They are impervious. 53 00:03:38,960 --> 00:03:41,840 Politics is inseparable from the people who practise it. 54 00:03:43,320 --> 00:03:48,080 The feeble pleading that it is not personal but about issues is a 55 00:03:48,080 --> 00:03:49,800 cross-party lie. 56 00:03:51,480 --> 00:03:55,800 Politicians from the extreme left to the extreme right are more like each 57 00:03:55,800 --> 00:03:59,480 other than they are like normal human beings. 58 00:03:59,480 --> 00:04:03,440 Their shared language is proof of this sameness. 59 00:04:03,440 --> 00:04:05,960 They all spout the same cliches - 60 00:04:05,960 --> 00:04:09,680 Hard-working families... Hard-working people... I am seeing a few green shoots... 61 00:04:09,680 --> 00:04:11,280 Green shoots of recovery... 62 00:04:11,280 --> 00:04:15,240 The green shoots of economic spring are appearing once again. 63 00:04:15,240 --> 00:04:20,200 It is personal, which is why we should mock the Member for Uxbridge 64 00:04:20,320 --> 00:04:24,240 and South Ruislip for being the rear end of Caligula's horse. 65 00:04:26,440 --> 00:04:29,240 Which is why we should mock the out-of-her-depth 66 00:04:29,240 --> 00:04:33,720 and massively compromised schoolmarm Mrs May ad feminam, 67 00:04:33,720 --> 00:04:36,240 for having willingly submitted to 68 00:04:36,240 --> 00:04:39,520 the Trump lout's radical handholding. 69 00:04:39,520 --> 00:04:43,720 Which is why we should mock her husband for making a nation cringe 70 00:04:43,720 --> 00:04:47,600 with his proud admission that he carries out menial domestic tasks 71 00:04:47,600 --> 00:04:50,400 which most men would do without noticing. 72 00:04:50,400 --> 00:04:54,040 I definitely do the taking the bins out, I do the traditional boy jobs, 73 00:04:54,040 --> 00:04:55,920 by and large. 74 00:04:55,920 --> 00:04:58,960 Slang is the expression of what we think, 75 00:04:58,960 --> 00:05:01,840 rather than what we are enjoined to think, 76 00:05:01,840 --> 00:05:04,720 what we are bullied into not thinking, 77 00:05:04,720 --> 00:05:08,760 what we are liable to censor ourselves for thinking. 78 00:05:08,760 --> 00:05:12,720 It describes the actual, rather than some sort of ideal 79 00:05:12,720 --> 00:05:17,720 which we are enjoined to achieve by hypocritical politicians, 80 00:05:18,480 --> 00:05:22,480 sodomitical bishops, and exploding imams. 81 00:05:22,480 --> 00:05:25,520 The bust - what I got arrested for in San Francisco. 82 00:05:25,520 --> 00:05:29,040 In San Francisco, I got arrested for, uh... 83 00:05:29,040 --> 00:05:31,920 "We can hear that, daddy." Um... I'm not going to repeat the word, 84 00:05:31,920 --> 00:05:34,520 because I want to finish the gig here tonight, it's, uh... 85 00:05:34,520 --> 00:05:37,480 Lenny Bruce was, as usual, on the money. 86 00:05:37,480 --> 00:05:41,240 There is no "what should be" - there is only "what is". 87 00:05:41,240 --> 00:05:44,440 Get in the court, swear the heat in, when did he say, "Your honour, 88 00:05:44,440 --> 00:05:46,400 "He said, blah, blah, blah!" 89 00:05:46,400 --> 00:05:49,560 The judge, "He said blah, blah, blah?!" LAUGHTER 90 00:05:49,560 --> 00:05:52,080 Then the guy really yanked it up - "That's right! 91 00:05:53,840 --> 00:05:56,720 "I didn't believe it, there was a guy up on the stage, in front of 92 00:05:56,720 --> 00:05:59,800 women and a mixed audience saying, blah blah blah!" 93 00:05:59,800 --> 00:06:02,560 Slang is exhilaratingly contemptuous 94 00:06:02,560 --> 00:06:04,400 of those who attain power, 95 00:06:04,400 --> 00:06:06,760 those who attempt to impose their 96 00:06:06,760 --> 00:06:09,000 will on the rest of us. 97 00:06:09,000 --> 00:06:12,600 We are capable of thinking for ourselves. 98 00:06:12,600 --> 00:06:16,960 Slang deflates the preposterous notion of human perfection. 99 00:06:16,960 --> 00:06:18,960 It acknowledges what we are, 100 00:06:18,960 --> 00:06:21,480 rather than what we should be. 101 00:06:21,480 --> 00:06:23,080 What we should be, that is, 102 00:06:23,080 --> 00:06:24,920 according to our supposed betters. 103 00:06:26,680 --> 00:06:29,920 Who are just now, depending on taste and religion, 104 00:06:29,920 --> 00:06:34,520 blessing Allah's suicide bombers, dating a choirboy, 105 00:06:34,520 --> 00:06:38,720 or getting pleasurably whipped by a lady in latex whom they will pretend 106 00:06:38,720 --> 00:06:41,760 not to have heard of when the slime of the gutter press comes 107 00:06:41,760 --> 00:06:44,160 a-blackmailing. WHIP THRASHES 108 00:06:44,160 --> 00:06:47,600 The more one sees of this end of humankind, 109 00:06:47,600 --> 00:06:51,600 the more one's milk of human kindness turns sour. 110 00:06:51,600 --> 00:06:54,520 Slang is the most sour poetry. 111 00:06:54,520 --> 00:06:56,760 It does not wish you well. 112 00:06:56,760 --> 00:06:59,440 It's demotic, it's the spoken and 113 00:06:59,440 --> 00:07:03,720 very occasionally written invention of the tap room, 114 00:07:03,720 --> 00:07:07,240 the bar room, the workplace, the barracks, 115 00:07:07,240 --> 00:07:09,840 the private place. 116 00:07:09,840 --> 00:07:14,480 The received idea about slang - that it's a form of language which 117 00:07:14,480 --> 00:07:17,920 occludes and excludes - is, I believe, wrong. 118 00:07:17,920 --> 00:07:20,760 Slang is about showing off, 119 00:07:20,760 --> 00:07:24,360 about increasing one's idiolect, 120 00:07:24,360 --> 00:07:28,160 about finding a better expression for blowjob than "blowjob". 121 00:07:28,160 --> 00:07:31,200 It's about flexing one's lingo muscle. 122 00:07:31,200 --> 00:07:34,720 It's an expression of verbal dexterity. 123 00:07:34,720 --> 00:07:37,000 Imagination costs nothing. 124 00:07:37,000 --> 00:07:41,520 The pleasure of slang is in the making. It's a boast. 125 00:07:41,520 --> 00:07:45,760 My boast is that I added to the already brimming store of 126 00:07:45,760 --> 00:07:50,640 words for drunk with "badered" - ie legless, like the air ace - 127 00:07:50,640 --> 00:07:54,480 and to the sexual lexicon with "rubbing offal", 128 00:07:54,480 --> 00:07:57,160 which is pretty much what intercourse is. 129 00:07:57,160 --> 00:08:00,680 I'm absurdly proud of these coinages. 130 00:08:00,680 --> 00:08:05,720 Slang is centripetal - it gets to the core of what it describes, 131 00:08:06,480 --> 00:08:10,120 and whatever it describes is made vital. 132 00:08:10,120 --> 00:08:15,200 The gap between signified and signifier is narrowed, exaggerated. 133 00:08:16,000 --> 00:08:17,880 You fucking cunt! 134 00:08:17,880 --> 00:08:22,120 You fucking, fucking, fucking fucked-up fuckwit! WHISTLE BLOWS 135 00:08:22,120 --> 00:08:24,960 MUSIC: Words Don't Come easy by FR David 136 00:08:24,960 --> 00:08:28,720 # Words don't come easy to me... # 137 00:08:28,720 --> 00:08:32,280 Jargon - the prissy net curtains of language - 138 00:08:32,280 --> 00:08:36,520 prescribes instead "you sexual intercourse", 139 00:08:36,520 --> 00:08:39,600 and "you fornicating pudendum", 140 00:08:39,600 --> 00:08:43,440 and "you crass genitalia". 141 00:08:43,440 --> 00:08:45,640 Words, words. 142 00:08:45,640 --> 00:08:48,920 Is it the actions and objects themselves that the petty-minded get 143 00:08:48,920 --> 00:08:51,960 so enthusiastically worked up about, 144 00:08:51,960 --> 00:08:54,840 or is it their verbal signifiers, 145 00:08:54,840 --> 00:08:59,400 the words attached to the beast with two backs? WOOD PIGEON COOS 146 00:08:59,400 --> 00:09:04,360 Is to accuse someone of being a have-sex or a make-love, 147 00:09:04,480 --> 00:09:09,520 or possessing excrement features and a faecal head, what bodies like the 148 00:09:09,640 --> 00:09:13,760 dim-witted football authorities call "foul and abusive"? 149 00:09:13,760 --> 00:09:17,360 What sort of cunt decrees that "cunt" is unacceptable, 150 00:09:17,360 --> 00:09:19,120 whilst vagina is OK? 151 00:09:22,000 --> 00:09:25,240 Jargon is everything that slang is not. 152 00:09:25,240 --> 00:09:27,920 De-centrifugal, evasive, 153 00:09:27,920 --> 00:09:31,240 drably euphemistic, unthreatening, 154 00:09:31,240 --> 00:09:32,800 conformist. 155 00:09:32,800 --> 00:09:35,800 The coinage of jargon words is not a creative act. 156 00:09:38,000 --> 00:09:42,520 Jargon does not attest to our capacity for linguistic invention. 157 00:09:42,520 --> 00:09:45,200 While slang belongs to the gutter, 158 00:09:45,200 --> 00:09:48,320 jargon belongs to the executive estate. 159 00:09:48,320 --> 00:09:50,880 It is the clumsy, graceless, inelegant, 160 00:09:50,880 --> 00:09:53,720 aesthetically bereft expression of 161 00:09:53,720 --> 00:09:57,800 houses with three garages, of businesspeople who insistently 162 00:09:57,800 --> 00:10:00,840 refer to their workmates as colleagues, 163 00:10:00,840 --> 00:10:05,360 of drivers who think it important to distinguish a Mondeo from an Astra. 