Bruce Almighty

“Good evening ladies, gentleman and children welcome to Strictly Come Dancing…”

With these lines the great entertainer Bruce Forsyth introduces the latest in a long line of prime time television shows he has presented since his career begun almost half a century ago.

Yet, I wonder, do you notice anything unusual about this otherwise seemingly functional welcome…?

The inclusion of the word ‘children’.

Only Bruce would care to make the distinction. Only Bruce would think to address children directly for the sake of inclusivity. Admittedly, those children watching will undoubtedly pay it no heed, they probably think Bruce a doddery, odd character, well-meaning but somewhat jarring with their preconceived, if fledgling, idea of what constitutes light entertainment in the modern age. They’re probably right!

Nonetheless, to me this seemingly inconsequential nicety speaks volumes as to why Brucie’s continuing appearance on our televisions should be cherished dearly by us all.

His skill at fostering a warm and genuine environment for family entertainment is unsurpassed. For example: taking time to lead the studio audience in an impromptu chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ for ‘former Bond girl’ Fiona Fullerton; breaking off in the middle of a link to chastise the floor manager for pointing him in the direction of the correct camera — “I know which camera it is, I’m not an idiot”; pretending to be caught unawares in mid-conversation with a member of the studio audience as his co-host hands back to him — all surprisingly anarchic but loveable elements of his repertoire that no doubt drive those behind the cameras to distraction.

Of course, not even his greatest fan could ever truly suggest his presentation is slick and refined, fumbling as he does every other line, regularly emphasising the wrong word in sentences and occasionally fluffing a punch line to the miffed reaction of a silent crowd. The autocue is certainly not his friend.

Yet none of this matters, partly because of his inherent charm but also because, when he lets loose - improvising and reacting to events unfolding before him - he produces spontaneous moments of pure, unadulterated rapport.

His genius (and it is a genius) is to be constantly aware of the inherent absurdity bred of live television, of the constructs that can be bent and sometimes broken in the otherwise necessarily restrictive format of a live game show. Despite his seemingly old fashioned approach, he’s an incredibly subversive presence, yet always showing an empathy towards his contestants as well as maintaining an air of irreverence.

During his time presenting ‘The Generation Game’ in the 1970s — a show where members of the public attempted various skilful acts, from creating a clay pot on a potter’s wheel to acting famous parts in parodies of stage plays — he was particularly adept at walking the fine line between affected sympathy and outright condescension.

Anyone witness to his perennial trope of making notes in a notebook as over excited contestants unveil their embarrassing foibles see this dynamic at work, muttering audibly under his breath “This one’s trouble”.

For he is at once for the contestant and the audience, sharing the latters desire to laugh at those making fools of themselves whilst also respecting the contestants courage in willingly doing so. That takes an especially rare and delicate touch.

In the age of the hectoring bully of a presenter or, worse still, the chummy, anodyne best friend, Forsyth walks a middle path, one that shows an honesty, sensitivity and affinity with the public and, above all, an acute fondness for the medium in which he operates.

His enduring career has weaved from association with the Trans-Atlantic giants of entertainment — Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jnr — to the home grown UK totems of British comedy — Barker, Corbett, Cooper and Dawson for instance. He clearly idolises them, studies them, is in love with their oeuvre. It shows. He now embodies the heritage of over half a century of the best of light entertainment.

His inevitable final curtain call will sever us eternally from that heritage, no longer evident on contemporary Saturday night television but confined to the BBC Four retrospective, the youTube video and the satire of the impressionist.

Mock him, of course, how could you not? His distinct voice, mannerisms, catchphrases—let alone his chin—all demand it. Yet, don’t ever be under the misapprehension you’re witnessing a flummoxed old has-been. Here is a master at work; a special talent that defines an age soon to be lost forever.

“Apologies for missing last week’s show. As you know, I’ve been ill recently and I’d just like to say, Craig [Strictly Come Dancing judge], thank you for the flowers… they were the most beautiful wreath I’ve ever seen.”

Frost/Thatcher

The disarming of Nixon will always be considered his defining moment but this Margaret Thatcher interview is equally revealing…

As the career retrospectives started to appear across news sites following David Frost’s death, I was quick to peruse the accompanying video clips, as if I were a magpie seeking a prize titbit with which to line my nest, a nest within which my final opinion of the journalist and TV presenter could begin to gestate.

