How Hard Can It Be? Page 9
But here’s the problem. It is extremely rare that the newspapers these days go after genuine charlatans. Every day, I hear rumours of malpractice in charities, or fraud in business, but with dwindling circulations and advertising revenue in freefall, the press simply doesn’t have the funds any more to chase leads. Woodward and Bernstein seem to have been replaced by a bunch of desk-bound journos who rewrite press releases from global-warming lunatics and run a couple of pap pictures of Madonna buying an ice cream.
Which brings me on to the dilemma. Because while I trained as a journalist, I wound up on television, which makes me a celebrity. Which means that, despite my best efforts to lead a quiet life, I am constantly photographed by a stream of two-bit losers who think my new shoes are in some way of importance to the nation.
On this basis, I found myself cheering wildly when the Mosley verdict came through. Because at last I knew the press could no longer come up my drive and take pictures of what’s in my garage. The Mirror actually did that the other day. It opened my garage doors and took photographs. Which is exactly the same as opening my wife’s knicker drawer and photographing what’s in there. That’s just out of order.
Then you’ve got Jonathan Ross. You can take it from me that he does not earn £6m a year. Nothing like. But the press can print that, amid stories that Madonna’s had an affair, that Alan Davies has eaten a tramp and that Lily Allen has been swimming.
I do not know many people from the world of television. I have not been to Jonathan Ross’s house. He’s never been to mine. But those that I do meet, with the exception of Piers Morgan, are mostly very ordinary people with very ordinary lives. They do not shout: ‘Do you know who I am?’ at every train guard and maitre d’. They do not quaff champagne or gorge on peach and peacock. And mostly they earn much less than you think. And yet every single one of them is fair game for those members of the press that, deprived of funds to chase down proper stories, see them as the cheap option. I urge you all to think about that next time you’re thumbing through Heat magazine and you come across a picture of some actress with stretch marks. Just imagine how that picture makes her feel. And how it makes her children feel.
Happily, however, Max Mosley, and Princess Caroline of Monaco, who won a similar case recently – although not involving any headlice – has finally put a stop to it. And if that means I can buy a cup of coffee without having my effing photograph taken every five seconds, I say hallelujah to that.
See the problem. As a journalist, I would say it is interesting for the public to know whether Madonna has had an affair but as a celebrity on her side of the fence, I would argue vehemently that it is not in the public interest. We have reached a point where newspapers will be disinclined to run any story on extramarital rumpy pumpy even though there is no actual British law preventing them from doing so. Just the interpretation of a tangential European law by one judge. What’s more, there never will be a British law because if any politician stood up and proposed such a thing, everyone would jump to the conclusion that he’s got a free private jet from the Syrians and a dungeon at home full of Thai lady-boys.
The only solution I can come up with is this: I am allowed to write what I want about whoever I want. But if anyone writes about me, I’ll stick so many lawyers up their arses, they’ll be able to turn a Vespa round in there.
Sunday 3 August 2008
Miss Street-Porter, I have a job for you in Cambodia
Since we’re told charity begins at home, it’s better, I’ve always thought, to give £1m to a hapless British person than 10p to an organization that provides sandwiches for prisoners in Turkey. Now, however, I have decided that, actually, charity begins in Cambodia.
Some people get all dewy-eyed about Africa. That’s jolly noble, but I don’t see the point because I fear that no matter how much money you pump in, the bejewelled pigs that run the place will pump it straight back out again, into the coffers of Kalashnikov and Mercedes-Benz. The only thing I’d send to the dark continent is a team of SAS hitmen to shoot the likes of Mr Mugabe in the middle of his face.
Others would say that we have enough problems on our own shores without getting all teary over the children of Mr Pot. I disagree, because these days, every time I think of underprivileged people in Britain, the hideous face of Shannon Matthews’s mum pops into my head, all greasy, fat and stupid, and it’s hard to summon up any sympathy at all. Cambodia, though, is different. It’s a country of 14m people but between them they have only about 5m legs. In fact, there are 25,000 amputees, the highest ratio per capita of any country in the world. This is not because Cambodians are especially clumsy. It is because of landmines.
