The tour is just around the corner and so I am doing bits and pieces of PR. Though I think the most useful thing I probably do is this blog right now.
Book now. Apparently it's selling well, so don't leave it to the last minute!
Anyway, this morning I was on the Wright Stuff on Channel 5, in front of the tiny and strange studio audience, some of whom had traveled from as far as Reading and Derby to be here.
We ended up talking about some quite serious and contentious subjects like the "Devil Brothers" (the children who horribly tortured some other kids) and whether schools should teach kids about the dangers of pornography (which I wanted to say would be instructing them on how to avoid spunking up on their keyboard). When we got on to Hitler it was actually a bit of light relief. Which might be the first time you've ever seen that sentence.
Incredibly I didn't manage to say the most contentious thing on the show, that honour went to a caller who was talking about her 10 year old son having porn on his mobile phone involving "anal". She got on a roll saying it was awful that kids could see "anal sex, double penetration...." where alas she was cut off before she could get to bukake and fisting. She seemed to know an awful lot about the subject.
The story about
whether the brothers from Edlington should be named was the main story. It seems to me pretty clear that they shouldn't whatever your point of view. Either you see the perpetrators as victims too who need help rather than punishment, or that children shouldn't be subject to the same punishments as adults or if you want revenge and punishment then naming the kids does no good at all. Because like the Bulger killers they will be given new identities at huge cost so it will be meaningless to know who they were anyway.
For a country that rightly hates the mistreatment of children, a lot of people seem rather keen to punish these boys more severely than if they were adults. What they did was beyond terrible, but their upbringing has been a kind of torture too and they haven't been taught right from wrong and they need help and education, not grown people clamouring for them to be named and shamed and presumably tortured themselves. They were 10 year old children.
Most people were reasonable about it, but one furious caller (and at what point are you against the abuse of children and when do you start to abuse children yourself?) claimed that there was no hope for these children and it was nothing to do with their upbringing. She said something along the lines of "I believe some people are just born evil."
I had been keeping fairly quiet on this subject, because I'd made my point and didn't want to get drawn too far into the hysteria, but I wasn't going to let that go. I had to tell the woman she was wrong and being ridiculous. "It's funny how many of these evil people are never born into happy, middle-class families," I told her. It seemed faintly ludicrous to be discussing the nature of evil on a Monday morning Channel 5 show, but I almost wanted to go on to question whether evil even exists. It's relative depending on your moral system and ultimately ideas of morality shift depending on where and when you are. It's convenient (and childish) to think that some people are good and bad, but we're a mixture of those things and what we define as good and evil are man made concepts anyway.
It was probably best we didn't get into all this right now.
I doubt she will be coming to my show anyway. As I realised when I was on this show with Carol Thatcher last year, it's fun to battle with the idiots!
And for your information the Warwick Arts Centre gig is already sold out and these venues are very close to being full -Birmingham Glee, Cardiff Glee, Reading South Street Arts, Manchester Frog and Bucket, Edinburgh The Stand, Perth Red Rooms, Wolverhampton Little Civic, Colchester Arts Centre and Norwich Playhouse. So don't delay!
