The prostitute and the politician

Introducing the real Belle de Jour

Over the course of the last six years, during which she has written a best-selling book which has spawned a successful TV series (The Secret Diary Of A Call Girl), the celebrated call girl-cum-blogger Belle de Jour has successfully maintained her cloak of anonymity.

When you think about it, that in itself is a seriously impressive achievement in a twenty-first century world in which it is now virtually impossible for anyone of any notable interest to hide anything for six hours, let alone six days. And yet Belle has kept her identity secret - via a combination of careful planning, discretion (not even her agent knew her true identity) and a well-concealed money trail – which has eluded the attempts of the world’s journalists to out her.

Other anonymous bloggers have been quickly identified and exposed, often within days. But Belle has kept the newspapers, literary critics and a curious public in the dark. It has variously been thought that she was a well-known author under a nom de plume, a man writing titillating male fantasy for other men, or an entirely fictional creation.

For six years, we have all been chasing wild geese.

Until today.

In an interview with India Knight - one of the staunchest critics of Belle's books - in today's Sunday Times, Dr Brooke Magnanti, a 34 year old Bristol research scientist, has finally stepped out of the shadows and publicly claimed her alter ego.

The interview makes interesting reading. She is as articulate and intelligent as you would expect from someone with a PhD and a pre-Belle de Jour history of scientific blogging. And she also seems fully responsible for her own actions. One of the most common accusations levelled at Belle has been the way her blog has seemingly glamorized the sex trade, but she in no way denies the less salubrious side to prostitution; it is more that her experiences – some real, some fictional - were at the other end of the scale. The simple facts as Brooke/Belle relates them are that she became an escort as a means to make ends meet without the need for skills or training. It’s not necessarily a solution most of us would have adopted, but it suggests a degree of pragmatism over aspiration in terms of career choice.

Now, the exact nature of truth is always an elusive thing, and it can often be difficult to separate it from carefully crafted, self-serving fiction. Indeed, in the hours since the newspaper’s publication, several people have already come forward claiming to have been previously aware of Belle’s hidden identity, and the suspicion is that Brooke Magnanti’s revelations, rather than being purely voluntary, are little more than pre-emptive action. (The interview mentions the looming threat of a whistle-blowing ex.)

Regardless, it’s hard to criticise. Belle de Jour remains who she has always been; the only real difference is we can now put a name to her.

Palin bends the truth (again)

Another high-profile woman whose book, Going Rogue, is due to be published this coming week, is already guaranteed a place at the top of the bestseller lists.

Sarah Palin, the former Republican vice-presidential nominee. The darling of the conservative right, with her gun-totin’, moose-huntin’, anti-abortion hockey mom image. The embodiment of all that is evil to many others.

The Palin PR machine is already in overdrive. For instance, she will appear on Oprah tomorrow as part of a promotional tour which could easily – and probably accurately - be interpreted as the first step of a three-year campaign for the Republicans’ 2012 presidential nomination. Already we have seen teasers of some of the juicier morsels from her book, from which it is clear – if we did not know already - that Sarah Palin is a woman who (a) ensures nothing she does remains anonymous and (b) clearly believes in “blame first, accept responsibility later (preferably never)” as a modus operandi.

In Going Rogue, Palin squarely refuses to accept any responsibility for the Republicans’ failure at the polls last November, instead pointing the finger unwaveringly at John McCain, his aides and anyone else unfortunate enough to stray within her blast radius. Her abysmal performance in an infamous TV interview with CBS’s Katie Couric – memorably lampooned by 30 Rock's Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live (and easily found on YouTube) - is explained away by Couric’s supposed bias and 'badgering'.

Judge for yourself whether the exchange below is a result of bias and badgering, or the performance of a barely articulate individual who is dangerously out of her depth.

Palin: "Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land … boundary that we have with … Canada."

Couric: "Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials."

Palin: "Well, it certainly does because our … our next door neighbours are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of ... We have trade missions back and forth. We … we do … it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where … where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is … from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to … to our state."

So, you tell me: Belle de Jour or Sarah Palin. Who, really, is prostituting themselves here? Who is distorting the truth more? And who would you trust? The established bestselling author recounting her time as a high-class escort, or the soon-to-be bestselling author attempting to rewrite history to further her unbridled lust for higher office?

Massacre? What massacre?

It was 20 years ago today that Chinese army tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square to bring a dramatic and brutal end to seven weeks of protest.

Officially, 241 civilans and soldiers died in what the Chinese government refers to as simply 'the June 4th incident'. Common wisdom generally puts the number of fatalities much higher than that: certainly several hundred, possibly even a few thousand. We will never know for sure.

What we do know with certainty are the seminal images that were broadcast around the world from what non-Chinese typically refer to with more emotive - and, it must be said, more accurate - descriptors such as 'the Tiananmen Square massacre'.