For that’s the aim of the ‘career spanning’ article, is it not? Offer the reader — someone who may have no preconceived idea of the merits of such an individual — an easily digestible morsel of generalisation, an insubstantial, introductory aperitif, suitable for the unrefined pallet of even the most fledgling chick?

I would usually baulk at this ‘Buzz Feed’ approach, especially when the subject’s work spans decades, but, incredibly, exceptionally, one of the clips I happened upon managed to encapsulate precisely the qualities of the man, and in little over ten minutes.

Yet, more than that, it displayed exactly how Frost’s skills as an interviewer could unveil a defining characteristic in his interviewee as well, coaxing out from the cracked egg shell, with a gentle tap, the yolk of his subject’s soul, bared for all to see.

The clip is taken from an 1985 interview with the then British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. It concerns a pivotal point in the Falklands War, a conflict in which Thatcher had been widely criticised for attacking and sinking the Belgrano, an Argentine vessel which was later discovered to be posing no immediate threat, sailing, as it was, away from the British fleet.

Watch how Frost remains resolute in the face of the Prime Minister’s deflection, particularly regarding a possible cover up, and at all times is calm, charismatic and polite. At no point does he feel the need to become aggressive in his questioning and despite Thatcher’s best efforts to undermine him, she is the one left with egg on her face.

Remarkably, it all serves to utterly expose the cold-hearted, bludgeoning morality that would come to define Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister.

If you want David Frost — or Margaret Thatcher — in a nutshell, then look no further. Here is the explanation for the high regard in which he was held and why her legacy remains that of the most divisive British leader in living memory. Just a few moments TV defines them both. It is compelling viewing…

‘Back to Reality’ — 14 Days Without Twitter (the Search for Self-Knowledge)

How a family holiday, a cult comedy and sexism led to a fortnight without Twitter.

There’s a cult sci-fi comedy show which used to air on the BBC called Red Dwarf. The title’s taken from the name given to a mining vessel marooned in deep space, its rag tag crew of obsessive compulsive android, vain mutant feline, cowardly hologram and lone remaining human, bumble their way from one alien encounter to another, discovering new species, new dimensions and futuristic technologies. It’s like Star Trek but for idiots!

Except that in its finer moments the show isn’t really for idiots at all. It can, in fact, be quite profound. I was recently brought to mind of perhaps its most loved episode, ‘Back to Reality’, in which all crew members hallucinate that, rather than being stranded in an over-sized tin can in the far reaches of the cosmos, they’ve been playing an extremely elaborate form of virtual reality computer game back home on Earth. Not only that but they’ve been playing it badly!

When confronted with what they believe to be reality, they don’t feel relieved nor delighted to have finally returned to Earth — that which they’ve been endlessly striving for —rather they become so depressed and disillusioned with each of their own personal realities that they decide to commit collective suicide. Thankfully, of course, the effects of the hallucinogen wear off just before they manage to do so.

Before journeying on family holiday to the rural wilderness of Dartmoor in the UK county of Devon, I’d been struck by two unrelated tweets which, together with the trolling of female journalists following Caroline Criado-Perez’s successful campaign to install the image of a woman — author Jane Austen — on the Bank of England’s ten pound note, pricked my, until then, unbridled belief in Twitter as a universally good thing.

The first missive — the exact 140 characters of which escape me now — suggested a futility in filling your Twitter feed with the musings of those who share your outlook on life. ‘Does it not somewhat narrow your horizons?’ the tweet suggested. ‘Does it not render Twitter nothing more than an enormous echo chamber?’

The second tweet opined that perhaps for most of us Twitter is tantamount to screaming into an empty pint glass, not only for those sexists venting their fury at successful, unobtainable women but also for those attempting to be creative, share knowledge or add to humanity’s collective understanding (this is a lot to cram into two tweets I grant you but the implication was clear).

After all, the intellectual rigour and wit of Oscar Wilde at his pithiest could easily be lost to the ether were he followed solely by Jedward. More tragically, were he to forget to append the #justsaying hashtag.

These tweets and the cacophony of horrific abuse re-tweeted by the female journalists and writers I follow triggered in me a long unconscious thought: ‘Am I really making any contribution to universal understanding through my tweets or merely adding to the incessant din? Am I just subconsciously patting myself on the back from within my own tiny cyber-clique? Am I, like the worst of the trolls, attempting in vain to dissuade the fear of my own infinite insignificance?’