164 00:10:09,640 --> 00:10:12,000 It is delusional. 165 00:10:12,000 --> 00:10:16,880 It inflates pomposity, officiousness and self-importance, 166 00:10:16,880 --> 00:10:19,160 rather than punctures them. 167 00:10:19,160 --> 00:10:24,200 Slang mocks. Jargon crawls on its belly, giving great forelock, 168 00:10:25,640 --> 00:10:29,480 hoping for promotion. Users of jargon often can't speak 169 00:10:29,480 --> 00:10:33,800 because they are stifled by having their head trapped in the duodenum 170 00:10:33,800 --> 00:10:37,000 of someone senior to them, and that person, 171 00:10:37,000 --> 00:10:39,920 for example a high-flying, multi-platform, 172 00:10:39,920 --> 00:10:44,080 forward-planification colleague is also unable to speak due to the 173 00:10:44,080 --> 00:10:46,960 position of his tongue. 174 00:10:46,960 --> 00:10:49,720 In jargon world, this can prove a problem. 175 00:10:49,720 --> 00:10:52,640 MUSIC: Mr Apollo by The Bonzo Dog Band 176 00:10:52,640 --> 00:10:55,880 # Apollo, Mr Apollo 177 00:10:55,880 --> 00:11:00,600 # Everybody knows he's the greatest benefactor of mankind... # 178 00:11:00,600 --> 00:11:04,680 Why ought we to respect scum of the earth like the Trump lout, 179 00:11:04,680 --> 00:11:07,040 who have attained power by grasping 180 00:11:07,040 --> 00:11:09,280 every opportunity for self-promotion... 181 00:11:09,280 --> 00:11:11,640 My hair is blowing wildly in the wind! 182 00:11:11,640 --> 00:11:14,040 ..by backstabbing, by lying, 183 00:11:14,040 --> 00:11:17,760 by making themselves Croesus-rich by borrowing so much that the banks 184 00:11:17,760 --> 00:11:20,440 can't foreclose on them? Nice hotel. 185 00:11:20,440 --> 00:11:24,520 They do this in order to be able to boss their fellows. 186 00:11:24,520 --> 00:11:28,840 Rub a successful politician, and you'll find a busybody who 187 00:11:28,840 --> 00:11:33,880 refers to him or herself in the third person, always knows best, 188 00:11:34,280 --> 00:11:36,280 who yearns to display its 189 00:11:36,280 --> 00:11:38,520 prefectorial pettiness on a global stage. 190 00:11:40,480 --> 00:11:44,160 Rub the Trump lout, and you'll find that, along with being the most 191 00:11:44,160 --> 00:11:46,920 mortgaged man on earth - that's what leader, 192 00:11:46,920 --> 00:11:48,920 "leader of the free world" means - 193 00:11:48,920 --> 00:11:52,400 along with that debt of $750 million, 194 00:11:52,400 --> 00:11:55,400 his proudly proclaimed racism and misogyny... 195 00:11:55,400 --> 00:11:59,480 Why not? ..his cosmic ignorance, his chilling nationalism... 196 00:11:59,480 --> 00:12:02,480 We have to build a wall, folks. CHEERING 197 00:12:04,320 --> 00:12:06,680 We have to build a wall. 198 00:12:06,680 --> 00:12:09,720 ..his blatant nepotism... It's a massive problem. 199 00:12:09,720 --> 00:12:14,080 ..his taxpaying, his bullying, sheer nastiness, 200 00:12:14,080 --> 00:12:17,200 his complete lack of generosity... Would you rather have Trump? 201 00:12:17,200 --> 00:12:21,680 ..his success in turning America into a pariah state, he has launched 202 00:12:21,680 --> 00:12:24,680 on an undeserving world a leatherette-faced 203 00:12:24,680 --> 00:12:26,880 consigliere called Kellyanne - 204 00:12:28,120 --> 00:12:32,480 the New Jersey Blueberry Princess of 1983, 205 00:12:32,480 --> 00:12:35,360 who has in turn brought us a useful 206 00:12:35,360 --> 00:12:40,360 new turd of despicable jargon - alternative facts... 207 00:12:44,840 --> 00:12:46,360 ..which means lies. 208 00:12:49,400 --> 00:12:53,040 Lord Acton was wrong - it is not power which corrupts, 209 00:12:53,040 --> 00:12:55,120 it's the other way round. 210 00:12:55,120 --> 00:12:57,120 Power is neutral. 211 00:12:57,120 --> 00:12:59,480 It can be exercised beneficently. 212 00:13:00,640 --> 00:13:03,320 But power is more often than not corrupted, 213 00:13:03,320 --> 00:13:06,720 abused by the people who are attracted to it. 214 00:13:06,720 --> 00:13:10,320 Power is attained by those who already harbour the germ of 215 00:13:10,320 --> 00:13:15,240 corruption but who usually keep that germ hidden - even from themselves - 216 00:13:15,240 --> 00:13:19,680 behind a mask, until they have attained the throne. 217 00:13:19,680 --> 00:13:23,960 That mask may be smooth or clownish or lovable or populist. 218 00:13:23,960 --> 00:13:25,720 Whatever it is, 219 00:13:25,720 --> 00:13:30,040 its wearers give themselves away with their abasement of language. 220 00:13:30,040 --> 00:13:35,120 They coarsely simplify complicated ideas in an access of patronisation. 221 00:13:36,160 --> 00:13:38,760 I wanted a Northern Powerhouse... Northern Powerhouse... 222 00:13:38,760 --> 00:13:41,000 Northern Powerhouse... Northern Powerhouse... 223 00:13:41,000 --> 00:13:44,720 Northern Powerhouse... Northern Powerhouse... Northern Powerhouse... 224 00:13:44,720 --> 00:13:48,040 Northern Powerhouse... Northern Powerhouse. APPLAUSE 225 00:13:51,240 --> 00:13:54,240 ORGAN MUSIC PLAYS 226 00:14:02,160 --> 00:14:07,240 Don't they realise how tired, how clapped-out their paltry jargon is? 227 00:14:07,840 --> 00:14:11,400 It's the language of people who can't think for themselves and 228 00:14:11,400 --> 00:14:16,440 arrogantly believe that the rest of the populace shares their infirmity. 229 00:14:16,640 --> 00:14:20,480 We don't. We are all in this together. 230 00:14:20,480 --> 00:14:24,400 Education... Real change... education... real change... 231 00:14:24,400 --> 00:14:28,240 ..and education. ..with the strong, the stable... 232 00:14:28,240 --> 00:14:31,720 Strong and stable... Strong and stable... Strong and stable... 233 00:14:31,720 --> 00:14:35,200 Strong and stable... Coalition of chaos. APPLAUSE 234 00:14:35,200 --> 00:14:38,240 These people are programmed morons. 235 00:14:38,240 --> 00:14:42,480 Their threadbare formulae are more than just pockmarks - 236 00:14:42,480 --> 00:14:44,840 they're seething buboes, 237 00:14:44,840 --> 00:14:48,960 signalling an absolute contempt for the populace whom they regard as 238 00:14:48,960 --> 00:14:53,520 gullible patsies to be patronisingly talked down to. 239 00:14:53,520 --> 00:14:57,920 They signal, too, a contempt for the language of the country they're 240 00:14:57,920 --> 00:15:02,480 meant to be governing. They signal their own poverty of thought. 241 00:15:03,600 --> 00:15:05,920 Are they brainwashed? 242 00:15:05,920 --> 00:15:07,680 They're certainly tongue-washed. 243 00:15:11,400 --> 00:15:13,240 Drip-down, trickle-down. 244 00:15:14,440 --> 00:15:17,760 Jargon words which, like so many jargon words, 245 00:15:17,760 --> 00:15:22,800 describe a non-existing process, a non-occurring phenomenon. 246 00:15:23,400 --> 00:15:26,840 Sure, in an ideal world, it might exist, but not in this one. 247 00:15:30,240 --> 00:15:32,200 The hypocritical, 248 00:15:32,200 --> 00:15:37,200 knowingly dishonest theory and the illusory practice are worlds apart. 249 00:15:37,240 --> 00:15:40,360 It is part of the organised social lie. 250 00:15:41,560 --> 00:15:44,720 The Gospel according to Matthew got it right, 251 00:15:44,720 --> 00:15:47,600 and nothing has changed in the last two millennia. 252 00:15:47,600 --> 00:15:50,040 HARPSICHORD MUSIC PLAYS 253 00:16:08,560 --> 00:16:13,600 Jargon begins at the top, which is where putrescence and decay begin - 254 00:16:14,240 --> 00:16:18,400 a fish rotting from the head down and so forth. 255 00:16:18,400 --> 00:16:23,120 The trickle-down of wealth is illusory, a blatant lie. 256 00:16:23,120 --> 00:16:25,360 Rottenness stays at the top. 257 00:16:25,360 --> 00:16:27,520 Just ask the bottom. 258 00:16:27,520 --> 00:16:32,480 However, the drip, drip, drip of septic jargon is undeniable. 259 00:16:32,880 --> 00:16:35,520 It is to be heard everywhere. 260 00:16:35,520 --> 00:16:39,440 The received idea about slang - that it's a language which 261 00:16:39,440 --> 00:16:42,600 occludes and excludes - is, I believe, wrong. 262 00:16:45,800 --> 00:16:50,200 That definition is, however, appropriate to jargon. 263 00:16:50,200 --> 00:16:54,960 Jargon has stealthily nicked slang's clothes from the washing line of 264 00:16:54,960 --> 00:16:59,000 usage. It is today jargon which 265 00:16:59,000 --> 00:17:00,880 occludes and excludes. 266 00:17:08,040 --> 00:17:12,120 I agreed with the Fees Office that a proportion of the maintenance and 267 00:17:12,120 --> 00:17:15,560 cleaning of my house, hence the housekeeper, 268 00:17:15,560 --> 00:17:17,720 should be on the Parliamentary allowance. 