Just mention the words 'Tank Man' to anyone aged, say, 35 or older, and a picture of a lone protestor standing in the middle of the road, arms outstretched, attempting to stop a line of tanks approaching the square, will instantly form in their mind. (We know that Tank Man was eventually dragged away by the police, and it is widely assumed he was subsequently executed. Certainly, the Chinese government were never able to provide any physical evidence to the contrary.)

The sad thing is that the vast majority of us living outside China know and have seen more of what happened in Tiananmen Square on June 4th, 1989, than the billion-plus Chinese population were every privy to. News, photographs and video images were - and still are - rigorously censored by the authorities.

In the run-up to today's anniversary, the square has been blocked off to prevent any kind of mass gathering, and access to Hotmail accounts and social networking websites like Twitter and Flickr temporarily suspended.

It seems that, 20 years on, the aggressive suppression of information and the curtailment of basic civil liberties such as the right to gather remain standard operating practice for the powers-that-be in Beijing. Even now, in supposedly more enlightened times, they remain just as committed to keeping their citizens in the dark as they have ever been.

And that's the saddest thing of all.

People can be such idiots

Given that we are the most intelligent species on the planet, human beings all too frequently demonstrate the ability to do the stupidest things, which suggest that our survival instincts have been irrevocably dulled by too much civilised living.

Of course, there are the Darwin Awards, which annually celebrate the achievements of the spectacularly silly in removing themselves from the gene pool.

But over the course of the last few days, a number of stories - all of them resulting in fatalities - have caught my eye which range from the foolhardy to the murderous.

Don't cramp(on) my style

I can see the attraction of scaling the UK's peaks in the midst of the worst winter for nearly 20 years: the views must be spectacular, and the sense of achievement incredibly uplifting.

However ...

Since the beginning of last week, five walkers have been killed on Snowdon and in the Lake District in four separate incidents. In at least one of these cases, the unfortunate victim was thought to have set out without an ice axe or crampons, which strikes me as a tad ... Darwinian.

Sure, even the most experienced and fully equipped of walkers can be caught out by a sudden change in conditions or just plain misfortune. But to take to the mountains without the most basic of cold weather gear, well, there really is no excuse for that.

Very sad. But, you would think, all too preventable.

Defence? What defence?

Jorge Nogueira da Silva has denied six counts of death by dangerous driving. Based on the evidence which has already been reported, it is hard to see how he has any credible defence.

You will probably remember the story. Da Silva killed David and Michelle Statham and their four children - the oldest, 13; the youngest, just 10 weeks - when his 40-tonne lorry hit their stationary vehicle in a crash on the M6 last October.

The Stathams' car had been at the back of a queue caused by an earlier accident on the motorway. It's alleged that da Silva was distracted because he was using a laptop - found by police in the lorry's cab by the driver's seat with its screen turned towards the driver - to look for an alternative route to circumvent the tailback.

The prosecutor has said, "If he had looked he would have seen the queuing traffic for himself because the road was straight for over a mile before the queue started. He had plenty of time to see the queue because the trucks in front had been there for between one and two minutes before he arrived. For over a mile before the point of impact the defendant was not paying proper attention to the road - it was gross inattention."

The case continues.

Now, dying on a snow-bound mountain is foolhardy, but places only the individuals involved at risk. This is an entirely different kettle of fish.

Burn them at the stake

At the time of writing, the bush fires in the Australian state of Victoria had claimed 181 lives, injured at least 500, and destroyed over 1,000 homes, wiping out a number of small rural towns.

That's bad enough. But police are treating a number of the fire sites as potential crime scenes, and have vowed to try any suspected arsonists for murder.

Bush fires are hard to fully comprehend. They bear about as much resemblance to what we traditionally think of as a fire as a Formula 1 machine does to a toy car. Extreme drought and heatwave conditions, as have been experienced in the state in recent weeks, create tinder-dry conditions. So when a fire does start it can spread at astonishing speed - potentially faster than humans can run - as feather-light burning ashes are scattered great distances, starting fresh blazes which multiply exponentially. Add in unpredictable, swirling winds, and firefighters' attempts to create containment lines - typically they bulldoze or 'back-burn' swathes of bush to remove all combustible material from the path of the fire - have been rendered ineffective as the fires have changed direction.

They are, however, a natural phenomenon: bush fires are actually just part of nature's cycle of renewal. What is not natural, however, is the strange copycat phenomenon of arsonists starting their own fires under the guise of a bush fire. The Australian Institute of Criminology estimates that as many as half of the nation's annual 20-30,000 bush fires are the result of arson.

What possesses someone to do this is beyond the comprehension of most rational people; it's certainly beyond mine. Dying on a snowy mountain is foolhardy; using a laptop (allegedly) at the wheel is criminally negligent. Bush fire arson is a whole different ball game.

Being convicted for murder seems like a comparatively light punishment for people like this. In olden times, they used to burn witches at the stake. Somehow, this would be altogether more fitting for the bush fire arsonists.

