Jane Garvey: Harbinger of the Dark Ages
Jane Garvey, the new presenter of Women’s Hour says Radio 4 has ‘a massively middle class bent‘. Now, Garvey came to her new job from Five Live’s Drive, an execrable programme where she exchanged inanities with the woeful Peter Allen over a platudinous presentation of the day’s events*. On that form, I’m left thinking that Garvey’s definition of middle class starts with people who get out of the bath to go to the toilet.
You know, I’m not a particularly well-educated or well-read person. I’m not what you’d describe as an intellectual. But one thing I am, in my own way, is a self-improver, an auto-didact. The government wants us to be drones, repeating our allotted task in order to service the economy until we die. You want to smell the roses? You’re going to have to grow them yourself.
I listen to Radio 4 not because I’m middle class – I’ll kill any man who describes me as such – but because it’s didactic. And massively entertaining. Five Live is rotting my mind. Five of the sweetest words in the English language are ‘Victoria Derbyshire is on holiday’. Garvey’s suggestion seems to be that instead of elevating the lower classes, Radio 4 should sink to their level. She can fuck right off, frankly. And the mouth-breathers she rode in on.
Jesus, even an ill-educated prole like me can see the cultural desertification that’s creeping up on us. As Jim Bliss said about the reaction to Rowan William’s speech – it’s anti-intellectualism. And the frustrating thing is, it wouldn’t take much to reverse it. My life was improved forever when, as a student in Huddersfield, I found the second-hand bookshop in the town centre. The prices were cheap enough for speculative purchases and very soon I’d put down the James Herberts and the Frederick Forsyths and was reading Thomas Hardy, Joseph Heller, Umberto Eco, Graham Greene. The world suddenly seemed massive and inspirational.
I know life’s hard and day are long and people are knackered but just once I wish someone would put down that novel about the SAS and pick up Catch-22 (it’s about war ‘n’ shit). Or drop The Da Vinci Code and pick up Foucault’s Pendulum (it’s about conspiracies ‘n’ shit). Or Our Man in Havana (it’s a comedy spy thriller ‘n’ shit). They’re more of a challenge to read, granted, but then they don’t talk to you the way Five Live talks to you either.
Try an Elmore Leonard – they’re like crack. When I discovered his books I read a dozen on the trot. His plots, characters and writing are like nothing else. And he doesn’t sound like Patricia Hewitt sending you to bed without any supper.
If Robert Sharp’s right and we only get time to digest 624 books before we die, why not try a little chateaubriand between the burgers? Try Radio 4 between 6.30 and 7 pm on a weekday or on a Saturday morning (skip Fi Glover though, she’s from Five Live and shit as well). Turn off Victoria Derbyshire’s daily racist and yahoo magnet and go and smear yourself with your own faeces instead. Trust me, you’ll feel like an intellectual titan.
* In the run up to the Iraq war, I remember one day them going on and on about a dead badger than had been painted over by someone painting double yellow lines on a road. On and on and on and on and on and on they went about this sodding badger. I emailed in and said: ‘We might be at war soon and you keep going on about a badger? You’re at the cutting edge of the news agenda.’ And they read it out!
Posted on February 13th, 2008 at 11:14 am
Spot on! Of course Radio 4 is ‘middle class’ and a bloody good job too!
Like you, I had to educate myself and I did it partly by listening to Radio 4 (and Radio 3, incidentally), reading The Guardian (in the days when it was worth reading), The New Scientist, The Spectator (again, in the days when, regardless of it’s political stance at least it was well written), the TLS, etc, etc. At times it was hard going and I’d often have a dictionary and notebook next to me but it was rewarding. It was like having to chew your food rather than having it cut up and mashed with a fork like you do for babies. But then infantilization in what it’s all about now, isn’t it? It’s not so much a ‘middle-class’ bent that’s being objected to as an ‘adult, mature and intellectual’ one, no?
There really is nothing better, is there? I’m determined to crack Bertrand Russell before I die.
In the dictionary next to the word “middle class”, there should be a picture of me. I don’t mind. Middle class pride! Or something.
Since the rise of a middle class has historically been associated with the rise of democracy (ie you have to be able to have time to do more than scrape a living to agitate for, y’know, rights and shit) I think “middle class” should cease being a word of approbation.
Now, closed-minded, superficial, curtain twitching busybody, on the other hand – not a good thing.
The thing is Katherine, what does ‘middle class’ actually mean? It’s seems to be to be such a debased term. Is it to do with income, education or status? How do the middle classes differ from the working classes – we’re all working for ‘The Man’ in some shape of form.
In the context of politics, appealing to the middle classes seems to be filtered via the thought processes of baby boomers and largely consists of appeals to narrow self-interest (house prices, nice schools etc) and ladder pulling. It never appealed to me as a club I want to be a member of. Being something of an inverted snob doesn’t help.
I think the point about the middle-class, in this context, is that they’re the class that live by their education. And so while there can be all sorts of things about them (and about Radio 4) that can be complacent and conservative and not as socially-informed as they might be, they do care about literature and theatre and music and thought, because they understand the value of these things and because they want their children to haver them. And this is why Radio 4 is a good thing.
In a way I’m reminded of something I think about comprehensive education. Middle-class parents will nag and harass and moan at schools until those schools provide what they consider is good enough for thir children. This is a good thing. But separate those parents off from everybody else, and it only benefits their children. Put ‘em in the same school as everybody else, and they have no option but to benefit everybody.
What ejh said.
Justin, you are far too literate to be a prole. “Middle class” is a state of mind, and you sir, are in it. I await your hunting down and killing me; will you the CounterStrike, or the Quake?
I’m probably teaching you to suck eggs, but if you like Leonard, you have to go back to the source and read Raymond Chandler. If you haven’t already, I’m jealous of the pleasure you have ahead of you.
