ANOTHER VOICE

Vacancies for right-wing gays, and West Country Keynesians — but no more gay rabbis, please

MATTHEW PARRIS

Ldays gone by, fathers would take their sons by the arm: 'Join the Royal Navy, my boy', or, `Go into the Church.' More recently, dads have been recommending careers in plastics or estate agency. But if I had a son, I should lay a fatherly hand on his shoulder at 17 and say, `Go into wry political commentary, lad.'

He would never lack work. Little occurs in politics. Politics is boring. Editors and programmers despair. Result? At 11.00 a.m. on any given day, editors nationwide are saying to minions, 'Find someone to cast a wry glance at the political scene for three minutes/800 words/a short video-clip.'

And who is there? Just Ian Hislop, David Aaronovitch, Simon Hoggart and me and Mr Hislop has a magazine to run. At 11.00 a.m., there is therefore nothing for it but to disconnect the telephone and hide under the sofa. If I could clone myself into six Matthew Parrises there would still be work for all six. Simon and Ian are every- where, Mr Aaronovitch has only just started at the Independent — snap him up while you can.

We are that sought-after minority who are Glad to be Wry. The handful of MPs prepared to turn their hand to this have become better known than Cabinet minis- ters. Julian Critchley, Charles Kennedy, Tony Banks, Jerry Hayes, Austin Mitchell, Ken Livingstone and Teresa Gorman could all go full-time into professional mickey- taking. Some would say they already have.

So take an ironic view of Parliament, lad; cast that wry eye; practise those sideways glances; leaven till you drop. Look sideways and you will never look back. Go into irony, my son!

As for my daughter, I should advise her to become a liberal Jewish rabbi. It is very fortunate that Julia Neuberger is such a talented and nice person, for if one had had the slightest propensity to dislike her, one would have been obliged to cut one- self off from all exposure to the broadcast or printed word this last decade and more. I would say the same — except that I cannot advise my daughter to be of Afro-Caribbean descent — of another woman I admire, Dame Jocelyn Barrow. Jocelyn's energies have never flagged in the face of the demand for her services on everything from the Board of Governors of the BBC to the Broadcasting Standards Council.

I am on the Broadcasting Standards

Council myself, as a sort of statutory Tory poof. Right-wing gays are terrifically in demand these days, as they can make speeches, do responsible committee work and stand up to Peter Tatchell in television discussion programmes. Equally sought- after are intelligent, moral Conservatives who will oppose liberal motions on social issues at the Oxford and Cambridge Unions and on the Moral Maze. One bumps into poor Victoria GiHick, looking more exhausted every year, wherever one goes on the debating stump. Lynette Burrows has opposed more motions that This House is Glad to be Gay than she's had hot dinners.

Most young graduates now wish to go into the media, and we are faced with a serious over-supply. Yet, as you see, attrac- tive niches remain unfilled: tiny but intense vacuums. Where are the commissioning queues? Thither they should hasten, taking steps to becoming a rabbi, nun, Cornish- man, Tory, lesbian — or whatever is needed to meet demand.

Stephen Fry already meets the limited call for celibate gays, and Sister Wendy has queered the pitch for copycat television nuns, but I identify an acute shortage of what we might call regional aesthetes. We need a Brian Sewell of the North and a Barnsley equivalent of Janet Street-Porter (look how well Mrs Merton is doing, and she isn't even real). Now that Roy Hatters- ley is getting on and Melvyn Bragg has lost his accent, a sensitive critic from Yorkshire or Stoke-on-Trent would do well — and how about a dandified Geordie? Starting on Late Review and Kaleidoscope, they would soon be all over the second section of the Guardian.

A West Country popular economist would do well, too, putting across the thoughts of J.M. Keynes in the accents of the Wurzels. Over the next two years, there will be huge demand, throughout the dreaded devolution debate, for Unionists with Scottish accents, to bal- ance discussion panels. The market for non-fascist English nationalists is picking up already, and there is a gap for a pair of bright (not Tory) Welsh-speakers worried about devolution. Coming down the line is burgeoning demand for youngish Labour supporters (clean fingernails, no beards) doubtful about Tony Blair but not from the old hard Left. And look how well Victoria Mather has reconnoitred the market for waspish Society commentary. Room, perhaps, for one more. Room, too, for anyone in prison writing anything really (except poetry, of course). Come to think of it, how about a Tatler 'Social' column from someone in Wormwood Scrubs?

I have been for years aware of potential media hunger for at least three articulate. emancipated young Asian women (but with `roots), as well as one amenable but cultur- ally reactionary Asian thirty-something. These people would be on Start the Week, The Midnight Hour and Radio Five Live's The Treatment within hours. They would soon be on Radio Four's Tea Junction. They would never be off the Moral Maze. They would be writing for the Daily Mail and turning down invitations for Kilroy by the fistful. We could restart Stop the Week for them.

A Brummie philosopher, a Brummie agony aunt — in fact a Brummie anything, except Jasper Carrot — would prosper. And there is an opening for a multi-pur- pose Third-World peasant (possibly South American Indian) with reasonable English, to be on all the programmes about world development, world music, folk literature and famine relief, over- loaded as they presently are with charity workers, dons and bank officials. This person would have to come up with a plausible explanation why he or she was doing Richard and Judy, the Observer colour supplement, The Spectator, A Good Read, Fourth Column, Loose Ends and writing for the Times in Britain, rather than growing potatoes in Huaraz, but it could be contrived. There are also oppor- tunities for an articulate paedophile with a blurred face. Also, at least 20 amusing East Europeans and a tame Belgian. Sorry, no more gay rabbis.

There remains a chronic shortage of clever, unpleasant, funny right-wing colum- nists. For decades, Auberon Waugh has had to pretend to be nasty in a lonely strug- gle to meet demand. And why has nobody targeted the pickings available to a wheelchair-bound critic of the disablement lobby? Where are the passionate Jewish critics of the State of Israel? And will nobody learn from the success of that soli- tary black Monday-clubber, Mr Derek Lord? If times grow hard I may have to become a homophobe.

Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter of the Times.