Using your celebrity status for Good(y)

Life never ceases to surprise me.

I never thought I'd write a blog defending Jade Goody, but four months ago I did exactly that. And today I feel compelled to do it a second time.

Having been diagnosed with cervical cancer, doctors had given the (in)famous serial reality TV star a 40% chance of survival. After the discovery that the cancer had spread to her liver, bowel and groin, doctors have now withdrawn that prognosis and said they will focus on efforts to prolong her life.

Now, I have previously described Goody as an exceptionable person, an assessment I stand by. But nonetheless, and I am in no way regressing to a state of mawkishness here, this latest news is very sad. In particular, the way some people have questioned her seeking to make money from her plight - in the time-honoured tradition of Z-list celebs - by selling her story to the tabloids is kind of missing the point. It's a bit like tutting at someone's decision to get uproariously drunk in the event of an impending nuclear attack: it's all about the context, not the individual act.

Yet again, Caitlin Moran sums it up beautifully in her Celebrity Watch column in today's Times:

Why should she retreat from public view? Why shouldn't she keep giving interviews? After all, when the Times columnist John Diamond - Nigella Lawson's first husband - had cancer diagnosed, he did not retreat from public view; he wrote a weekly column, for which he was paid, in which he discussed his illness and, eventually, approaching death. It was deemed an informative, courageous act.

Goody's career, her main source of income, is as a reality TV personality. If she chooses to continue working - which is to say, continue being paid to reveal her life to the public - isn't the difference essentially that she is a working-class woman, talking to the mass media, whereas Diamond was middle class, and writing for a broadsheet?

Quite aside from the fact that people's reaction to news of their own terminal illness is different, is it so unfathomable that Goody would wish to earn as much as she could, and as quickly as possible, to give her children security?

Exactly. As a parent, if I had a terminal illness and had the opportunity to generate a large volume of cash to give my son a more secure future, would I do so? Of course I would. Wouldn't you?

Yes, we all remember the "Shilpa Poppadum" comment which sparked the Celebrity Big Brother race row. Yes, it was a terribly distasteful thing to say, knowingly, on national TV. Yes, I - like many others - despised her for doing so.

But let's put it into context. As Boris Becker once famously said after losing a match: "Nobody died." As a member of an ethnic minority, I've been called worse in my time. Prince Harry referred to an Army colleague as "Paki", and the fuss over that has died down pretty quickly. Nobody demanded Prince Phillip's allowance to be curtailed in the wake of his "slitty eyes" comment made on a visit to China. And, most recently, has Carol Thatcher's use of the word "golliwog" in the green room at the One Show (in reference to French tennis star Jo-Wilfried Tsonga) - a comment she refused to apologise for and resulted in her sacking from the programme - caused more than the merest ripple in a teacup? (Indeed, it has been referred to by more than one commentator as being an over-reaction by the BBC.)

What's the difference? Well, on the one hand, you have the third in line to the throne, the husband of the current monarch, and the daughter of Britain's only female Prime Minister. And on the other you have a chav of below-average intelligence from a deprived background, who in most people's eyes has done nothing to earn her money or celebrity status. Unlike the aforementioned three, of course.

Double standards, people?

Don't get me wrong. I totally subscribe to the view that Jade Goody had far outlived her allotted 15 minutes of fame long before the Celebrity Big Brother scandal. I too am bemused at the seven-figure earnings she has gained from Big Brother, the likes of OK! magazine and Living TV creating reality shows around the launch of her new perfume or her hunt for a PA. But, given the nature of her chosen 'career', I have no problem with her doing whatever she does to provide financial security for her family, because it's clearly not all about prolonging the fame thing any more.

And if the tabloid coverage of Jade's cancer story does something to raise awareness of - and potentially funding for - this most terrible of diseases, then maybe her celebrity status may be put to good use after all.

Now why is that such a bad thing?

Oliver Postgate RIP

A big part of my childhood - and, I suspect, that of many other people in their 30s and 40s - died yesterday.

Oliver Postgate, creator of much-loved children's TV programmes such as Ivor the Engine, The Clangers, Bagpuss and Noggin the Nog, died yesterday aged 83. Apparently he died peacefully.

Postgate was one half of the Smallfilms team, alongside artist Peter Firman. Together, the pair worked in a disused cowshed in Kent - a far cry from today's high-tech CGI production houses - to create classic shows which live on in the memories of millions of children-turned-adults: the marvellous mechanical mouse organ in Bagpuss; the surreal, swanee whistle conversation of the Clangers, (the show inspired the name of the early 90s indie band The Soup Dragons); Postgate's dodgy Welsh accent as Jones the Steam ("Come now, Ivor!").