Nobody knows how many mines were laid during the endless cycle of warfare, but it’s sure to be in the millions. What we do know is that since the Vietnamese invaded in 1979 and drove the madman Pol Pot into the hills, 63,000 people have trodden on one. One man has had his left leg blown off four times. They gave him a good prosthetic after the first and second explosions, but since then he’s had to make his own out of wood. And it’s still going on today. In most places in the world, you can get three rice harvests per year from your paddy field. In Cambodia, it’s one. This is partly because the Khmer like a weird sort of rice that’s harder to grow, but mostly it’s because you set off with your plough and within minutes there’s a big bang and your water buffalo has become a crimson mist.
As a result of the ordnance lying in every field, no one is fighting for a right to roam in Cambodia. They have no equivalent of the Ramblers Association. They have no concept of Janet Street-Porter. In fact they have no concept of England. Because the education is so poor, most people there believe the world is made up of four countries: Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Everywhere else is France. All white people are therefore French. Angelina Jolie, who adopted a Cambodian baby, does much to help clear the landmines and has been made a Cambodian citizen, is French. I was French. And every night, most of the men settle down to watch Manchester United and Chelsea slug it out for honours in the French Premier League. I’d never met an adult anywhere in the world (apart from America) who’d never heard of Great Britain. In Cambodia nobody had.
What’s more, you will never see a Cambodian person wearing sunglasses. Mainly this is because the average wage in Cambodia is less than £400 a year and so Ray-Bans are a bit out of range. But also it’s because Cambodians all have flat noses. So sunglasses simply fall on to the floor every time you hop to the shops, and every time your buffalo explodes.
That’s what did it for me. The sunglasses. Not the education. Not the notion of living in a country where there is no Janet Street-Porter. The landmines made my eyes prickle, but my heart just mushroomed over the idea that they can’t afford to wear shades. And that even if they could, they’d keep falling off.
I have therefore decided that I must do something. Unfortunately, however, we all reach a point like this when we decide we must help, and then it’s so very hard to know what should be done next. Secretly we all know that for every pound we donate to a large charity, only 2p actually reaches the people we have in mind. The rest is spent on adverts for highly paid coordinators in the Guardian and expensive offices in London’s glittering West End.
You always feel you want to go to the root of the problem. But in the bee that’s come to nest in my roost, that’ll be hard. Earlier this summer a team of Australian doctors happened upon a little girl in the town of Siem Reap. Her face had been horribly disfigured, by a bloody landmine I suppose, and they were overwhelmed with a need to help. They went to meet her parents, and her father was keen that his daughter be sent to Australia for plastic surgery. Her mother, however, went ballistic when she discovered the poor child would once again look normal. ‘How will she be able to beg then?’ she asked. And the Aussie medics were sent packing.
I can’t even ring the Cambodian government for help because I fear it would be extremely enthusiastic and then all the money I sent over would be spent on fixture
s and fittings in the finance minister’s next luxury hotel. That’s if I could raise any money in the first place. It’s hard when money’s tight here and everyone else has their own pet project.
I suppose I could write to Ray-Ban asking it to design a cheap pair of shades that can be worn by someone who has no nose. But I think it’d be better if I started work on some designs for the most brilliant mine-clearing vehicle the world has ever seen. I’m thinking of strapping some ramblers together, and then …
Sunday 14 September 2008
Hey, let’s live fast and die when ministers tell us to
So, how are you going to die? It’s a tricky question and unless you are currently on your way to an American airbase in Baghdad, while wearing a C-4 explosive vest, the chances are you haven’t got a clue.