269 00:17:19,640 --> 00:17:22,960 A Scottish grandee remarked of the Douglas pig, 270 00:17:22,960 --> 00:17:27,320 "If I had a moat that small, I'd have mucked it out myself." 271 00:17:27,320 --> 00:17:29,160 GRUNTING 272 00:17:29,160 --> 00:17:33,040 As well as pigs with tragic moat problems, we have... CASH REGISTER RINGS 273 00:17:33,040 --> 00:17:35,920 ..further expenses-poor MPs... 274 00:17:35,920 --> 00:17:40,400 countless wealth-sharing CEOs, business gurus... CHAMPAGNE CORK POPS 275 00:17:40,400 --> 00:17:45,400 Altruistic bankers, white-collar paragons, philanthropists, 276 00:17:46,480 --> 00:17:50,680 lovers of mankind - but which bit of mankind? 277 00:17:50,680 --> 00:17:55,720 - patrons of what are called the arts, high-IQ media innovators, 278 00:17:56,480 --> 00:17:58,600 humble barristers, 279 00:17:58,600 --> 00:18:02,840 internet billionaires who rob the rich to give to the poor. 280 00:18:02,840 --> 00:18:07,520 Is that right?! And let us not forget the management consultants 281 00:18:07,520 --> 00:18:09,960 who have meekly inherited the earth - 282 00:18:09,960 --> 00:18:12,480 blessed, blessed, blessed. 283 00:18:14,440 --> 00:18:18,200 Whilst this creme de la creme de la creme de la creme de la creme talks 284 00:18:18,200 --> 00:18:23,200 ceaselessly about transparency, its mores and practices are as 285 00:18:23,600 --> 00:18:26,760 densely opaque as the law will allow, 286 00:18:26,760 --> 00:18:28,880 or even denser. 287 00:18:28,880 --> 00:18:32,080 Jargon is the language of the trained liar, 288 00:18:32,080 --> 00:18:34,480 of the professionally mendacious, 289 00:18:34,480 --> 00:18:38,800 of the dishonesty trainee who learns from its masters. 290 00:18:38,800 --> 00:18:40,840 It is the language employed to 291 00:18:40,840 --> 00:18:44,480 construct what the American journalist Ben Bradley called 292 00:18:44,480 --> 00:18:46,880 the "non-denial denial". 293 00:18:46,880 --> 00:18:50,600 It is the language the French call "la langue de bois". 294 00:18:50,600 --> 00:18:52,960 It is the language of the culpable 295 00:18:52,960 --> 00:18:56,640 who will always sidestep admission of guilt. 296 00:18:56,640 --> 00:19:01,360 It is the language of bad faith, of people without conscience, who, 297 00:19:01,360 --> 00:19:04,680 if they ever suffered shame, have long forgotten what it felt like. 298 00:19:12,120 --> 00:19:16,320 What part of the brain is it that barristers have surgically excised 299 00:19:16,320 --> 00:19:20,480 in order that they can, without shame, without the faintest obloquy, 300 00:19:20,480 --> 00:19:25,520 defend the indefensible and prosecute the patently blameless? 301 00:19:25,760 --> 00:19:29,160 It is, presumably, that part of the brain which 302 00:19:29,160 --> 00:19:32,440 suppresses moral infirmity and transforms 303 00:19:32,440 --> 00:19:36,280 life and liberty into a game. 304 00:19:36,280 --> 00:19:40,320 Their parallel world is rendered yet more ludic - more ludicrous - 305 00:19:40,320 --> 00:19:45,360 by the anachronistic garb, the wigs, the ritual, and the jargon, 306 00:19:45,440 --> 00:19:47,800 which is what Latin borrowings are. 307 00:19:50,480 --> 00:19:53,360 The law does not concern itself with trifles. 308 00:19:55,560 --> 00:19:57,360 A victim's body. 309 00:19:59,040 --> 00:20:00,240 Whereby. 310 00:20:02,640 --> 00:20:04,360 In proportion to the value. 311 00:20:06,760 --> 00:20:09,000 Criminal act. 312 00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:12,880 The English translations of all these are unexceptionable, 313 00:20:12,880 --> 00:20:15,880 they are clear and comprehensible. GAVEL BANGS 314 00:20:15,880 --> 00:20:19,200 And that very clarity is, of course, the problem. 315 00:20:19,200 --> 00:20:22,080 It fails to blind with archaism. 316 00:20:23,360 --> 00:20:27,320 Your learned friend, who is most likely your pompous friend, 317 00:20:27,320 --> 00:20:31,400 will seem markedly less learned and markedly less pompous if it speaks 318 00:20:31,400 --> 00:20:33,160 the common tongue. 319 00:20:34,240 --> 00:20:37,040 The words and expressions remain hermetic - 320 00:20:37,040 --> 00:20:40,760 they do not advance beyond the state of jargon. 321 00:20:40,760 --> 00:20:45,040 They are, wittingly, spoken weapons of bafflement. 322 00:20:45,040 --> 00:20:48,760 They deliberately create incomprehension and bemusement. 323 00:20:50,040 --> 00:20:55,000 And it should be noted that legal Latin was once just Latin. 324 00:20:55,120 --> 00:20:59,440 It was co-opted by the law - it is not the law's coinage. 325 00:20:59,440 --> 00:21:03,240 There is a qualitative difference between Latinisms whose use is 326 00:21:03,240 --> 00:21:06,880 exclusively legal and those such as... 327 00:21:24,120 --> 00:21:25,920 ..and so on. 328 00:21:25,920 --> 00:21:28,400 These latter have entered the 329 00:21:28,400 --> 00:21:32,040 English language as denizens, if you like. 330 00:21:32,040 --> 00:21:34,720 Immigrants, if you don't like. 331 00:21:34,720 --> 00:21:38,000 They have crossed an invisible border from jargon 332 00:21:38,000 --> 00:21:41,040 into the vernacular. 333 00:21:41,040 --> 00:21:45,080 They're used by speakers and by writers like me who have forgotten 334 00:21:45,080 --> 00:21:47,720 most of the little Latin we once had 335 00:21:47,720 --> 00:21:50,960 and can recall only such things as Horace's 336 00:21:50,960 --> 00:21:53,160 marvellously graphic simile. 337 00:21:55,120 --> 00:21:58,040 MELANCHOLY MUSIC PLAYS 338 00:22:21,760 --> 00:22:26,560 Those who put off leading a full life are like this mouth-breathing 339 00:22:26,560 --> 00:22:28,960 Benny, who is going to wait till 340 00:22:28,960 --> 00:22:32,200 all the water has flowed by till he crosses. 341 00:22:32,200 --> 00:22:35,440 The river will flow and flow, he will wait and wait. 342 00:22:42,840 --> 00:22:47,240 This is a more expansive version of the same writer's Carpe Diem, 343 00:22:47,240 --> 00:22:51,720 another maxim which has crossed that border and shed the constraints of 344 00:22:51,720 --> 00:22:54,400 jargon. It should encourage us to 345 00:22:54,400 --> 00:22:58,200 Epicureanism rather than opportunism. 346 00:22:58,200 --> 00:23:03,040 There is very little jargon - as opposed to slang - which describes, 347 00:23:03,040 --> 00:23:06,120 let alone celebrates, enjoyment and exhilaration. 348 00:23:07,720 --> 00:23:10,320 Very little jargon which accords 349 00:23:10,320 --> 00:23:14,160 with AE Housman's indisputable dictum that "the pleasure of the 350 00:23:14,160 --> 00:23:18,160 "moment is the only possible motive for action." 351 00:23:18,160 --> 00:23:22,760 Only a fool, fluent in jargon or crippled by religious belief, 352 00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:24,200 would disagree. 353 00:23:26,360 --> 00:23:30,360 Immediate gratification is what makes life bearable, 354 00:23:30,360 --> 00:23:34,040 or the anticipation of immediate gratification. 355 00:23:34,040 --> 00:23:37,080 Or, anyway, the possibility. 356 00:23:37,080 --> 00:23:40,200 In Housman's case, this would have meant a plentiful supply of 357 00:23:40,200 --> 00:23:43,040 guardsmen and gondoliers. 358 00:23:43,040 --> 00:23:46,880 Are you going to shave here or wait till you get back to barracks? MARCHING FEET 359 00:23:48,680 --> 00:23:51,160 MUSIC: Nice One Cyril by Cockerel Chorus 360 00:23:51,160 --> 00:23:53,520 # Nice one, Cyril 361 00:23:53,520 --> 00:23:57,720 # Nice one, son... # 362 00:23:57,720 --> 00:24:01,760 Anyone who watches football will be familiar with the nutmeg. 363 00:24:08,440 --> 00:24:11,040 If Lad A persists in nutmegging Lad B, 364 00:24:11,040 --> 00:24:13,280 he will be deemed to be lacking respect - 365 00:24:13,280 --> 00:24:17,280 a very important abstract concept in football, as in life - 366 00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:19,840 and Lad B will elbow him in the eye... 367 00:24:21,320 --> 00:24:25,040 whereupon Lad A will fall to the ground as though felled 368 00:24:25,040 --> 00:24:26,720 by a Tonton Macoute hit squad... 369 00:24:26,720 --> 00:24:28,000 WHISTLE BLOWS 370 00:24:28,000 --> 00:24:29,840 ..and Lad B will, when the panting 371 00:24:29,840 --> 00:24:34,280 former-Gauleiter-turned-referee arrives on the scene, be sent off - 372 00:24:34,280 --> 00:24:37,280 or will see red, as they say. 373 00:24:39,560 --> 00:24:43,440 One thing that a nutmeg will gain you, as well as an elbow, 374 00:24:43,440 --> 00:24:45,840 is half a yard. 375 00:24:45,840 --> 00:24:48,200 BIRDSONG 376 00:25:02,240 --> 00:25:04,880 MUSIC: Match Of The Day by Barry Stoller 377 00:25:04,880 --> 00:25:07,760 This is a unit of measurement which is peculiar to football, 378 00:25:07,760 --> 00:25:12,440 and to football's wise and articulate pundit-philosophers who, 379 00:25:12,440 --> 00:25:16,440 week in, week out employ it as though it were everyday speech, 380 00:25:16,440 --> 00:25:19,760 when in fact it is as arcane as such 381 00:25:19,760 --> 00:25:22,800 measurements as a peck, an oxgang, 382 00:25:22,800 --> 00:25:26,080 a livre, a mark, a pennyweight, 383 00:25:26,080 --> 00:25:28,720 a London quarter. 