Bagpuss was voted the top children's programme of all time in a 1998 poll, and ranked fourth (with The Clangers 13th) in Channel 4's 100 Greatest Kids' TV Shows in 2001, holding its own among such exalted company as The Simpsons, Danger Mouse, Grange Hill and Mr Benn.

Contemporary children's programmes may be more sophisticated, exciting and expensive than Bagpuss, Ivor and their ilk, but somehow they will never have the same simple charm of an era when two men in a shed were able to both entertain and shape the lives of an entire generation.

Rest in peace.

Oliver Postgate's obituary on BBC News

Spinning around

So, John McCain was ultimately unsuccessful in the US presidential election. Lembit "Self-Publicity is a Virtue" Opik too. In news that will reverberate around the corridors of power in Wasington almost as loudly as a monk obeying a vow of silence in a sound-proof room, Mr Cheeky Girl nee Mr Sian Lloyd - open brackets, weather-girl, close brackets - failed in his bid to become party president of the Liberal Democrats. (Note to Sarah Palin: that's not a country on the Pacific rim.)

Anyhow, I couldn't let the post-US election aftermath - analysis of which has generated column mile after column mile in the UK papers over the past five days - go without mentioning a couple of things I've read.

Firstly - and I promise this will be the last time I mention The West Wing, at least for a while - a number of papers picked up on the link between the show and Barack Obama's new chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel.

I've previously noted some of the similarities between the McCain/Obama race and the fictional world of TWW, where the series ended with Matt Santos defeating the Republican veteran Arnie Vinick, aided by a major external event (a near-nuclear disaster) which swung the pendulum decisively towards the Democrats, and resulted in the election of the first US president from an ethnic minority.

But that's not where the similarity ends. In the fictional White House, the deputy chief of staff is a canny, Jewish political operator named Josh Lyman, who was based on a real-life canny, Jewish political operator in the Clinton administration named ... Rahm Emanuel. And in TWW, president-elect Santos's choice to be his chief of staff was Josh Lyman, just as Emanuel is Obama's.

Life really does imitate art.

Secondly, the more distasteful side of politics has, inevitably, reared its ugly head as the Republican blood-letting and finger-pointing has begun in earnest. McCain insiders have started a virtual stampede of anonymous confidential 'briefings' - leaks, by any other name - against Sarah Palin, placing the blame for the election defeat solely at her door. (Never mind the fact that it was their man who chose the woefully underqualified governor of Alaska as his running mate in the first place.) She has been accused of a woeful ignorance of global affairs (something we already know to be true); in addition to her oft-televised foreign affairs gaffes, she has been accused of not knowing who the three members of NAFTA, the North America Free Trade Agreement, are (the US, Canada and Mexico, in case you wanted to know), and of thinking that Africa is a country rather than a continent. And, harking back to the cost of her campaign wardrobe - which it is suggested was rather more than the $150k which was originally stated - she and her husband Todd (the self-styled 'first dude', puh-lease) have been labelled as "Wasilla hillbillies looting Neiman Marcus from coast to coast".

Other than being a killer soundbite, it's all very Lord of the Flies, isn't it?

Clearly, McCain staffers are looking to deflect blame for last week's defeat on to the most obvious (and all too plausible) target. And Palin has responded in kind, blaming the Bush administration for the election result, refusing to comment on several allegations and accusing reporters of not doing their homework before filing stories about some of her policies, decisions and (alleged) abuses of power. (Regardless of whether she is correct, attacking the press does not exactly strike me as the best way of getting them on-side.)

Post-election analysis confirms that Palin was certainly a divisive figure in the campaign, driving away swathes of independent voters, particularly women - a constituency which her appointment as McCain's running mate was designed specifically to appeal to. However, she remains popular with many conservative elements of her party, with a national poll suggesting that 64% of Republican voters now consider her to be the party's best presidential candidate for 2012. (Although no doubt Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and others will also be major contenders for the next Republican nomination.) The jockeying for position has already begun, with Palin extracting maximum advantage from her run in the spotlight; it would not be surprising if her next step was to run for Alaskan senator.

The sad thing is that my view of Sarah Palin is inevitably distorted by the lenses of the media and of the political spin doctors. There is no question she is woefully short of knowledge, but that can be addressed over the next four years. Similarly, she has been clearly shown on a number of occasions to have been, ah, economical with the truth to an extent which would make even seasoned politicos blush.

Other than that, the image I have built up of her is of an ambitious, ruthless, single-minded woman (pretty much incontrovertible), who loves the political spotlight in the same way a film star loves the photographers on the red carpet (again, I'm fairly secure in that assumption) and is not afraid to use her position and power in all manner of dubious ways - 'Troopergate', shopping sprees, allegedly 'going rogue' in the final days of the campaign - which cast severe doubts on her holding any position of power, let alone the most powerful one in the world.

Now how much of that last set of assumptions is actually true or not is anyone's guess - there's so much contradictory spin flying around that I'm getting a headache - but to my mind, there's no smoke without fire. However, 64% (or more) of Republicans clearly think otherwise, as is their right.

