Tuesday, 19 July 2016

Remember "The Entertainer"?

I couldn't believe this in The Independent. Less than a fortnight after Andrea Leadsom implied that there was something peculiar about Theresa May for not having children - and was quite rightly slapped down for it - Owen Smith  appeals to the homophobic vote in his campaign for the Labour leadership.

I was reminded of the words of the song John Osborne put in the mouth of Archie Rice, the sleazy washed-up music-hall comedian in "The Entertainer": "Thank God I'm normal". The play was taken to be an allegory for British decline at the time of the Suez adventure, summed up in Rice's closing: "Don't clap too hard – it's a very old building." This could apply to the Labour Party also.

1 comment:

Stan said...

I saw the "I am normal" interview live on TV and could not believe the gaffe. But he's got off a lot lighter than Andrea Leadsom in my opinion. Smith strikes me as a very conceited man with an unfortunate perma-smirk that you'd love to smack. I have no doubt he'll be brought down to size over the next couple of months, which in his case is very short indeed.