384 00:25:28,720 --> 00:25:33,320 By the way, Lad A has now recovered from his life-threatening injury. 385 00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:39,400 I suspect that these experts don't actually know what half a yard, 386 00:25:39,400 --> 00:25:42,720 18 inches, looks like, how long it is. 387 00:25:42,720 --> 00:25:46,200 And they drone on about the back of the net. 388 00:25:46,200 --> 00:25:48,920 What about the front of the net? 389 00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:51,960 "Half a yard", "nutmeg", "back of the net", 390 00:25:51,960 --> 00:25:56,720 "see red" have entered the language to the extent that people who watch 391 00:25:56,720 --> 00:26:01,200 football on telly are apprised of what they signify. 392 00:26:01,200 --> 00:26:05,240 Yet they remain bound to their original locus, 393 00:26:05,240 --> 00:26:07,120 their original meaning. 394 00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:12,040 The sole exception derives from the philosopher-footballer 395 00:26:12,040 --> 00:26:16,560 Joseph Barton, whose paradoxes are said to nutmeg one's mind. 396 00:26:30,120 --> 00:26:34,040 Otherwise, no use has been found for them outside football. 397 00:26:34,040 --> 00:26:38,960 They're well-known but exclusively in their original context. 398 00:26:38,960 --> 00:26:41,440 They are definitively jargon. 399 00:26:41,440 --> 00:26:46,520 So too are football's thefts from a blue-collar lexicon which is now as 400 00:26:47,320 --> 00:26:52,240 extinct as the factories and mines which gave rise to it. 401 00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:54,760 He's got the guys in there who are willing to put a shift in. 402 00:26:54,760 --> 00:26:56,880 He should put a shift in. 403 00:26:56,880 --> 00:27:00,960 They've got to play those slide-rule passes. Just let him run all day. 404 00:27:00,960 --> 00:27:03,120 Would you say Arsenal, not really at the races? 405 00:27:03,120 --> 00:27:05,120 You say, not at the races today. 406 00:27:05,120 --> 00:27:09,920 "Put a shift in", "slide-rule pass", "not at the races". 407 00:27:09,920 --> 00:27:13,720 Does anyone under the age of 60 know what a slide rule is? 408 00:27:13,720 --> 00:27:16,440 Has anyone under the age of 60 ever 409 00:27:16,440 --> 00:27:20,800 missed a work's outing bus to Haydock Park or Market Rasen? 410 00:27:20,800 --> 00:27:23,840 Jargon conditions behaviour. 411 00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:28,080 As we have seen, when a footballer brushes against another footballer, 412 00:27:28,080 --> 00:27:30,760 one or perhaps both will fall over. 413 00:27:32,040 --> 00:27:36,480 If this grave lack of balance were transferred to everyday life, 414 00:27:36,480 --> 00:27:39,280 then scenes such as this would be all too familiar. 415 00:27:39,280 --> 00:27:41,440 MUSIC: Back Home by England World Cup Squad 416 00:27:41,440 --> 00:27:44,400 # Back home, they'll be thinking about us... # 417 00:27:44,400 --> 00:27:47,280 Footballers regularly increase the proportion of their body that is 418 00:27:47,280 --> 00:27:51,920 graffiti. They disfigure themselves with hideous tattoos, 419 00:27:51,920 --> 00:27:54,080 with brand marks. 420 00:27:54,080 --> 00:27:58,680 They may be Croesus brats, but they treat themselves like cattle. 421 00:27:58,680 --> 00:28:01,480 They have not read Leviticus, 422 00:28:01,480 --> 00:28:05,120 nor do they know that the SS tattooed as an insult, 423 00:28:05,120 --> 00:28:07,760 as well as a means of identifying their victims. 424 00:28:11,240 --> 00:28:15,440 And as for free will, the poor sods have never heard of it. 425 00:28:15,440 --> 00:28:20,440 They're team players, so they follow the team, the mob. 426 00:28:20,640 --> 00:28:22,840 Team spirit isn't a virtue. 427 00:28:22,840 --> 00:28:27,160 It's merely falling in with the flock, obeying the common will. 428 00:28:27,160 --> 00:28:30,200 MUSIC: All Together Now by The Farm 429 00:28:30,200 --> 00:28:33,200 They alter their daft hairdos and their make-up weekly. 430 00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:37,720 So why can they not alter their accent, 431 00:28:37,720 --> 00:28:40,800 their often incomprehensible regional accent? 432 00:28:44,400 --> 00:28:48,720 Accents are no more natural or inevitable than daft hairdos. 433 00:28:48,720 --> 00:28:51,960 It's not as if the lads have regional tattoos 434 00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:54,760 or regional daft hairdos. 435 00:28:54,760 --> 00:28:56,960 # She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah 436 00:28:56,960 --> 00:29:00,960 # She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah. 437 00:29:00,960 --> 00:29:03,600 # With a love like that, you know you should be glad... # 438 00:29:04,840 --> 00:29:07,200 FRENETIC MUSIC PLAYS 439 00:29:11,000 --> 00:29:14,800 I tell 'ee 'uumman, "I be sick o' we clack." 440 00:29:14,800 --> 00:29:17,800 I 'pose now most everybody know how to write love poetry 441 00:29:17,800 --> 00:29:20,920 Bloody near missed the boat to play cricket. 442 00:29:20,920 --> 00:29:25,560 Why should regional jargon, regional dialect, regional accents 443 00:29:25,560 --> 00:29:29,680 be regarded as so admirable if they are incomprehensible 444 00:29:29,680 --> 00:29:34,320 to those with a different regional accent, a different regional jargon, 445 00:29:34,320 --> 00:29:36,800 a different collective lexicon? 446 00:29:36,800 --> 00:29:38,880 They often are incomprehensible. 447 00:29:38,880 --> 00:29:41,960 You can see how the pink part has gone down. 448 00:29:41,960 --> 00:29:45,960 You should have had another 300 there, at least. Yeah. 449 00:29:45,960 --> 00:29:48,720 Eeh, but it's e'er si grand. 450 00:29:48,720 --> 00:29:51,640 But ah'm dazzled with the mysteries of livin'. 451 00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:56,200 There was - and still exists - a wrong idea that mass media have 452 00:29:56,200 --> 00:29:59,480 caused regional accents to disappear. 453 00:29:59,480 --> 00:30:02,480 Television is supposed to have killed them off. 454 00:30:02,480 --> 00:30:06,400 It's an idea without foundation. Why, we call them cosies down 455 00:30:06,400 --> 00:30:09,080 yonder, but up here they call 'em byres. 456 00:30:09,080 --> 00:30:12,000 Do they? Well, it's a very fine mare, isn't it? 457 00:30:12,000 --> 00:30:14,520 She's a grand 'un. Yeah, she is indeed. 458 00:30:14,520 --> 00:30:18,840 In fact, both telly and radio display a wide range of regional 459 00:30:18,840 --> 00:30:23,320 accents, regional dialects, regional jargon. 460 00:30:23,320 --> 00:30:26,320 But perhaps not quite wide enough. 461 00:30:26,320 --> 00:30:31,360 West Country and Black Country accents, both stupidly regarded as 462 00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:35,280 signs of stupidity, are in short supply, 463 00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:40,280 whilst there is an overabundance of mid-Atlantic, generic Northern, 464 00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:42,760 estuarial and Irish. 465 00:30:42,760 --> 00:30:44,320 My deeply caring, 466 00:30:44,320 --> 00:30:49,360 hypersensitive big heart bleeds when I see a tiny child without limbs 467 00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:53,760 bleeding, almost as much as my deeply caring, 468 00:30:53,760 --> 00:30:56,080 hypersensitive big heart bleeds. 469 00:30:58,280 --> 00:31:00,560 Speech has changed. 470 00:31:00,560 --> 00:31:04,960 I don't mean usage, vocabulary and so on - that is and always has been, 471 00:31:04,960 --> 00:31:08,720 always will be in perpetual mutation. 472 00:31:08,720 --> 00:31:11,400 I mean the very purpose of speech. 473 00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:15,240 It is no longer exclusively a means of communication. 474 00:31:15,240 --> 00:31:20,320 It is increasingly employed as a self-conscious badge of identity - 475 00:31:20,320 --> 00:31:24,000 that is, of separateness, of difference. 476 00:31:24,000 --> 00:31:28,280 Mancunian usage is not that of the Lancashire towns. 477 00:31:28,280 --> 00:31:33,000 Tyne and Tees do not elide, nor Cardiff and Swansea. 