I just hope we never have the chance to find out. Right now, Sarah Palin is arguably the second most famous politician on the planet, after the president-elect. It doesn't mean she's the second most capable, though.

From red to blue

As I write this at 0830 GMT, and with only two states - Missouri and North Carolina – undeclared, Barack Obama leads John McCain 349-162, having easily passed the required total of 270 electoral college votes, and with a majority of the popular vote (52% currently).

Last night, the USA elected its first black president. This morning, the world is already a very different place. How much different it becomes will be the backdrop to the next four years in US politics.

In the final analysis, the writing was quickly on the wall for McCain. Having effectively declared Pennsylvania as his last stand, the state’s early call in favour of Obama – by a crushing ten point margin – had the calorifically-challenged lady limbering up her vocal cords. And when neighbouring Ohio – no Republican candidate has ever gained the White House without the Buckeye state - also proclaimed the Democrat candidate, 51% to 47%, the singing could be heard from Florida all the way to Sarah Palin’s home state of Alaska.

As other swing states followed the trend with a seeming inevitability, the US political map turned from Republican red to a sea of blue. It’s an over-simplification for sure, but it’s hard not to see this as a reflection of the changing times, with the demography of key battleground states such as Virginia and Florida having been dramatically altered by a combination of domestic and cross-border immigration in recent years.

While the Republicans will point to the popular vote being closer than any of the pre-election polls were suggesting – the pollsters were forecasting a chasm of anywhere between 6 and 13%, and it looks like the final gap will be 5-6% - the reality is that the Grand Old Party of American politics has been soundly trounced by a charismatic, at times almost messianic opponent, who has mobilised support with unprecedented efficiency. (The Obama campaign spent more money than both candidates combined in 2004.)

(Incidentally, for stattos like me who are that way inclined, Daniel Finkelstein’s article in Monday’s Times is an interesting insight into the systematic inaccuracy of the US polls.)

At a distance several thousand miles removed from the heat of the election battle, it seems to me that John McCain was an essentially honourable man – he repeatedly avoided the temptation to overtly smear Obama – who was ultimately undone by two events: one within his control, the other not. Firstly, his choice of running mate. (I’ll come back to that.) And secondly – and perhaps more critically - the economy, which voters have cited as the single biggest influence on their choice of candidate.

In the hype and hysteria of the last few weeks, in which Obama has been effectively proclaimed president-elect before the fact by a predominantly liberal media, it is easy to forget that the two candidates were neck-and-neck at the end of September. Had the global financial meltdown not started until, say, this morning, the election result could have been very different.

However, the crisis happened when it did, and as such the incumbent ruling party – and therefore McCain - took a lot of collateral damage. Despite being regarded by many as a great ‘war president’, George W Bush leaves office with a lower approval rating than Richard Nixon, and the Obama campaign relentlessly drove home the point that McCain – for all his claims to be a maverick – has voted with Bush 90% of the time.

Can the Republicans fight back in 2012? Of course they can. As Barack Obama himself has shown, with the right message, the right organisation and the right timing, it is possible to go from being a virtual unknown to holding the most powerful office on the planet within two years.

Already, some factions within the Republican party are positioning Palin as their presidential candidate next time around, a scenario which is frankly terrifying – this is the woman who claimed that Vladimir Putin flying through Alaskan airspace counted as foreign policy experience - but far from impossible. Her proponents will point to her being a role model for women (although she conspicuously failed to draw the support of Hillary Clinton’s supporters), her role in galvanising the gun-toting, bible-bashing extreme conservatives (which is true) and that, in four years’ time, she will be a more experienced and better prepared candidate (she could hardly be worse).

But Palin’s backers fundamentally miss the point. Barack Obama has won on the back of a message of change for an American society which has already changed and continues to do so. He has energised previously disenfranchised and disillusioned voters – blacks, Hispanics, the young – and embraced America in all its diversity. Palin’s message (insofar as there was any coherent message) throughout the campaign has been one of fear of change. She has accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists” and questioned his patriotism, his religious leanings, in fact pretty much everything except his skin colour. Yes, it is a message which appeals to a conservative minority, but that is exactly what her constituency is: conservatives in a time of change, and a minority (of largely older, white Americans) which is shrinking.

Barack Obama talks of striding forward and shaping the future. Sarah Palin is the political manifestation of the lie that America is the UNITED States, and would have the nation take a step backwards into an insular, arrogant and racially fragmented past which is out of step with our modern world.

The last time I wrote about Palin, I referred to her as “the political equivalent of a reality TV wannabe”. I was interested to note this morning in a couple of political blogs that TV execs are reportedly considering approaching her with a view to either fronting a chat show of her own or creating an Osbournes-like vehicle around her family. I don’t normally like to say “I told you so”, but … I told you so.