Certainly, if you’d asked Mrs Carol Colburn in May how she was going to shuffle off this mortal coil, she wouldn’t have said: ‘Well, tomorrow I imagine that I’ll be scratched by a rat which will have traces of urine on its claws. Yes. That’s how I’ll meet my end.’ But I’m afraid that’s exactly what happened.
Similarly, if you’d asked the Greek playwright Aeschylus how he thought he would go to meet his maker, I bet you any money he wouldn’t have said: ‘Good question. And I think it almost certain that what will happen is this: I shall be out for a walk and an eagle will drop a tortoise on my head.’
We spend the first part of our lives imagining that we will not die at all, and the second part hoping that we will slip into the darkness of eternity, aged about 105, while fast asleep.
Undoubtedly, Kenneth Pinyan would have wanted this – but instead, in 2005, he received a spot of horse sex from his beloved stallion and, presumably a bit embarrassed by what had happened, chose not to seek medical help for the fatal injury that resulted.
Of course, if you choose to make love with a horse, you must have an inkling that no good will come of it. It’s not like becoming so engrossed in a video game that you play nonstop for fifty hours and die of tiredness. That’s what happened last year to a chap in South Korea called Lee Seung Seop.
That’s the sort of thing that causes me to sweat. How many times have I done something apparently harmless that could very easily have killed me? How many times have I been unwittingly close to death in a car, or while wiring a plug?
How many times has an eagle dropped a tortoise where I had been standing only seconds earlier? And how do I know that right now, aged forty-eight, on a Saturday afternoon, my carotid artery isn’t just about to rend itself asunder?
I hate the uncertainty. I hate the idea that later I might sit on the suction pump in my swimming pool and have my intestinal tract pulled clean out of my bottom. That happened to someone in America last year. Someone who’d woken up that morning imagining that it was going to be just another normal day.
Death also came unexpectedly to Isadora Duncan, who must have thought: ‘I’ve taken the roof off my car, so because it’ll be a little bit chilly, I’ll wear this long scarf …’ You see flowers at the side of the road these days, a petrol-station reminder that someone was just on their way home from work when the final curtain came slamming down. It makes me shiver with fear.
There’s another problem, too. Because, like you, I harbour a vague notion that I’m not going to die until I’ve had a telegram from Buckingham Palace – or is it an e-mail these days? – I’m going to stay in to watch television tonight. I certainly wouldn’t be doing that if I thought that in the morning I was going to trip while pulling on my trousers and break my neck.
Think. You are reading this now, on a Sunday morning, and you probably have nothing on for the rest of the day. But what if you knew for sure that tonight you were going to explode? You’d get off your arse and try wing-walking. Or see how many baked beans you can eat with a cocktail stick in less than a minute. In short, you’d do something useful.
And that has given me a bonzo idea. We may be capable of living for 100 years, but most of the time we’re not really living at all. We are wasting time, doing nothing in particular. And I’m sure this attitude would stop if we knew precisely when our time was going to be up.
So why doesn’t the government introduce a law that forces everyone to jump off Beachy Head when they are sixty-five? This way, you would cram every single waking moment of every single day with stuff, adventure and excitement. It really would be a Brave New World.
And if you were unfortunate enough to die early, with, say, a stingray’s pointy bit in your heart, you wouldn’t traipse through the Pearly Gates thinking: ‘Damn. If only I’d made love to a few more women.’ Because under my proposals you’d have made love to them all. And, what’s more, as the day of doom drew near, you’d have a chance to make sure that the local donkey sanctuary, and not your miserable family, was going to inherit all your belongings.
You’d also have the opportunity to say goodbye to your loved ones, a scene that was denied to Martin of Aragon, who, over supper one night and in rude health, died from an uncontrollable burst of laughter.
You’d also be able to choose to die with dignity, something that was not afforded to Evelyn Waugh, Elvis Presley or Lenny Bruce, all of whom went west, rather ignominiously, on the lavatory.