What a wonderful feeling it was to spend a prolonged period of time without tweeting. Living life, loving my wife, playing with my child, joking with family friends and experiencing the simple pleasures of the countryside in the summertime.

A trip to the zoo, hopping over stepping stones in the river Dart, making sandcastles for the boys, cooking pancakes for breakfast, cricket in the garden and talking. Talking to real, live people…in a room…in a cottage…in the middle of nowhere.

For a while, I thought I’d had an epiphany. I could just forget about writing anything ever again, forget reading, never post another puerile tweet for the rest of my days. Live! Live in tactile reality apart from the digital dissonance of the online community. I could do it. Of course I could do it! I’d gone 14 days, why not 140? Why not forever!?

Those first few tweets on my return from holiday were painful. I detested myself even as I tapped the areas of my phone screen designed to look like keys on a keyboard. In the halcyon Neverland of a summer holiday it was easy to resist the caterwauling. In the monotonous mangle of the daily commute it was impossible to ignore.

I’m unable to quit Twitter, I realise this now. Not only do I have an inherent need to express my opinions, hopefully in a creative and informative way, but I also feel it’s a duty to do so as a human being. To somehow, in some small way at least, attempt to add value, even if it blurs the lines between my ‘virtual’ and ‘actual’ reality; even if, ultimately, my thoughts (hopefully not screamed) travel no further than the bottom of the empty pint glass.

The alternative is to leave Twitter to the ignorant — not an option based on the abhorrent sexism currently evident across the site — and therefore admit a total defeat. I suppose, in a manner of speaking, to be a Twitter quitter is to turn ones back on society itself and I, for one, am not ready to indulge in so morose an act as that very nearly undertaken by the crew of Red Dwarf.

Twitter, like Red Dwarf, is for idiots! Except,in its finer moments, it isn’t really for idiots at all.

"A Republican walks into a pub..." - Humour and the new Royal arrival

Should we first turn to humour in the fight against public outpourings of emotion?

Throughout the surreal build up to the birth of Prince George of Cambridge I posted a series of silly tweets imagining the new heir to the British throne’s imminent arrival as that of a hotly anticipated studio album from a popular recording artist.

How we laughed… @jockyblue82 twitter feed 19th July 2013

I was trying to be funny but also highlight how the global media’s sinister clamour for any titbit of news turned a yet to be born human being into some sort of marketable product, the way a major record company will leak information in dribs and drabs, exploiting art to the point of undermining it in the hope of maximising the ‘buzz’.

It was my way of coping with the frustration at Britain’s ongoing adoration for the institution of monarchy, so totally and completely at odds to my own ideals that I want to scream defiantly into my cup of tea. As those around me debated appropriate names for the privileged sprog, it took great resolve to prevent myself from snapping like Michael Douglas’ character in the film ‘Falling Down’.

Those tweets were a puerile way of dealing with my own anger I’ll admit but then better than the alternative. For nothing has left me more moribund this week than the cawing Republicans, as equally and effortlessly dull as the servile ‘cootchy, cootchy cooing’ Royalists.

Sometimes a point of disagreement is so fundamental that it’s hopeless debating it. Like negotiating with terrorists or arguing the finer points of immigration law with a member of the English Defence League, you simply risk adding fuel to the fire.

Thankfully, however, there is refuge from the maelstrom and it can be found in that other defining British character trait: when all else fails and the tide of public emotion seems to have unequivocally burst over the sea wall of sanity, we at least have our sense of humour to fall back on.

By way of example, The Guardian newspaper’s temporary “Republican?” setting — hiding all coverage of the Royal baby from its website — was an excellently tongue-in-cheek admission of opposition, yet perhaps this sheltering in the darkly comic was best displayed by BBC reporter Simon McCoy, whose evident frustration at being forced to report relentlessly on nothing at all manifested itself in this wonderfully self-sacrificial piece from outside the Lindo Wing of London’s St Mary’s Hospital.

As McCoy dead pans his “none of it news” quip he is at once part of, and in on, the joke, with an acceptance of absurdity that borders on the epiphanic. Yet it’s true, isn’t it, that when we laugh — and McCoy’s report was certainly very funny — our minds are far more open to new possibilities, responsive to new ideas?