Anyhow, America has made its decision. It remains to be seen whether Obama really will be able to deliver on what are preposterously high expectations, but I can’t help but feel that the US electorate has voted in a 21st century president for a 21st century world, and that’s got to be a good start.

Jump on the bandwagon? No thanks, I’d rather walk

One of the best things about our modern, online, 24/7 world is the speed with which it allows word-of-mouth to spread, and for people to voice their opinions.

It’s a double-edged sword, though.

One of the worst things about our modern, online, 24/7 world is the speed with which it allows word-of-mouth to spread, and for people to voice their opinions.

From those idiots who seem to do nothing but snipe and post spiteful vitriol on message boards – “Who does Rebecca Adlington think she is?”, “Russell T Davies has killed Doctor Who”, “X is an ugly cow” - to the Spanish website currently spouting all kinds of racist and homophobic drivel against Lewis Hamilton in advance of Sunday’s Formula 1 title showdown in Brazil, modern communications has become a breeding ground for bandwagons for the moaners to jump on to with unseemly haste.

If you’re a UK resident who hasn’t been hiding under a rock for the past week, you may possibly be aware of an incident which has rippled the normally calm waters of the BBC.

In summary; Russell Brand, aided and abetted by Jonathan Ross, left a series of prank calls on the answerphone of Andrew Sachs (best known as Manuel on Fawlty Towers) insinuating, among other things, that Brand had slept with Sachs’ granddaughter, Georgina Baillie. These were broadcast on Brand’s post-watershed radio show on Saturday 18th October. Two complaints were received by the BBC, both relating to Ross’s swearing rather than the content of Brand’s humour.

Several days later, Sachs’ agent wrote to the BBC, demanding a full public apology. Last Sunday, a full eight days after the event, the Mail on Sunday ran an article condemning Brand, Ross, the BBC, global warming and fox-hunters (or something like that).

And so the media circus exploded. By the following day (Monday), the BBC had over 1,000 complaints on its hands and, as every UK news outlet further fanned the flames, that number swelled to 27,000 by Wednesday, at which point the BBC suspended both stars, and Brand announced he would resign from his radio show. And by the time Radio 2 controller Lesley Douglas tendered her resignation yesterday (Thursday), the count had passed 30,000.

Now, call me an old cynic, but I’m willing to bet that most of those 30,000-odd people who complained have neither listened to the show (either live or on YouTube) nor read the transcripts (which can be easily found online). I’m also willing to bet that a sizeable proportion have never actually seen or heard Brand in action, and have chosen to register complaints simply because they don’t like him or Ross (and particularly the latter’s estimated £6m pa earnings).

So why complain? Because the Mail on Sunday – which likes to consider itself the arbiter of what is right and wrong in modern society - is outraged? Because you heard second-hand from family, friends or colleagues about Brand and Ross making ‘obscene’ phone calls? Or because some people recognise a good bandwagon when they see one and scapegoatng some overpaid, over-hyped celebs to take them down a peg or two makes you feel good?

(By the way, I have seen the word ’obscene’ bandied around way too freely with regards to this incident. It was certainly misjudged, lewd and inappropriate, but it was no more obscene than the Sun’s Page 3 girls. Child pornography: now that’s obscene.)

Don’t get me wrong, there has been a multitude of mistakes here. Brand and Ross certainly overstepped the mark, for which they have apologised. Production oversight was virtually non-existent, not helped by the fact that Brand owns the production company which runs his radio show. And the BBC was slow to react: an immediate apology and a prompt response (as opposed to calling an ‘emergency’ meeting the following week) could well have nipped the whole affair in the bud. (It’s clear the BBC did not learn from Channel 4’s equally ponderous handling of the Jade Goody/Shilpa Shetty Celebrity Big Brother racism row.)

However, what’s done is done. Brand and Douglas are gone, and Ross has been hit heavily in the pocket. The BBC will introduce tighter production controls, and will no doubt err on the side of conservatism in its humour, just as its investigative news reporting lost some of its teeth in the wake of the Hutton inquiry.

30,000 people - and let’s remember that only two complained initially – almost all of whose quality of life would have remained blissfully unaffected had the media not raised public awareness of the affair, have brought about a significant change in the UK radio landscape. I guess that’s democracy for you.

Odd, isn’t it? I’m not a fan of Russell Brand, so I choose not to listen to his radio show. For me, an apology, a slap on the wrist and better judgment in the future would have been enough. Bloodshed was unnecessary. (In the same way, I’m not a fan of Chelsea, but every time they do something that displeases me I don’t feel the need to complain to the Premier League asking for them to be fined or deducted points. What’s the difference?)