I can see the government liking my idea very much. Partly because ministers love bossing us about in life, so it stands to reason they’ll also love telling us when to die. Partly because fewer people means less global warming. And partly because, with a looming pensions crisis, a number of economic problems would be averted if everyone got the gold clock and immediately hurled themselves on to the Central line.
Sunday 21 September 2008
Don’t let banks lose your money – do it yourself
A few months ago I was seated at dinner next to a banker and, as you can imagine, my watch immediately started going backwards. Minutes crawled by, and as he droned on about derivatives and sub-prime markets in America I began to wonder if it would be poor form to stab him in the eye with my lobster scissors. Instead I decided to try to will myself to death. But then I was snapped into hair-straightening consciousness when he casually mentioned that the giant Union Bank of Switzerland was in trouble.
UBS? That’s where I’d plonked all my life savings. What do you mean, trouble? Are you saying that because some Mexicans can’t afford to pay their mortgages I’m in danger of losing the fruits of a lifetime’s graft? The answer, when translated and condensed, was yes.
The next day, in a bit of a flap, I rang the bank, which quite understood my concerns and offered to transfer the bulk of my savings to a company I’d never heard of. It was called AIG.
As you can imagine, the past two weeks have been most enjoyable. No wait. That’s the wrong word. I mean blood-in-my-feet, dead-faint-half-the-time terrifying. As I sat there on that horrible Monday, watching the whole financial world on the brink of collapse, I thought back to all the midnight oil I’d burnt writing these columns, all the crappy hotels I’d stayed in while making various television shows. And how all of that revenue would be lost for a raft of reasons I simply didn’t understand.
Of course I made strenuous efforts to get my money out of AIG as soon as the scale of its problems became apparent. But it wasn’t possible. It had shut the fund in which I’d invested and it would remain closed for three months while it tried to sell the assets. ‘We need to do this in an orderly fashion,’ said the man on the phone, calmly.
Inwardly I was screaming. I don’t give a shit about an orderly fashion, any more than a man in the trenches wants to look smart while running for his life. It’s my money. I gave it to you. You’ve squandered it on a Mexican’s house in San Diego and a stupid football team and that’s your problem. Not mine.
It turned out, however, that I was wrong. It was my problem, so I decided to try to understand banking. And what I’ve gleaned from a two-week crash course is that it is completely unfathomable. There isn’t a single person in the entire world who has the first idea how the system
works. It’s like the internet. An entity. Something that can be brilliant or terrible, depending on nothing that the human mind can grasp. But either way, it cannot be turned off.
This, for example, is what AIG had to say about the situation. ‘Approximately $307 billion … of the $441 billion in notional exposure of AIGFP’s super senior credit default swap portfolio represented derivatives written for financial institutions, principally in Europe, for the purpose of providing regulatory capital relief rather than risk mitigation. In exchange for a minimum guaranteed fee, the counterparties receive credit protection with respect to diversified loan portfolios they own, thus improving their regulatory capital position.’ That’s not English. So far as I know, it’s not even human. It is rhyming slang for bank.
Then, for no reason that anyone can explain, news came through that the American taxpayer had rescued AIG. I was beside myself with happiness. I was also in California. So I turned off the CNN business report – the BBC was doing something on global warming, as usual – ran downstairs and, much to the surprise of the hotel doorman, thanked him and everyone in the lobby for getting me out of such a deep and confusing hole.
Sadly, however, it turns out I’m still in it. You see, I’ve just received a letter from an AIG assistant general manager – it has obviously put its top men on the job – saying that I can either have a fraction of my investment back in December, or I can take out a new fund – using imaginary money that obviously doesn’t exist – and hope to get it all back at some unspecified point in the future. Now, I’m a gambler. I love the horses and playing cards. But this is a big one. This is keeping me awake at night. Can I really put twenty years of savings on red and hope that Carlos the Mexican sells his pick-up truck to pay off his mortgage?