478 00:31:33,000 --> 00:31:35,920 It's a badge of pride in your particularity, 479 00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:37,720 in where you come from. 480 00:31:38,800 --> 00:31:41,280 Where YOU come from - not me. 481 00:31:42,720 --> 00:31:47,080 All faiths, all moral codes are instruments of repression. 482 00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:48,880 Accents are, too. 483 00:31:48,880 --> 00:31:53,560 Dumping them frees us to go who knows where - on an adventure. 484 00:31:53,560 --> 00:31:57,400 After I heard a tape recording of myself at the age of 17, 485 00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:02,280 I struggled to lose my South Wiltshire, West Hampshire burr. 486 00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:06,040 I had no desire to be bound by what came out of my mouth, 487 00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:07,920 to a particular place. 488 00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:10,520 I did not want to be instantly classifiable. 489 00:32:12,760 --> 00:32:15,440 Nonetheless, I was horrified in my first week at RADA 490 00:32:15,440 --> 00:32:18,760 when a voice teacher, the late Michael McCallion, 491 00:32:18,760 --> 00:32:22,080 listened to a group of us read the same text and then told us where we 492 00:32:22,080 --> 00:32:25,440 came from. He got me bang to rights. 493 00:32:25,440 --> 00:32:27,960 "Somewhere near Southampton," he said. 494 00:32:27,960 --> 00:32:32,240 Spot-on. I grew up only 20 miles from that city, 495 00:32:32,240 --> 00:32:34,680 which is where all of my mother's family lived, 496 00:32:34,680 --> 00:32:37,800 and which I visited every couple of weeks throughout my childhood. 497 00:32:38,960 --> 00:32:41,960 Michael's correct call was shaming. 498 00:32:41,960 --> 00:32:46,280 It made me strive even more to erase this banner of belonging. 499 00:32:48,040 --> 00:32:52,360 Shedding an accent is part of the process of self-obliteration which 500 00:32:52,360 --> 00:32:54,800 necessarily precedes self-creation. 501 00:32:55,800 --> 00:33:00,120 It's a manacle which binds you to wherever you came from, 502 00:33:00,120 --> 00:33:04,080 to whatever faith or moral code you were brainwashed into. 503 00:33:05,160 --> 00:33:10,240 Dumping them frees us, to go who knows where - on an adventure. 504 00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:18,240 HE SPEAKS GAELIC 505 00:33:18,240 --> 00:33:22,840 Scotland has a population of 5.2 million people. 506 00:33:22,840 --> 00:33:27,920 Just over 1% of them, 55,000, speak Gaelic, 507 00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:33,600 and of that 55,000, 65,000 work for the BBC... 508 00:33:33,800 --> 00:33:36,280 LAUGHTER 509 00:33:37,840 --> 00:33:42,560 ..which funds the Gaelic channel Alba with actual money. 510 00:33:42,560 --> 00:33:47,600 Alba is comprehensible only to that 1%, all of whom speak English. 511 00:33:49,120 --> 00:33:52,680 There are no monoglot Gaelic speakers. 512 00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:57,360 Thus huge sums are frittered away on life support for a language which is 513 00:33:57,360 --> 00:33:59,360 a luxury - not a means of 514 00:33:59,360 --> 00:34:03,280 communication, but a symbol of tribal belonging. 515 00:34:03,280 --> 00:34:06,480 You have only to go back a mere seven centuries to a time when 516 00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:09,680 Gaelic was spoken in Lothian and the Borders. 517 00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:14,680 Authenticity will link you to the distant past of your ancestors - 518 00:34:15,280 --> 00:34:18,160 that idyll of freezing mud, 519 00:34:18,160 --> 00:34:21,360 untreated animal furs, plague and woad. 520 00:34:22,760 --> 00:34:27,160 It was assumed that the advent of mass media would obliterate the 521 00:34:27,160 --> 00:34:31,680 particularities of topographically determined jargon, and Newport, 522 00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:36,760 Shropshire; Newport, Monmouthshire; Newport, Isle of Wight; Newport, 523 00:34:37,080 --> 00:34:41,760 Pembrokeshire, would become orally indistinguishable parts of the same 524 00:34:41,760 --> 00:34:43,520 community community. 525 00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:46,280 Homogeneity would prevail. 526 00:34:46,280 --> 00:34:50,960 They would, as team-spirit mentorship advisers advise 527 00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:55,560 the easily advised, all sing from the same hymn sheet - 528 00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:59,480 a sheet soiled by overuse, lack of 529 00:34:59,480 --> 00:35:02,920 originality, and maps of Ireland. 530 00:35:02,920 --> 00:35:06,360 At the third stroke, the time will be six o'clock and 20 seconds. 531 00:35:06,360 --> 00:35:11,280 At the third stroke, the time will be six o'clock precisely. 532 00:35:11,280 --> 00:35:14,960 At the third stroke, the time will be six o'clock and ten seconds! 533 00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:18,520 Homogeneity didn't prevail - regional accents, 534 00:35:18,520 --> 00:35:22,040 along with regional everything else, have been revived, 535 00:35:22,040 --> 00:35:24,480 or have revived themselves. 536 00:35:24,480 --> 00:35:28,360 If anyone is acting daft, I say... HE SPEAK IN OWN DIALECT 537 00:35:28,360 --> 00:35:32,000 These accents are worn with such pride, such misplaced 538 00:35:32,000 --> 00:35:35,720 pride in their differences and their tics and their whimsical 539 00:35:35,720 --> 00:35:39,480 peculiarities, that they have become foreign to one another. 540 00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:42,360 What are you like?! Shut up, I'm on the compu'er, all right?! 541 00:35:44,440 --> 00:35:49,480 But Babel is inimical to social mobility - to mobility full stop. 542 00:35:51,720 --> 00:35:54,640 It signals a fractured society, 543 00:35:54,640 --> 00:35:58,720 composed of countless exclusive communities which, 544 00:35:58,720 --> 00:36:02,560 whilst they may not be actively antipathetical to each other, 545 00:36:02,560 --> 00:36:04,080 are certainly separate. 546 00:36:05,560 --> 00:36:10,240 This is willing apartheid - apartheid with a sugar coating, 547 00:36:10,240 --> 00:36:13,640 apartheid disguised as vibrant diversity, 548 00:36:14,880 --> 00:36:17,240 but apartheid nonetheless. 549 00:36:23,200 --> 00:36:25,040 KLAXON 550 00:36:25,040 --> 00:36:26,840 Hello, Radio Olympia. 551 00:36:26,840 --> 00:36:29,880 This is direct television from the studios at Alexandra Palace. 552 00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:32,960 Received pronunciation, RP, 553 00:36:32,960 --> 00:36:36,840 was the linguistic monoculture which has disappeared. 554 00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:38,320 It was practical. 555 00:36:39,800 --> 00:36:44,600 It enabled a pyromaniac from Elgin to understand an assurance assessor 556 00:36:44,600 --> 00:36:48,840 from Port Talbot. A palliative nurse from Norwich, a 557 00:36:48,840 --> 00:36:50,520 chemist from Wrexham, 558 00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:54,680 and an undertaker from Whitehaven were mutually comprehensible. 559 00:36:55,880 --> 00:37:00,360 The widely-held wrong idea about received pronunciation is that it 560 00:37:00,360 --> 00:37:04,360 was a means by which people traitoriously sloughed their natural 561 00:37:04,360 --> 00:37:07,480 identity, whatever that is. 562 00:37:07,480 --> 00:37:12,560 What is germane here is that RP was a successful lingua franca, 563 00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:14,800 an auxiliary language. 564 00:37:14,800 --> 00:37:19,840 RP owes its iffy reputation - don't say "iffy", say "questionable" - 565 00:37:20,080 --> 00:37:25,080 to its cinema and broadcast versions, which were aberration. 566 00:37:25,080 --> 00:37:28,360 Since the opening of the television service in November 1936, 567 00:37:28,360 --> 00:37:31,280 the programmes transmitted have covered a wide range of 568 00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:35,120 entertainment and interest. Where on earth was it received from? 569 00:37:35,120 --> 00:37:37,360 The Rank Charm School? 570 00:37:37,360 --> 00:37:40,560 The douce Edinburgh suburb of Morningside? 571 00:37:41,520 --> 00:37:44,160 It did RP a disservice. 572 00:37:44,160 --> 00:37:48,240 It became an ingrown affectation as much as an accent. 573 00:37:48,240 --> 00:37:51,200 It was a tribal badge, like any regional accent. 574 00:37:52,200 --> 00:37:56,120 This was the tribe of the prissy and the bloodless. 