Brand isn’t the victim here: he will quickly return with his edgy, bad boy image enhanced. Neither is Ross: yes, he has forfeited an estimated £1.4m in earnings as a result of his suspension, but the BBC can ill-afford to jettison the man who is arguably its biggest TV and radio audience draw. Baillie has sold her side of the story to the Sun, and will no doubt extract the maximum from her 15 minutes of fame. And Sachs, thanks to his agent, is back in the public consciousness from which he has been absent since Fawlty Towers.

No, the victim here is Lesley Douglas, the controller of Radio 2, who resigned yesterday because (in her own words) “the events of the last two weeks happened on my watch”.

The BBC has lost a talented controller, one who over the past four years has transformed Radio 2 into the UK’s most popular radio station – with 13 million listeners – and assembled a diverse and enviable roster of talent, including Ross, Brand, Terry Wogan and Chris Evans.

More than that, the corporation has lost an honourable servant, one who has accepted responsibility for errors made, not by herself, but by her people.

If only politicians were as honourable in accepting responsibility for their actions (let alone those of their people) – but then I suppose the House of Commons would be a very empty place if that were the case!

So, to the 30,000-odd people who took the opportunity to have a pop at Brand and/or Ross: I hope you’re happy now. Radio has lost an unsung champion in Lesley Douglas, a casualty of war.

Sadly, I doubt too many of those 30,000 will even care. The baying crowd has tasted blood, and that’s all that really matters to them. You’ll forgive me if I want no part of that: I’m quite happy to let the bandwagon roll on without me. I need the exercise anyway.

Sympathy for the devil

Well, not the devil exactly. But Jade Goody has all too often been held up as reality TV’s most diabolical creation, a celebrity whose fame is built solely on the basis of having appeared on a TV show, Big Brother, whose sole premise is to entertain viewers with the laboratory rat antics of a bunch of wannabes desperate for their 15 minutes of fame, despite having no discernible talent other than searing ambition, and the ability to be simultaneously obnoxious and completely lacking in self-awareness.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not here to vilify Big Brother. As someone who has watched the programme since its beginning in 2000, I’m well aware I’m part of the machine which creates Z-list celebs like Goody. And I know it’s little more than glorified car-crash TV, but it’s still one of my guilty pleasures which fills a gap in a largely football-free summer, so I won’t apologise for that either. (“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been two months since I last watched Big Brother.”)

Equally, I come neither to praise Goody, nor to bury her. She has long been held up as Queen of the Chavs, the far-from-the-sharpest-tool who made a million off the back of not knowing where “East Angular” is. And that was before the events of ‘Shilpa-gate’ during Celebrity Big Brother in 2007, where she was ritually crucified on the altar of public opinion for her racist comments - “Shilpa Poppadum”, among others - towards Bollywood actress Shilpa Shetty.

While there is no place in society for the kind of abuse Goody dished out, it’s also worth putting into perspective. I’m from an ethnic minority myself, and while I found Goody’s insults offensive to say the least, I’ve been on the receiving end of worse abuse at football matches. And that pales into insignificance compared to the kind of vile homophobic abuse dished out by Tottenham fans to their former captain Sol Campbell two weeks ago. (Abuse which I am sure many Spurs fans themselves are disgusted by, but which equally has been publicly defended by some as “no more than he deserves” and “just part of footballing banter” on radio phone-ins. I'm not joking.)

My point is this: Jade Goody may be exceptionable, but she is certainly not exceptional. We like to think of our society as cosmopolitan and sophisticated - and that our mob reaction in scapegoating the likes of Goody is incontrovertible proof of that – but the fact is that Goody is neither unique nor the worst example of abusive, discriminating behaviour there is. Yes, we are a cosmopolitan society in the UK - something I take great pride in - but we’re by no means a perfect one.

Anyhow, I never thought I’d feel sympathy towards Jade Goody. While she has certainly made the most of her celebrity and limited talent – wouldn’t anyone in her position? – it’s not as if my quality of life has been eroded by her ubiquitous presence in the gossip mags. Earlier this year she went into the Indian Big Brother house – now there’s a show of PR chutzpah if ever there was one – only to leave within days after being told she had been diagnosed with cervical cancer.

And it was in this context that I was horrified to read Caitlin Moran’s weekly Celebrity Watch column in today’s Times. Here’s Moran commenting on OK! magazine’s interview with Goody this week:

With her on/off boyfriend, Jack Tweed, currently in jail, she has had to cope with her illness alone. OK! tackled this aspect of her life with the question: “How's [Jack] coping - has he been safe in the showers?” Because it's always nice when a national publication asks if your partner is being raped in prison. Follow-up questions/comments included: “What if one of the kids at school goes up to [your kids] and says 'Your mum is going to die'?”; “Would you come back as a ghost?”; and, fairly incredibly, “You'll be like a cockroach, who'll live for ever.”

Who comes up with this? Why do the bottom-feeders at OK! think there are people out there who want to read this kind of trailer-trash journalism? And, worst of all, why are they right in thinking exactly that?

As I said above, I never thought I’d feel sympathy towards Jade Goody. I do now.

