Poor David Yelland: nothing to offer but bananas, whipped cream and a male stripper called Dean
STEPHEN GLOVER
DR, they or didn't they? Have they or ha‘en't they? I hate, gentle reader, to draw you into a world of which you are probably barely aware. It started with Big Brother, the Channel 4 programme which put a number of young and generally tiresome people together in a house and invited us to listen to them maundering on about themselves. You've probably heard of it. You may even have seen it by accident. You may even know that Big Brother ended more than two weeks ago. What you may not realise is that the 'red top' tabloids have taken over where Channel 4 left off. Big Brother is bigger than ever.
Since Monday of last week the Sun has covered its front page evety day with some aspect of Big Brother, or another equally brainless and voyeuristic programme, also ended. called Survivor. That is nine successive days. The Daily Star has missed only two days over the same period. The Mirror, having described itself as the Big Brother paper while the programme was showing, has oddly become rather superior, restricting itself to more ruminative inside pieces. The Sun's obsession centres, of course, on sex, and in particular the question of whether two Big Brother contestants, Helen, a 23-year-old Welsh hairdresser, and Paul, have been to bed together. Channel 4 producers had devoutly hoped they would. but Paul proved surprisingly reluctant on camera, and at the crucial moment went off to make a cup of tea.
So the Sun has revived the question to which I referred at the beginning of this piece. Experts agree that Helen and Paul probably have been to bed together —indeed, the Sunday People, not to be outdone by the Sun, confidently declared on its front page that 'Helen and Paul do stuff'. (The News of the World, on the other hand, suggested on its front page that all was not well in the relationship.) But, to be fair to the Sun, it is not only interested in Helen and Paul's love life. One of its front pages concerned Helen's new friendship with 'Posh Spice'; another dealt with her career prospects. Yet another brought Helen together with 'Charlotte the Harlot', the star of Survivor. On Tuesday the paper, momentarily exhausted with Helen, led with 'Charlotte's three-in-bed stripper shocker'. 'Sis begged for romp', we were informed. There were further details, which I won't tax you with, about bananas, whipped cream and a male stripper called Dean. Now it may be. gentle. tolerant reader, that I am in danger of losing you. Why is he telling us all this? I can hear you asking. Why should the hallowed pages of The Spectator be sullied? My defence is that 10 million people read the Sun — let alone the readers of the other titles — which is almost one in four of the adult population of this country. In fact the paper's readership is considerably larger than was the audience for Big Brother. We cannot entirely ignore so many of our fellow countrymen. We must ask whether they enter this stupid and depraved world with a jaunty step and a happy heart, or whether some of them are also rather appalled and even a little bored by their paper's infatuation with characters who, after all, are neither glamorous nor as distinguished as the most obscure soap star.
Paul, Helen, Charlotte the Harlot and Dean are deeply ordinary. Or rather they are ordinary save in one respect, being exceptionally vain, narcissistic and publicityseeking, and having an extraordinary appetite for fame for which they have absolutely no qualifications. They are famousfor-five-minutes people whom the Sun wants to make famous for at least a couple of weeks. The paper's motive is that it is frustrated with real stars. Real stars have agents who protect them and bang on about rights of privacy. Real stars do not give themselves hook, line and sinker to the red-top tabloids. The beauty of Paul, Helen, Charlotte and even Dean is that they are not stars at all but obscure people who are pathetically grateful for their unexpected notoriety and will cheerfully talk about their sex lives in a way proper stars never would. The Sun may believe that it has created its own stars, but of course it hasn't. In a couple of months they will all be forgotten. You can't, in the end, be famous just for being famous. Now August is supposed to be a thin month for news, though history suggests that it is not as thin as all that. One understands the predicament of David Yelland, the Sun's editor. No doubt he understands his readership infinitely better than I do. But I can't help feeling that he is flogging a dead horse. Big Brother may have been a moderate success, attracting some six million viewers, because of its voyeuristic appeal. But now that this appeal is fading I can't imagine that his readers derive much enjoyment from reading about these boring people. The Sun's obsession actually borders on the psychotic, and it is possible that Mr Yelland, whom I have always rather liked, stands in serious need of help.
So far lain Duncan Smith has had a surprisingly good press in the liberal media. I have noted a couple of dismissive references to him on the BBC, while Polly Toynbee in the Guardian and Andrew Rawnsley in the Observer have referred rather witheringly to him as Captain Duncan Smith. Presumably if he had been a general they would think more highly of him. But so long as he is the victim of mere snobbery he has little to fear.
However, he is likely to be the victim of something more damaging quite soon. The media class is still mostly on holiday, so it probably has not noticed that Mr Duncan Smith is ahead of Kenneth Clarke in all the straw polls, and as things stand seems odds on to win. As journalists wake up to this prospect, they will increasingly turn their guns on him. He will be depicted as a farright loony who will lead the Tory party into a wilderness from which it may never return.
My guess is that such warnings will come too late to affect the outcome of this particular election contest. But if Mr Duncan Smith does win he will face a redoubled barrage. I am sure he realises this, and will be at pains to present himself as a man of fresh but essentially unextreme views. Let's hope against hope that the liberal media give him a fair hearing. For to depict him uncritically as more far out than William Hague would be to do New Labour's work. The best way of securing a one-party state is to aver again and again that there is only one party that can be, or should be, elected. Is that what the liberal media really want?
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