575 00:37:56,120 --> 00:37:59,480 It had its own jargon, which was anything but earthy, 576 00:37:59,480 --> 00:38:03,360 but there was another form of RP which was simply functional. 577 00:38:03,360 --> 00:38:08,320 It merely meant suppressing accentual tics and quirks of usage. 578 00:38:08,320 --> 00:38:12,080 So a pan-British kind of comprehension was achieved. 579 00:38:14,960 --> 00:38:19,880 JB Priestley's celebrated wartime talks were obviously those of a 580 00:38:19,880 --> 00:38:24,160 Yorkshireman, but a Yorkshireman who could be understood in Yeovil. 581 00:38:24,160 --> 00:38:27,760 Could I speak to Mr Oldenroyd, please? 582 00:38:27,760 --> 00:38:29,600 Oldenroyd. 583 00:38:31,160 --> 00:38:34,000 Oldenroyd! 584 00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:38,960 He could have spoken Yorkshire words - "mardy", "gradely" - 585 00:38:38,960 --> 00:38:42,120 which would have seemed ridiculous if spoken by a Southerner, 586 00:38:42,120 --> 00:38:45,760 but which were nonetheless comprehensible to a Southerner. 587 00:38:45,760 --> 00:38:49,680 Jargon and dialect and accent are inseparable. 588 00:38:49,680 --> 00:38:53,000 I remember writing a book that became undeservedly popular, 589 00:38:53,000 --> 00:38:55,560 they made a film out of it, called A Clockwork Orange. 590 00:38:55,560 --> 00:38:59,600 The great peripatetic Mancunian novelist Anthony Burgess and the 591 00:38:59,600 --> 00:39:02,840 great Aberdonian footballer Denis Law, a long-time resident of 592 00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:05,160 Manchester, sound similar. 593 00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:07,600 So as we're walking along, I mean, absolute silence, 594 00:39:07,600 --> 00:39:10,080 he walked right by me. LAUGHTER 595 00:39:10,080 --> 00:39:13,000 If you were Indian, you were out of the picture entirely. 596 00:39:13,000 --> 00:39:17,560 RP was not a disguise - it was an instrument of social mobility, 597 00:39:17,560 --> 00:39:20,120 a social mobility which no longer exists. 598 00:39:22,760 --> 00:39:27,640 Ingerlandlandlandland and a helpful veteran of Stalingrad 599 00:39:27,640 --> 00:39:29,560 won the World Cup in 1966. 600 00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:32,720 By then, RP was on its way out. 601 00:39:32,720 --> 00:39:36,040 This country's only successful national football manager, 602 00:39:36,040 --> 00:39:38,400 Sir Alf Ramsey, was consequently 603 00:39:38,400 --> 00:39:41,960 mocked for having overdone his elocution lessons. 604 00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:45,120 I think, when selecting teams, selecting players, 605 00:39:45,120 --> 00:39:50,200 then it becomes a little more lonely, inasmuch that one feels this 606 00:39:51,160 --> 00:39:52,840 very heavy burden. 607 00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:53,960 So what? 608 00:39:53,960 --> 00:39:58,040 His RP was recognisably that of the sergeants' mess, 609 00:39:58,040 --> 00:40:01,960 the workers' education authority, the saloon bar. 610 00:40:01,960 --> 00:40:03,400 He spoke clearly, 611 00:40:03,400 --> 00:40:07,520 clearly enough for Argentinian footballers to get his gist when he 612 00:40:07,520 --> 00:40:12,120 called them "henimals" and so caused an international incident. 613 00:40:12,120 --> 00:40:14,760 We have still to produce our best, 614 00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:19,480 and this best is not possible until we meet the right type of 615 00:40:19,480 --> 00:40:22,600 opposition, that is a team that comes 616 00:40:22,600 --> 00:40:27,360 out to play football and not act as animals. 617 00:40:27,360 --> 00:40:30,200 Genteel jargon poses a problem. 618 00:40:30,200 --> 00:40:35,000 If you cannot call a spade a spade, what can you call it? 619 00:40:35,000 --> 00:40:38,960 "Speech-impaired onanist" really doesn't cut it the way that 620 00:40:38,960 --> 00:40:40,640 "dumb wanker" does. 621 00:40:40,640 --> 00:40:44,440 And no-one ever called a linesman - sorry, an assistant referee - 622 00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:46,840 a "coupling labia". 623 00:40:46,840 --> 00:40:51,440 No genteel speaker would ever observe, let alone articulate, 624 00:40:51,440 --> 00:40:55,960 that when a darting run down the channel ends up with the ball in the 625 00:40:55,960 --> 00:40:58,200 back of the net - never the front - 626 00:40:58,200 --> 00:41:02,720 the scorer's subsequent celebrations are proxy masturbation. 627 00:41:02,720 --> 00:41:04,840 Or is that a load of testicles? 628 00:41:04,840 --> 00:41:06,840 A bowl of bovine evacuation? 629 00:41:12,640 --> 00:41:16,560 Genteel pretensions affect perception. 630 00:41:16,560 --> 00:41:20,600 The genteel shut out that which does not accord with their straitened 631 00:41:20,600 --> 00:41:22,640 world-view. 632 00:41:22,640 --> 00:41:24,760 They see what they believe in. 633 00:41:27,400 --> 00:41:32,400 We should believe in what we see - the scum, the sublime, the banal, 634 00:41:33,360 --> 00:41:36,440 the numinous, the dreary, the Elysian... 635 00:41:37,640 --> 00:41:41,520 and the operation waste seeping from a sack outside a clinic's back door. 636 00:41:42,840 --> 00:41:45,880 How boring the genteel life must be - 637 00:41:45,880 --> 00:41:49,000 a life that denies so much of life, 638 00:41:49,000 --> 00:41:51,480 a life led in fear of life. 639 00:41:51,480 --> 00:41:56,520 Inhibited language promotes inhibited behaviour and vice versa. 640 00:41:56,520 --> 00:41:58,320 MUSIC: Kama Sutra by The Bonzo Dog Band 641 00:41:58,320 --> 00:42:00,200 # We tried position 31, yeah, yeah, yeah 642 00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:02,280 # It was terrific fun.... # 643 00:42:02,280 --> 00:42:05,160 Is it the genitals themselves that cause offence? 644 00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:07,480 Or is it the many pleasurable uses 645 00:42:07,480 --> 00:42:09,320 they're put to? 646 00:42:09,320 --> 00:42:10,760 Or is it the vulgar names that are 647 00:42:10,760 --> 00:42:12,160 attached to them? 648 00:42:12,160 --> 00:42:14,200 It's liable to remain a mystery. 649 00:42:14,200 --> 00:42:18,080 Genteel persons are unlikely to respond to even the most courteous 650 00:42:18,080 --> 00:42:21,840 inquiries about the fastidious pathology they suffer. 651 00:42:21,840 --> 00:42:24,640 FRENETIC MUSIC PLAYS 652 00:42:29,080 --> 00:42:33,080 Tabloid newspapers are written by people who can't write, 653 00:42:33,080 --> 00:42:35,000 and read by people who can't read. 654 00:42:39,960 --> 00:42:43,600 A character in Tom Stoppard's Night And Day observes, 655 00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:46,160 "People think that rubbish journalism is produced 656 00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:49,000 "by men of 'discrimination,' who are vaguely 657 00:42:49,000 --> 00:42:51,680 "ashamed of truckling to the lowest taste. 658 00:42:51,680 --> 00:42:56,680 "But it's not - it's produced by people doing their best work." 659 00:42:57,040 --> 00:42:58,880 What can their worst be like? 660 00:43:00,000 --> 00:43:02,600 Tabloid Ingerlandlandlandish 661 00:43:02,600 --> 00:43:05,400 attempts to achieve urgency with a 662 00:43:05,400 --> 00:43:10,480 mendacious mix of naive exaggeration, euphemism, elliptical 663 00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:14,480 constructions, and arcane words 664 00:43:14,480 --> 00:43:17,160 chosen for their punchiness. 665 00:43:17,160 --> 00:43:22,120 Trash journalism is another jargon which is widely comprehensible but 666 00:43:22,120 --> 00:43:25,840 whose usage does not extend beyond the page and the screen. 667 00:43:28,400 --> 00:43:30,560 What is remarkable about its 668 00:43:30,560 --> 00:43:33,440 impoverished, cliched lexicon is 669 00:43:33,440 --> 00:43:37,280 that it would rarely be spoken by either its writers or 670 00:43:37,280 --> 00:43:38,640 its readers. 671 00:43:40,160 --> 00:43:43,000 Every match in every sport is a "clash". 672 00:43:44,120 --> 00:43:49,080 No-one talks of going to a clash at St Mary's or Stamford Bridge - 673 00:43:49,080 --> 00:43:51,560 the football ground, not the battle. 674 00:43:51,560 --> 00:43:55,000 No-one boasts of their champagne lifestyle, 675 00:43:55,000 --> 00:43:57,800 no-one quips about their harridan mother-in-law. 676 00:44:00,440 --> 00:44:04,080 No-one bemoans the fate of tragic toddler Darina. 677 00:44:05,720 --> 00:44:08,440 No-one owns up to having penned a script. 678 00:44:09,720 --> 00:44:12,840 No-one witnesses a blaze. 679 00:44:12,840 --> 00:44:17,480 No-one actually says, "vivacious strawberry blonde Tina." 680 00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:22,360 "Bid", meaning hope to or try, is not used in speech. 