Instead of pillorying Jade Goody and her ilk, maybe we would be better served by taking a long, hard look in the mirror ourselves. I’m not at all sure we would like what we see.

Will Sarah Palin become the first "reality" VP?

I don’t normally take much of an interest in American politics – pretty much everything I know about the US electoral process I learned from watching The West Wing – but there has been something strangely compelling about this year’s presidential race.

Something more than a little terrifying too.

The acrimonious race for the Democrats’ nomination between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was never less than intriguing, with the candidates seeking to become, respectively, the first female and black president of the US.

And now we have Sarah Palin, who as John McCain’s running mate, is arguably the least qualified person ever to seek a role which requires her to be one heartbeat away from the most powerful office on Earth.

As I said, more than a little terrifying.

Now don’t get me wrong. Unlike the bipartisan American media, I do not pledge allegiance to either the Republican or Democrat camp. Nor do I discount Palin solely on the basis of her gender. (For what it’s worth, I think Hillary Clinton is thoroughly deserving of her status and reputation notwithstanding her gender or who her husband is.)

However, what are we supposed to make of a candidate who has:
- No foreign policy experience, to the extent that she didn’t even know what the Bush Doctrine is (for God’s sake, even I know what it is)
- Demonstrated on several occasions that her grasp of economic policy, past Supreme Court judgments and many of the other basic tools of the political trade verges on the non-existent
- Effectively positioned her candidacy on the basis of being a mom, a moose-hunter and a maverick

In a now notorious interview with CBS’s Katie Couric, this is what Palin had to say, having shot herself in the foot in an earlier interview with ABC in which she had cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of her foreign policy experience.

Palin: "Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land … boundary that we have with … Canada."

Couric: "Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials."

Palin: "Well, it certainly does because our … our next door neighbours are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of ... We have trade missions back and forth. We … we do … it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where … where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is … from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to … to our state."

Now Palin’s ineptitude and all too obvious lack of knowledge have made her an easy target; a sizeable proportion of the world is literally laughing at her, as exemplified by a series of parodies by Tina Fey - who bears an uncanny resemblance to Palin - on Saturday Night Live. (Check out YouTube for more.)

And her performance in last Thursday’s sole televised vice-presidential debate – which was watched by more Americans than the first McCain/Obama presidential debate - was barely an improvement. The debate was leniently moderated and structured so as to provide both Palin and her opponent Joe Biden with minimal opportunities to insert feet in mouths. But for every solid point she delivered, there was another question which was answered in the vaguest terms, or neatly sidestepped - yes, I know that’s what politicians do, and Biden did plenty of the soft-shoe shuffle too - or simply countered with one of her folksy homespun catchphrases (“Say it ain’t so, Joe”, “Doggone it”) and a wink and a smile.

Many commentators suggested that, because Palin had not made any game-changing gaffes and exceeded very low expectations, that the debate could be viewed as a tie. Oh, puh-lease.

If all that is required of a vice-president is an ability to deliver a well-rehearsed script, then for sure Palin can do that. Call me a bluff old traditionalist, but I would hope that the vice-president of the most powerful nation on the planet was capable of a little more than that. Does that make me odd?

The scariest thing of all is that there is a sizeable proportion of the American population – paid-up members of the NRA, Creationists, rednecks, whatever - who see no problem having Palin as McCain’s designated backup. They are convinced by her attempts to spin her lack of Washington and foreign policy experience into a virtue: she’s an outsider, a maverick, as opposed to someone of utterly unproven ability and essentially zero experience. They are even happy to accept the factual errors, the gaping knowledge gaps, the half-truths and the bare-faced lies – if you don’t believe me, a simple Google search should rapidly convince you otherwise - as the words of a credible candidate.

What we have here is the political equivalent of a reality TV wannabe, a woman of great ambition who would have us believe that memorised scripts, cutesy soundbites and a telegenic array of smiles and winks is in some way a replacement for experience, talent and – heaven forfend - substance. And like your average Big Brother contestant, she has long since exceeded her allotted 15 minutes of fame. It’s time for Americans to, as the Republicans’ slogan so boldly proclaims, put their 'country first'. Which means choosing the option which has the greater credibility on both the domestic and world stage, in rescuing an ailing economy and in navigating tricky foreign policy waters. Which surely means the Democrats' ticket of Obama/Biden.

For sure, Sarah Palin looks good on TV: does anyone sane really believe this is enough?

One final thought. In the fictional world of The West Wing, the series ended with the Democrats' young buck, Matt Santos, defeating the Republicans' veteran politico, Arnie Vinick, aided in no small part by a game-changing external event (in this case, a near-nuclear disaster) which swung the pendulum decisively towards the Democrats, resulting in the election of the first American president from an ethnic minority.

No doubt you can see where I'm going with this: sometimes, as the saying goes, life imitates art. In this case, I certainly hope it does.