I’m not suggesting this was the reporter’s attempt to douse a burning desire for regicide, thus installing a new British Republic in the process, but it did have a certain power in emanating from the ‘belly of the beast’ as it were.

Of course, there was plenty more straightforward anti-royalist rhetoric published in the run up to the birth, yet, when in the eye of the storm, I wonder if it’s productive to stand quite so affronted, quoting the total figure of babies born into poverty in a desperate attempt to arrest attention from the main event?

We need to be more cunning than that, more Machiavellian perhaps? For in Machiavelli’s most famous work we learn how, to retain power, we must carefully maintain the sociopolitical institutions to which the people are accustomed. Or at least appear to.

It’s time we naysayers used humour as a tool to challenge and subvert the dominant contemporary norms. Perhaps if you can appear to be ploughing the same furrow of popular opinion whilst occasionally sowing the odd seed of doubt, you’re far more likely to make people think twice.

Humour is adept at conveying a subtlety otherwise out of reach. It is a means to an end as well as an end in and of itself.

For Republican’s seeking to undermine the sycophancy currently surrounding them, it is important not to forget the solace to be found in a laugh. And about that I am deadly serious.

"It isn't hard to do..."

Fransico Goya's "Witches Sabbath"

What if there really was no religion? Would we gain a new level of understanding or all go to hell in a handcart?

‘Imagine’ by John Lennon is one of the 'go-to' songs for those wishing to convey a message of world peace. You can hear it as the backdrop to ceremonial occasions the world over, it’s ever present, becoming almost as ubiquitous as the releasing of a white dove.

It's a little strange given that it asks us to imagine a world with no religion. How many heads of state and other notable dignitaries have unconsciously endorsed the striking of religion from our lives?

But what if we did live in a religion free world? Many would think us destined to descend into an irreversible chaos.

One of the most influential books I read whilst at school was "Introducing Marxism: A Graphic Guide". It was probably my first step towards political awareness (ably assisted by cartoon illustrations).

I remember an early chapter on the symbiotic relationship of the ruling class and religious belief. How Marx believed religion, particularly the fear of God, was a bourgeois tool with which to control the populous and maintain a stranglehold on power.

By instilling the belief that reward would come only in death, and only to those who had lived by the ethical code of a religious doctrine, the elite could quash the desire for rebellion in the working class, rendering the populous placid, docile and compliant to the whims of the bourgeoisie.

As Marx himself put it, "Religion is the opium of the people".

Nothing I have read before or since has been so damaging to my personal belief in the divine and although I can appreciate the many merits of religious community, the premise on which they are founded has long been beyond my acceptance.

On the contrary, the French philosopher of the Enlightenment period, Voltaire, argues that if God didn't exist, it would be necessary to invent him, that people need to believe in a higher power for comfort, to give their lives meaning, to rationalise or form a narrative of why things are.

But wouldn't it be nice to think that humans could make do without? Could accept this finite lifetime for all its natural beauty and absurdity, to be moral, ethical and just without the dangling carrot of a heavenly reward or the looming stick of a hellish comeuppance?

Biologist and primatologist Frans de Waal certainly thinks so, suggesting most of northern Europe, where the vast majority of people are now non-religious, is currently undergoing a form of organic social experiment to see whether a society in which religion isn't the dominant force can still remain a moral one.

de Waal refutes what, he suggests, is the oft held belief that religion was the birth of moral behaviour, claiming that religious morality was somewhat 'tacked on' to pre-existing moral codes, perhaps to "sway morality in a direction that we might prefer".

It does seem to chime with Marx's idea of religion as a primary means to control, and certainly the proliferation of secular societies and charities aiming to better humanity's plight suggests the desire to 'do good' doesn't solely rely on a religious belief.

Morality covered then, but what of the other great pillar of religious purpose - meaning?

Whilst at university in 2001, I remember sitting down with a friend and watching the Sam Mendes film American Beauty on VHS, borrowed from the campus library. Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, a middle aged, middle class man fed up with modern life.

By quitting his insufferable job, taking up a strict fitness regime, smoking marijuana, buying a fast car and listening to loud rock music, he begins to free himself from the prison of his own disillusionment. A mid-life crisis it may be but by the end of the film his pursuit of happiness seems, almost by happenstance, to have reached an end. In fact, the point is, it wasn't really a 'pursuit' at all. More accurately, he has come to an acceptance of his own existence...