681 00:44:28,280 --> 00:44:33,280 Celebrity crossing patrol executive Howard Clent, 38, of Brierley hill, 682 00:44:33,280 --> 00:44:38,200 Staffordshire, is bidding to be hailed Mr West Midlands Curry 683 00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:41,920 Inferno Wallah for the third year in succession. 684 00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:46,960 Last year, courageous Howard won the eat-off clash with Sparkbrook's 685 00:44:46,960 --> 00:44:51,120 Norman Bullwinkle, downing no less than 14 megafowls, 686 00:44:51,120 --> 00:44:54,760 despite rupturing his duodenum in the semifinal. 687 00:44:54,760 --> 00:44:58,400 Quips Howard, "Overcoming the pain barrier is worth it, 688 00:44:58,400 --> 00:45:01,400 "if that's what it takes to become a legend." 689 00:45:01,400 --> 00:45:04,720 That way round - it's never, "Howard quips". 690 00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:10,760 Every blowjob is described as a Disgusting Sex Act, a DSA. 691 00:45:10,760 --> 00:45:13,040 A startling euphemism, 692 00:45:13,040 --> 00:45:17,680 given the lack of disgust shown by tabloid tree-top commandos with long 693 00:45:17,680 --> 00:45:20,880 lenses pointed at minor celebrities enjoying this form of 694 00:45:20,880 --> 00:45:23,200 Vatican-approved contraception. 695 00:45:23,200 --> 00:45:25,120 Just how disgusting can it be? 696 00:45:26,440 --> 00:45:29,720 But we should not forget the tabloid world's prurience levels are 697 00:45:29,720 --> 00:45:31,640 dangerously high and 698 00:45:31,640 --> 00:45:33,760 its moral compass void. 699 00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:36,360 Its hypocrisy is astounding. 700 00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:38,920 Or would be, were we not so inured to it 701 00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:41,600 and to its grubby schoolboy lexicon 702 00:45:41,600 --> 00:45:43,640 of wardrobe malfunctions, 703 00:45:43,640 --> 00:45:46,120 side boobs and flaunting, 704 00:45:46,120 --> 00:45:48,360 flaunting, flaunting, 705 00:45:48,360 --> 00:45:52,400 flaunting... This is the language of the verbally inert, 706 00:45:52,400 --> 00:45:57,200 the language employed in the tabloid coarsening of just about everything. 707 00:45:57,200 --> 00:46:02,120 It adds up to a codified pact between xenophobic morons - 708 00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:06,320 xenophobic morons who sort of write and xenophobic morons who sort of 709 00:46:06,320 --> 00:46:10,720 read. The average gutter-press reader is a slow reader. 710 00:46:12,760 --> 00:46:15,520 It takes all day to read the paper 711 00:46:15,520 --> 00:46:17,480 and to have its prejudices confirmed. 712 00:46:19,440 --> 00:46:24,040 That coarsening is not, of course, restricted to the gutter press. 713 00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:26,880 Television is equally infected. 714 00:46:26,880 --> 00:46:31,000 What can one say about this great and gruesome city that hasn't been 715 00:46:31,000 --> 00:46:33,280 said 1,000 times before? 716 00:46:33,280 --> 00:46:35,240 This was where I lived for years 717 00:46:35,240 --> 00:46:37,440 and, I imagine, accepted for years. 718 00:46:40,520 --> 00:46:45,440 This is the first of four programmes in which I want to question some of 719 00:46:45,440 --> 00:46:49,760 the assumptions usually made about the tradition of European painting. 720 00:46:49,760 --> 00:46:53,040 People are beginning to take advantage of an astonishing new 721 00:46:53,040 --> 00:46:56,280 liberty. We can actually talk about things and people with the same 722 00:46:56,280 --> 00:46:59,800 freedom that you can in magazines and books. 723 00:46:59,800 --> 00:47:02,840 All that power and certainty and ambition and cruelty... 724 00:47:02,840 --> 00:47:06,080 The language used by such writers as James Cameron, 725 00:47:06,080 --> 00:47:08,760 John Berger and Kenneth Tynan - 726 00:47:08,760 --> 00:47:10,720 supple, articulate, 727 00:47:10,720 --> 00:47:13,800 confident of its audience's comprehension - 728 00:47:13,800 --> 00:47:17,880 has disappeared to be replaced by the grunts of primates. 729 00:47:20,080 --> 00:47:25,080 Television's abject distractions are found in humiliation and bullying. 730 00:47:25,840 --> 00:47:28,880 Freak shows fronted by scum-of-the-earth barrow boys and 731 00:47:28,880 --> 00:47:31,120 freelance spivs are neither 732 00:47:31,120 --> 00:47:34,440 intellectually nor morally justifiable. 733 00:47:34,440 --> 00:47:36,440 They appeal to the lowest instincts. 734 00:47:36,440 --> 00:47:39,440 TRIBAL MUSIC PLAYS 735 00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:45,800 APPLAUSE 736 00:47:48,880 --> 00:47:52,280 You cannot marriage multi-platform 737 00:47:52,280 --> 00:47:55,200 kerosene with culture culture. 738 00:47:55,200 --> 00:47:59,360 But no-one...ever magneto-feathered by double axeling. 739 00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:02,400 Expand to contract, contract to expand. 740 00:48:02,400 --> 00:48:05,520 Vibrantly diverse world-class content. 741 00:48:05,520 --> 00:48:09,000 Aerosols - right brain aerosols. 742 00:48:09,000 --> 00:48:10,840 Front loading! 743 00:48:10,840 --> 00:48:12,800 Underlay bleed partnerships. 744 00:48:12,800 --> 00:48:15,280 Have they really got poverty lust? 745 00:48:15,280 --> 00:48:18,400 Or is it sea-horse quanting? 746 00:48:18,400 --> 00:48:21,040 We need big dick thinking. 747 00:48:21,040 --> 00:48:22,400 Big dick. 748 00:48:22,400 --> 00:48:24,640 Otherwise we're retrofitting. 749 00:48:24,640 --> 00:48:27,560 Thank you. CHEERING AND APPLAUSE 750 00:48:30,520 --> 00:48:34,640 Jargon's ubiquity is a measure of the extent to which we are being 751 00:48:34,640 --> 00:48:37,320 lied to and conned all the time. 752 00:48:37,320 --> 00:48:40,040 Language and usage are gauges both 753 00:48:40,040 --> 00:48:42,240 of gullibility and authority - 754 00:48:42,240 --> 00:48:44,200 patient and agent, 755 00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:47,120 the controlled and the dominant, the meek and the Trump. 756 00:48:48,480 --> 00:48:50,480 Hi there! 757 00:48:50,480 --> 00:48:52,360 PIANO MUSIC PLAYS 758 00:48:54,080 --> 00:48:58,040 Discrimination is vital in what is called the arts sector, 759 00:48:58,040 --> 00:49:01,600 which has little to do with art and everything to do with following 760 00:49:01,600 --> 00:49:03,480 exhausted fashions. 761 00:49:03,480 --> 00:49:07,840 The ability to distinguish between noisome rubbish and noisome rubbish 762 00:49:07,840 --> 00:49:12,840 which purports to be art is a demanding and arcane task. 763 00:49:12,840 --> 00:49:16,400 It is not vouchsafed to anyone without a doctorate in paradigmatic 764 00:49:16,400 --> 00:49:19,160 waste interventionism. 765 00:49:19,160 --> 00:49:22,440 Nonetheless, even these experts make mistakes. 766 00:49:22,440 --> 00:49:25,840 A highly qualified gallery cleansing operative might, 767 00:49:25,840 --> 00:49:30,840 in an access of sanity, fail to recognise that a used condom, 768 00:49:31,080 --> 00:49:35,600 a pizza with some cigarette butts in it and a few beer cans 769 00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:39,360 comprise a major work, and sweep it away. 770 00:49:39,360 --> 00:49:42,720 He or she could be chucking out a work worth millions. 771 00:49:49,120 --> 00:49:53,080 But not to worry! When such a fate befell some art rubbish 772 00:49:53,080 --> 00:49:57,800 by Gustav Metzger at the Tate - sorry, Tate full stop, 773 00:49:57,800 --> 00:50:01,920 it's lost the "the" to make it, well, younger, buzzier, more 774 00:50:01,920 --> 00:50:05,840 intensely, Serotally relevant - 775 00:50:05,840 --> 00:50:10,320 it was pointed out by a spokesmoron that the artist had not actually had 776 00:50:10,320 --> 00:50:13,960 to go to the trouble of picking up new rubbish to create a replacement 777 00:50:13,960 --> 00:50:16,760 work of art but had simply found 778 00:50:16,760 --> 00:50:19,880 a bag that had already been filled and discarded. 779 00:50:24,960 --> 00:50:26,880 According to the spokesmoron, 780 00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:31,120 who was presumably acting on the orders of a senior moron, 781 00:50:31,120 --> 00:50:35,720 "The bags are taken from where they are found and placed in the gallery 782 00:50:35,720 --> 00:50:40,800 "space. He doesn't manipulate what's in the bag." 783 00:50:43,360 --> 00:50:45,520 Anthony Burgess wrote... 