I don’t know why the press reaction to beardy has blown everyone’s mind. It’s always the way. The only constraint on journalists is that their interpretation of events bears some minimal standard of correspondence to reality – distortion, omission etc. (’interpretation’) is not a problem. With that constraint in place, they then look to maximise ’sensation’ of the story. A selection process ensures that successful journalists are those that think this is a perfectly sensible way to carry on / don’t notice they’re doing it (are ‘good’ at it – at spotting ‘the story’). This is also true of supposedly intellectual journalists on the left wing, writing about economics, foreign policy etc.
Sadly most of us (me too) only notice the shortcomings of journalists we are predisposed to disagree with anyway, so for example Tim Worstall picks up errors in one direction, and perhaps you do in another (if you see what I mean). I’m over stating things here, making it sound like everyone is equally blinkered; that ain’t so.
Oh, and I really think it reveals a strain of chronically fucked-up-ness in this country that so many people regard ‘middle class’ as a dire insult – but that’s another story. Ah, if I had my own blog ….
[my Phd supervisor has forbidden me from starting my own blog. I ought to forbid myself from reading the damn things too].
Shame on your selective 5Live crit.
1. Their footie coverage compared to BBC, ITV and Sky rocks. You don’t need to see it when they’re describing it. And the second-chairs they get on generally speak in sentences.
2. Simon May’s afternoon show ditto. The seethers get the odd email read out, and that’s their lot.
1) I’ve lapsed on the football front, I’m afraid. I might try and achieve tumescence for the World Cup qualifiers…
2) I’ll give you Mayo. Him and Mark Kermode are unmissable but I also agree with Tom – his coverage of PMQs is rubbish.
Justin, you mean you listen to something other than sports commentaries on Five Live? Why? (Okay, so you might not like sport – but that’s about the only reason to listen to the station…as long as you avoid the fuckwittage on some of the sports phone-ins) I gave up on LBC for R4’s Today ages ago for similar reasons to yours.
“Simon May’s afternoon show ditto. The seethers get the odd email read out, and that’s their lot.”
Mayo? Three things piss me off about that – his parliamentary coverage panel usually has two neocons and a token Lib Dem, he had a truly awful interview with John ‘Bombs Away’ Bolton a few months back and, most heinous of all, he keeps having David Blunkett on, lobbing soft questions at him and letting him rant. Closet Blairite, perhaps?
Heh, I’ve been listening to radio 4 in the evenings (and occasionally mornings on the way in to work) for some time now – glad it doesn’t mean I’m an old fogie
I’m not middle class – I don’t earn much, live in a single room flat, and have never owned a new car. That doesn’t mean I have to listen to Chris Moyles.
Never tried Elmore Leonard… Recommendations for a starter?
Pretty much any Elmore Leonard: they all share the same DNA – cracking dialogue which brings his characters fizzing to life, heroes who turn out to be in it for the money and scumbags you end up rooting for.
Out of Sight, Pronto and Maximum Bob are three of my favourites but everyone will differ. Or the one partially set in Rwanda, the name of which escapes me for the present. Brilliant stuff.
Also rather partial to the mighty James Ellroy.
I’ll second that – you can pick up an Elmore pretty much at random and be guaranteed a cracker. I’ve read loads of them and I can’t remember a bad one.
The recommendation to read Chandler is heartily sceonded. If you can’t enjoy the writing of a man who comes up with the line, “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window.” doesn’t deserve to be able to read. Interesestingly (to me at least), one of the other finest wordsmiths of the 20th Century, P G Wodehouse (see http://www.drones.com/pgw.cgi for random quotes or any Guttenberg mirror or manybooks.net for a number of his books), was educated at the same school as Chandler, Dulwich College.
Cheers Mr E!
Just want to add my voice to the pro-Chandler camp. And like TomJ, I’ll let the man’s own words do the convincing…
“She gave me a smile I could feel in my hip pocket.”
How can anyone not want to read the man who wrote that?
I’d also agree with the James Ellroy recommendation. Though he’s a fair bit heavier and darker than either Leonard or Chandler.
Incidentally, you know that much current historiography considers that the Dark Ages didn’t really exist? (That is, they weren’t Dark – they weren’t characterised by the constant war, collapse of civilisation and expulsion of peoples that was formely supposed.)
Just to link that to thriller writers, I was taught the history of the period at university by the chap upon whom Le Carré based George Smiley.
>his coverage of PMQs is rubbish.
Well, the only coverage of PMQs that I’d bother with is Gordon and Dave wittering away in the background with someone shouting “bollocks” over the top of it every time one of them spoke. So, yes, on those terms, Mayo’s coverage isn’t quite to my taste. But maybe my taste is a bit niche for 5Live.
As an exercise for the discerning:
a) listen to the BBC Radio Player episode of ‘On The Hour’
b) listen to a random half-hour of a Five Live current affairs show
If you can spot any meaningful difference, well done. I certainly can’t.
See also any episode of The Day Today versus any edition of a prime-time news show. These people either think we’ve forgotten or they never learned anything from Chris Morris.
I have a horrible feeling they learned *everything* from Chris Morris.
I must defend the lovely Jane (and the magnificent Mr Allen, whose show is alas better than the dreadful Eddie Meir – a real Radio 5 person).
If you’ve not noticed before, it’s a sure signifier of middle-classness that you use the term ‘middle-class’ perjoratively. Ms Garvey’s just mouthing the standard Woman Sour pieties.
It’s why there’s a book every month about a child carpet-weaver in Anatolia – before they go back to the REAL stuff – yet another interview with a posh actress.
(agree re Derbyshire and Glover though. And Stephen Nolan).