It's a sentiment easy to mock, yet another article, again from the endlessly excellent BigThink website, takes up this idea in the context of the Samuel Beckett play 'Waiting for Godot'...

"Like most postmodern literature it’s unclear what, exactly, Waiting for Godot is about. But that’s the point. You create meaning for yourself ... In other words, we’re spending our lives searching for meaning – waiting for our Godot – and failing. The problem, paradoxically, is just that: we’re searching....we know that the search for happiness and meaning is self-defeating: if you’re looking for either, you’ve already failed."

Perhaps one day we'll live in a global society where morality and meaning are intrinsically woven into the very fabric of our existence, hardwired into the minutiae of our everyday lives without us having to seek the approval of a higher being or the validation of a higher reason.

It may seem twee, but there is surely enough beauty and wonder in even the most seemingly insignificant aspect of existence to make us grateful for every single moment of our "stupid, little" lives.

At the end of American Beauty, Lester is somewhat flippantly asked "How are you?". Perhaps we too will be able to pause for a moment, consider the reality of the question and answer, truthfully, "I feel great".

"The folkish summer romance" - Or how Andy Murray conquered the All England Club

yvettemn via flickr

This year's Wimbledon was a heady festival of tennis in which Andy Murray not only conquered his opponents but also the quintessential Englishness of the All England Club.

Of all the sports writing I've devoured since Andy Murray's triumph at Wimbledon, Barney Ronay's article in The Guardian has perhaps best encapsulated the giddy height of his accomplishment...

"It is a genuinely gold-standard achievement for the man from Dunblane, given weight not just by the burden of history and the folkish annual summer romance of Wimbledon itself, but by the fact he is competing in one of the great periods of elite men's tennis."

Indeed, Murray has won the most coveted prize in tennis at a time when, as Billie Jean King recently put it, the sport boasts possibly the four greatest players ever to grace the game - Nadal, Federer, Djokovic and Murray himself.

Yet, despite this undoubtedly remarkable feat of sporting excellence, it is the reference to a 'folkish summer romance' I find particularly interesting.

For isn't it true that the annual fortnight of lawn tennis at the All England Club brings with it a very peculiar strain of English behaviour? It cultivates a quasi-religious fervour in those who have barely a passing interest in tennis for the remaining 50 weeks of the year. 

On the eve of the final they find themselves inexplicably queuing overnight, not for tickets, but for the chance to perch on a proximitous patch of grass, officially called the Aorangi Terrace but also taking on the mythical monikers of Henman Hill or Murray Mound (I prefer to call it Bates' Barrow, a tongue in cheek reminder of the desperate era when Jeremy Bates was our great British white hope - Bates never progressed passed round 4).

So why this bizarre form of mass hysteria?

In clement weather the All England Club takes on a guise of the ultimate garden party, with those lucky enough to attend initiated into an intimate other-world, replete with sporting colossi and celebrity glamour but also stamped with Royal approval. It symbolises a very English sense of propriety and privilege, the grounds dressed in politely disarming whites and greens but also purple - the colour of Royalty.

For so many in the middle class majority, it seems Wimbledon allows them to transcend the divide between their own social status and that of the elite.

As much as I love the BBC, it portrays and fuels this same self-aggrandisement delivering a relentlessly gushing celebrity sycophancy, punctuating the pauses in play with shots of the rich and famous.

It's part of a somewhat callous mystique that surrounds Wimbledon, pervading the general discourse continually. You can hear it when your mother calls the evening after the final, conversation momentarily happening upon the sporting prowess on display before quickly turning to an in-depth sartorial analysis of those in the Royal Box.

It makes its voice heard again when 'Beeb' presenter John Inverdale remarks on ladies champion Marion Bartoli not being the best 'looker'!

It veritably screams at you when, following Murray's final victory, the headline on the front cover of the Daily Mail reads not "Champion" nor "He's done it!" nor even a histrionic "Our hero" but instead opts for the following... "Now it'll be arise Sir Andy". How galling that potentially being bestowed a Queen's Honour is given more import than the skillful artistry of the sporting achievement itself?