784 00:50:50,600 --> 00:50:53,000 JAUNTY MUSIC PLAYS 785 00:50:57,160 --> 00:51:02,120 Installations and found objects ceased to be dangerous decades ago. 786 00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:07,960 It's a century since Marcel Duchamp changed the face of urinals forever. 787 00:51:08,560 --> 00:51:11,080 Bad joke then - and one which has 788 00:51:11,080 --> 00:51:13,600 only got worse with constant retelling. 789 00:51:15,920 --> 00:51:17,960 Here are some of the properties 790 00:51:17,960 --> 00:51:20,840 invariably ascribed to installations. 791 00:51:20,840 --> 00:51:22,440 You can simply tick them off. 792 00:51:46,200 --> 00:51:49,520 Really? They're about as dangerous as a soft toy. 793 00:51:49,520 --> 00:51:52,880 A very expensive soft toy, of course. 794 00:51:52,880 --> 00:51:56,120 About as subversive as a high-end BMW, 795 00:51:56,120 --> 00:51:58,280 about as challenging as a poached egg. 796 00:51:58,280 --> 00:52:00,600 And they sell for millions. 797 00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:12,440 Installations, especially minimalist installations, 798 00:52:12,440 --> 00:52:16,200 are the supreme trophies of the international establishment - 799 00:52:16,200 --> 00:52:21,120 that super-haute bourgeoisie which is rich enough, gormless enough, 800 00:52:21,120 --> 00:52:25,160 and boastful enough to own foundations, exhibition spaces, 801 00:52:25,160 --> 00:52:27,440 parks and galleries - 802 00:52:27,440 --> 00:52:31,200 places where the rubbish can be displayed. 803 00:52:31,200 --> 00:52:34,760 Site-specific rubbish and mute rubbish, 804 00:52:34,760 --> 00:52:37,640 for installations have absolutely nothing to say. 805 00:52:39,440 --> 00:52:41,880 They might have been sworn to silence. 806 00:52:43,120 --> 00:52:47,760 The Trappist dictum - be in this world, not of it - 807 00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:52,000 is the very worst precept that any artist can follow. 808 00:52:52,000 --> 00:52:55,040 Yet we live in Trappist art's golden age. 809 00:52:55,040 --> 00:52:58,520 SLOW BRASS MUSIC PLAYS 810 00:53:01,600 --> 00:53:06,640 In this debased milieu, anything is art if an artist says it is art. 811 00:53:07,480 --> 00:53:12,040 This is rather akin to Tony Blair's conviction, or delusion, 812 00:53:12,040 --> 00:53:16,200 that a course of action is correct because it is his course of action. 813 00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:39,560 Quite who anoints a halfwit as an artist is a different matter. 814 00:53:56,240 --> 00:53:58,240 But it's not important, 815 00:53:58,240 --> 00:54:02,440 because whilst we may acknowledge the halfwit's right to call itself 816 00:54:02,440 --> 00:54:06,760 an artist, we do not have to acknowledge that the art is anything 817 00:54:06,760 --> 00:54:08,400 other than worthless. 818 00:54:24,880 --> 00:54:29,080 The history of art since Duchamp has been the history of the kings and 819 00:54:29,080 --> 00:54:32,400 even the pawns within the art loop, 820 00:54:32,400 --> 00:54:35,240 patronising those outside the art loop 821 00:54:35,240 --> 00:54:37,960 for their Ostrogothic philistinism 822 00:54:37,960 --> 00:54:40,480 in failing to appreciate drivel, 823 00:54:40,480 --> 00:54:43,360 mocking pretentious art criticism, 824 00:54:43,360 --> 00:54:45,000 and, above all, 825 00:54:45,000 --> 00:54:47,240 excoriating the jargon of art. 826 00:54:54,600 --> 00:54:58,480 It's also the history of people too afraid and too peer-pressured 827 00:54:58,480 --> 00:55:01,360 to admit that they know they're being flogged a pup. 828 00:55:14,520 --> 00:55:17,160 There are no trades which are more contaminated 829 00:55:17,160 --> 00:55:20,680 by meaningless self-congratulatory, obfuscating jargon 830 00:55:20,680 --> 00:55:23,320 than those of curator, 831 00:55:23,320 --> 00:55:26,760 patron, critic, gallery director, 832 00:55:26,760 --> 00:55:29,240 panjandrum. 833 00:55:29,240 --> 00:55:31,920 They speak only to each other. 834 00:55:31,920 --> 00:55:34,680 Or to themselves - they are, often as not, 835 00:55:34,680 --> 00:55:37,160 the same person in multiple roles. 836 00:55:40,000 --> 00:55:43,080 The art loop is forever out to shock - 837 00:55:43,080 --> 00:55:45,760 pickled corpses, obviously, 838 00:55:45,760 --> 00:55:50,280 performance artists severing bits of their bodies to eat, 839 00:55:50,280 --> 00:55:53,280 insulting royals, 840 00:55:53,280 --> 00:55:55,800 suicides by several means, 841 00:55:55,800 --> 00:55:57,880 burning buildings, 842 00:55:57,880 --> 00:56:00,480 shit, shit and more shit, 843 00:56:00,480 --> 00:56:02,840 drowning babies, 844 00:56:02,840 --> 00:56:05,760 black pudding made from the artist's blood, 845 00:56:05,760 --> 00:56:07,960 bestiality workshops, 846 00:56:07,960 --> 00:56:11,080 and genitals by the truckload. 847 00:56:11,080 --> 00:56:13,240 The usual stuff. 848 00:56:13,240 --> 00:56:15,520 And because it is so usual, 849 00:56:15,520 --> 00:56:19,320 so utterly familiar, it fails in its mission. 850 00:56:19,320 --> 00:56:22,800 It does not shock as it intends. 851 00:56:22,800 --> 00:56:26,000 Its commonplace triteness is not shocking at all. 852 00:56:39,120 --> 00:56:43,800 But it does shock in a way that it is incapable of realising, 853 00:56:43,800 --> 00:56:46,720 in a way that is not intended. 854 00:56:46,720 --> 00:56:50,600 Its carelessly ignorant mauling of the English language is truly 855 00:56:50,600 --> 00:56:53,320 shocking. The work of people with 856 00:56:53,320 --> 00:56:56,280 tin ears and such lack of originality 857 00:56:56,280 --> 00:56:58,640 that they resort to cliche. 858 00:56:58,640 --> 00:57:03,360 Serota called his application to run the Tate "grasping the nettle". 859 00:57:04,520 --> 00:57:07,800 That very title should have disqualified him. 860 00:57:07,800 --> 00:57:09,840 But of course it didn't, 861 00:57:09,840 --> 00:57:14,200 because the clique that chose him recognised him as one of their own, 862 00:57:14,200 --> 00:57:17,960 with the same gross insensitivity to English. 863 00:57:17,960 --> 00:57:21,600 It's for everyone, it is somehow... That insensitivity is shared by the 864 00:57:21,600 --> 00:57:26,040 curator's curator, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, 865 00:57:26,040 --> 00:57:29,640 who mauls the language with insouciant abandon. 866 00:57:29,640 --> 00:57:33,680 The poor man is quite unaware that the words he expectorates are so 867 00:57:33,680 --> 00:57:37,640 meaningless that they might constitute a private idiolect that 868 00:57:37,640 --> 00:57:40,080 he alone can understand. 869 00:57:40,080 --> 00:57:42,240 Within this whole information explosion, 870 00:57:42,240 --> 00:57:44,360 curating is used more and more. 871 00:57:44,360 --> 00:57:47,400 We can see it on Amazon - book lists are being curated. 872 00:57:47,400 --> 00:57:50,680 We can see it in magazines - pages are being curated. 873 00:57:50,680 --> 00:57:52,840 Concept stores are being curated. 874 00:57:54,080 --> 00:57:55,960 Of course, it is understood. 875 00:57:55,960 --> 00:57:59,720 It's a pidgin loosely based on English, 876 00:57:59,720 --> 00:58:04,800 a lingua franca globally spoken by the few thousand people who inhabit 877 00:58:04,800 --> 00:58:08,400 the art loop and who foist their tastes on the world. 878 00:58:11,160 --> 00:58:14,320 Cultish, exclusive, incomprehensible 879 00:58:14,320 --> 00:58:18,320 to the uninitiated, uncommunicative - 880 00:58:18,320 --> 00:58:20,320 which is the very opposite of art - 881 00:58:20,320 --> 00:58:22,520 entirely lacking in transparency. 882 00:58:24,000 --> 00:58:25,760 It is scared to say anything. 883 00:58:27,000 --> 00:58:30,880 Or is it art by people who want to be artists but who have no skills 884 00:58:30,880 --> 00:58:33,720 whatsoever? It is unique - 885 00:58:33,720 --> 00:58:38,760 a lingua franca which is also a language of exclusion, 886 00:58:39,160 --> 00:58:44,200 a word fortress built by the inmates to keep out the mocking gawpers who 887 00:58:44,480 --> 00:58:48,120 want to visit the asylum to jeer at the inmates. 888 00:58:48,120 --> 00:58:51,480 A fortress that has, evidently, been breached. 889 00:58:52,760 --> 00:58:55,240 We shall go on mocking. 890 00:58:55,240 --> 00:58:57,640 MUSIC: Words by Bee Gees 891 00:58:57,640 --> 00:59:00,520 # You think that I don't even mean 892 00:59:00,520 --> 00:59:05,320 # A single word I say 893 00:59:05,320 --> 00:59:09,600 # It's only words 894 00:59:09,600 --> 00:59:12,720 # And words are all I have 895 00:59:12,720 --> 00:59:15,800 # To take your heart away 896 00:59:20,560 --> 00:59:23,960 # Da-da, da-da, da-da-da 897 00:59:23,960 --> 00:59:28,120 # Da-da, da-da, da-da-da da... #