Is it more rude to ask if someone’s going whacko than blind?

30 September 2009

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Rod Liddle says the furore surrounding Andrew Marr’s questions to Gordon Brown is academic. These rumours are rife in the blogosphere

Is our Prime Minister perpetually out of his brainbox on powerful psychotropic substances, as everybody now seems to believe? Dilaudid, crystal meth, that sort of thing? Does he stagger out of bed and say: ‘Aw, Sarah, I’ve got a meeting with Harman in half an hour. Light up the crack pipe, will you?’

Looking at the man, you would not think so. That strange, strangulated smile, the ever encroaching brow — this is not the demeanour of a man who, for example, mainlines camel tranquillisers every morning. If he is scoring regularly, then I suggest he changes his dealer, because he’s being ripped off. Mandelson, meanwhile — well, there’s another issue.

The BBC’s Andrew Marr is in a spot of bother because he asked Gordon Brown straight out if he was a druggy, having already asked him if he were about to go blind. I quite like the idea that the country is being led by a severely visually impaired Dennis Hopper; it has a certain rapturous end-time beauty about it. But Labour MPs are now in revolt and may boycott Marr’s fine Sunday morning chat show as a consequence of this impertinence; they have been jabbering about it endlessly in the bars at Brighton. Well, boys, you have about seven months for that threat to contain even a modicum of force, so enjoy it while you can.

Most people seem to be agreed — including one or two BBC political interviewers I spoke to — that Marr was on good ground talking about Brown’s eye problems, but on decidedly dodgy ground when he brought up the drugs. Certainly, there has been fury from Labour, with even perfectly sensible people like Jon Cruddas insisting that the question was inappropriate — and, ever attuned to the general sensibilities of the public, David Cameron concurring. There has been spite and malevolence too, from — would you Adam and Eve it? — Alastair Campbell. On a blog, the former spin doctor castigated Marr’s approach and suggested that there were certain things which Andrew Marr wouldn’t like to be asked about in an interview in front of millions of people. In the no-longer (sadly) smoke-filled rooms at Brighton, plenty of Labour MPs took up this nasty little baton and suggested that Brown should have turned the tables there and then.

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Vulture

October 1st, 2009 11:20am Report this comment

The reason that those spoof takeoffs of The Downfall, with Bruin doubling as Hitler were so funny, is that they were all too credible. You know from his air of brooding menace, without actually witnessing them, that Bruin has fits of titanic, pencil-snapping rage. That he is a bully who regularly sends his female staff to the lavvy in tears, that no Nokia is safe in his chimpish paws, etc etc.

Similarly, it would not surprise anyone to learn that he is on strong medication to control physical and/or mental illness. His strange gestures, the Facebook gurning, the inability to smile appropriately, the regularly swooping jawline, all point to one or more severe impediments.

So perhaps another Hitler parallel holds true: the Fuehrer, especially in his last months, suffered from a range of chronic maladies, including flatulence, Parkinsons, tremors, deafness, and impaired vision. His quack doctor, Theor Morrell, proscribed a battery of pills and potions, so that if anyone had had the temerity to hold the Fuehrer upside down by his jackboots he would have rattled like a Salvation Army collecting tin.

Given all this, Big Ears was quite right to pop the pill question to Noddy. A more honest inquiry would have been: 'Prime Minister, are you as nutty as a Dundee cake?'

Hawkeye

October 1st, 2009 12:25pm Report this comment

"... what is still referred to, by some foaming maniacs, as the Blair Broadcasting Corporation"

Phew! I was worried there for a minute, but I refer to it as the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation.

That's me in the clear then...

David99

October 2nd, 2009 2:17pm Report this comment

A generation ago, David Frost used to conduct incisive interviews (e.g. Nixon).
Then he went on Sunday morning TV and went all bland.
Andrew Marr, in taking over from Frost, has carried on in the same vein, never, until last week, saying boo to anyone.
So it is long overdue!

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