Yet, even though I suspect he would accept such an honour gracefully and is certainly happy to channel the heady energy of the Centre Court crowd to his own advantage in a match, what makes Andy Murray such a fascinating character is that he always appears one step removed from the madness around him.

Of course, the clambering English public disliked this fact initially, they want to submerge him in all that Wimbledon represents to them, they want him to get recklessly caught up in the hazy summer vibe, to ultimately validate their own sense of occasion.

Indeed Murray's tears after last year's final loss to Federer temporarily gave them the chink in the armour they craved. Suddenly the relationship between player and public thawed. However, that outpouring of emotion was momentary, no longer relevant after the claiming of the US Open confirmed that Murray's career need not be defined by Wimbledon alone.

To Murray's credit he seems aware of the ongoing circus surrounding him, batting away the wild interview questions with a disregarding pragmatism. Some still choose to interpret this as a stereotypical dourness but it's nothing of the sort. He simply won't play their games nor pander to their pandemonium.

It is that feature of his personality which allows him to shed the burden and, despite overwhelming pressure and expectation, find a way to win.

For Murray is, undoubtedly, a winner, and though in many ways the English love him for ending 77 year wait for a British male champion, there's a small but significantly dark corner of their collective psyche that resents him a little too. It suggests that he'll always be somewhat of an outsider. After all, winning just isn't English is it? Then again, neither is Andy Murray.

Empathy, empathy! They've all got it empathy

I'd champion an ability to empathise over most human traits but in some circumstances can it actually hinder the progress of humanity?

Previously, I've waxed lyrical on the readiness of celebrities to associate with charity but on reading this article last week, I've finally been able to put my finger on a different aspect of prime-time fundraising television that has always disconcerted me...

"The concept of empathy—putting yourself into another's shoes—has fuelled political and moral thinking of late, inspiring presidents and academics to hail the feeling of another's pain as necessary to curing the world's ills. Crucial to empathy is "victim identification", by which we come to know the human face of tragedy. As a result, we are far more likely to give donations to a person whose picture we see on the news than seek solutions for systemic problems, such as underfunded hospitals, that affect the lives of far more individuals. In other words, empathy can result in the sacrificing of the many for the one." - The Case Against Empathy - bigthink.com

Children In Need and Comic Relief clearly fall into this trap because of their desire to show the "human face of tragedy" so forcefully. In doing so they miss a key facet of what should be the overarching question i.e. 'why have the political powers responsible not addressed the issues that led to this suffering?'

I always suspect the organisers (and the public for that matter) are far more concerned with which BBC newsreaders will be wheeled out for the annual dance routine. At least Bob Geldof physically and metaphorically loomed over Thatcher in the run up to Live Aid. He wasn't just looking on dutifully as an African child showed him round their woefully inadequate home. He wasn't just yelling "Give us yer money!"

It's this lack of focus on the 'systemic problems' that I can't abide. After all, isn't prevention always better than cure?

Children in Need alone raised over £26million in 2012. A fantastic sum. However, put into context (and this is where I wave the red flag), UK bankers bonuses alone totalled £13billion in 2012. That's more than the total GDP of Equitorial Guinea; a country, lest we forget, crippled by the cost of its debts to us in the developed world.

"Even though Africa has only 5 percent of the developing world's income, it carries about two thirds of the debt - over $300 billion. Because of this, the average African country spends three times more of its scarce resources on repaying debt than it does on providing basic services" - allAfrica.com

The funds and awareness that charities raise for their cause are extremely important; the good will and kindness of those that work for a charity is to be commended, yet, however good the intention, when we ourselves donate, I wonder whether we aren't just letting our politicians off the hook? Whether we aren't just perpetuating the status quo (and I don't just mean prolonging the careers of Francis Rossi and Rick Parfit. I've moved on from Live Aid now)?

Contrary to the article I quote here, I don't really think that empathy is the problem - you can't have enough of that in society to my mind - rather it's the action this "victim identification" catalyses.

It's an objective and politically engaged response we need rather than a guilt relieving, emotive knee-jerk reaction. After all, however much we raise financially, we won't cure the problem. 12 months later we'll see the same upsetting images on our TV screens again.

Next year I suggest that, instead of Bill Turnbull and Charlie Stayt performing Abba for our amusement, we should demand David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the rest of the House of Commons take their place. We might suddenly find there's a permanent change for the better. A change that money can't buy.