Loath as I am to either restrict free speech or add to the
burden caused by the Tory party on the prison system, I must propose that
Edwina Currie be prosecuted for perpetrating an unusual and surprising degree
of violence upon the visual imagination.
The mind shies away, like a maiden aunt from a wasp, like a
nervous horse startled by an explosion of flaming vomit, from the dreadful
pictures which would result from contemplating the conjunction between the
egg-woman and the grey man. So we must not get too close to imagining this, my
little darlings, for fear of the black whirling pit of stinky madness, as Papa
Freud would warn us.
But may we not ask, in careful parentheses, anxious to exclude
any wanton peeping of hitherto unsuspected Tory genitalia, whether this erotic
catastrophe may not have (in some warped moral transfiguration) inspired the
ludicrous vision of a morally bankrupt and fiscally cynical (or vice versa)
administration promoting a return to Victorian values under the bathetic
catchphrase 'back to basics'? Victorian values of philandering and slander
(long the favoured hobbies of the Westminster elite), of prostitution and
bribery, of perjury and lechery and malfeasance and verbose pomposity, values
eminently Victorian in that they consist of perverse compounds of hypocrisy and
guilt.
That John Major (so little the hero of this story) should
declare the episode 'shameful' is personally understandable, politically true
and pathetically ungallant - a rhetorical gesture typical of the man; flat,
unimaginative, inadequate even to be described as bland. Edwina is a woman with
a foolish desire to be the centre of attention. This is not a good reason to
enter politics, although it often seems to be the only one, but it seems an
excellent recommendation for an entertainer (a radio presenter), as is the
possession of a voice both grating and dreary, as I would clearly know.
Personally, whenever I hear her on the radio (generally the weekend night shift
on Radio 5, heroically interrupting callers and guests on an appalling,
incompetent and dismal phone-in) I switch it off, a kind of Pavlovian response
which is also triggered by Sarah Cox, the loud mouthed git Chris Moyles,
'Sailing By', the National Anthem, Opera, Roy Hudd, the Queen, and the Archers
theme-tune. This unfortunate state of affairs renders me ineligible for 86.2%
of the BBC, and I hereby demand a corresponding refund of all the fees I have
not paid them. Coupled (if I dare use that poor, soiled lexical item in this
new and appalling context) with the two supreme qualifications alluded to
previously, whatever they were, (narcissism and the love of wallowing in the
filth of your own corruption or something wholesome and kindly like that I
expect), Edwina's voice jabbing from the tiny black orifice of my Yacht Boy
will carry with it the terrifying alloy of unspeakable horrors which Edwina has
unleashed within our private minds.
The BBC, the Courts, the Government, the European Union, the
Presbyterian Women's League against Public Immorality, the Pope and the United
Nations must take action, make statements, print pamphlets, issue Bulls,
publish bills, ring bells, talk balls, drink bols, must (in short) bring every
pressure to bear in order to repress this unsuspected threat to the safety, no
the very sanity of Society in general and the Nation at large, indeed,
Civilisation as we have pretended it from Mesopotamia to the American Empire,
and in particular myself.
So having rambled on like this for a bit, I want to appeal to
whatever crazed force currently dominates the media: please protect us now from
Edwina Currie, Jonathon Aitken, the oil-slick that is David Mellor, Jeffrey
Archer and his flagrant wife and the whole panoply of Tory goons that the demon
Thatcher unleashed upon the world. God help us now; we have already suffered
them once - must we suffer them forever? They are reminiscent of the old Gods
in the Borges story who return from limbo depraved and deformed, except that
these puny gods of ours were plainly depraved from the beginning.
So what now? 40 years of bureaucratic managerialism basting in
its own self-importance? We can look forward to a future where Stringfellows of
pole-dancers lobby in hotels all over Westminster, their silicone valleys
marked with the drool of pimply spin doctors and business-studies graduate
half-wits destined otherwise for the lower reaches of the obfuscatory system.
Still, no matter, we will die eventually. What is most shocking, perhaps, in
the whole ghastly saga is the decision by the B.B.C. to fire the seemingly
amiable Angus Deaton for spending his inflated wage on cocaine and prostitutes
whilst retaining the services of the hideous Currie who therefore continues to
harangue the innocent listener whilst bringing to mind scenes of erotic horror
that
were previously literarily unimaginable. Steve Bell, cartoonist,
for only one example, made an entire career from failing to imagine that John
Major could have sex at all, let alone have sex with anyone quite as
unattractive as Edwina Currie. This decision is not only unfair, unwise, a poor
piece of judgement and plainly hypocritical, but a gross error of taste. But
help. Now I have got too close and my mind is burned, or frozen, or boiled in
the bag, and Papa Freud's black well of stinky madness beckons to me with its
fixated lips. Follow me not, my beloved, in fact it would be best not to listen
to this at all, I'm sorry I mentioned it.