Saying of the Week
There is something that these three largely admirable institutions (the BBC. the Guardian and the Observer) have in common which drives some people to quite extravagant loftiness or fury.--Mr. Michael Frayn, Observer, August IS. It seems an odd way to reply to Christopher Booker's criticisms to 'allow your professional funny man, who has himself produced some of the best parodies of Observerstyle yet written, to write a serious piece. 'I think the trouble is,' Mr. Frayn continues, 'that they are all suspected (rightly or wrongly) of highmindedness. An air of benevolent middle-class didacticism is detected about them. . . . Try as they might to seem unsentimental and sunburnt and gossipy, the suspicion remains that underneath they are afflicted with moral earnestness and soft- heartedness.'
Ah, Mr. Frayn, you have it the wrong way round, and I am sure you know it. It is, not the highmindedness that troubles us. It was not the highmindedness that inspired your parody, but something quite different. There is, indeed, something about those once admirable institu- tions , . . try as they might to appear benevo- lent, middle-class or didactic, soft-hearted or Morally earnest, the suspicion remains that under- neath they, are inflicted with sentimentality, gossip, trendsetting, pacemaking, sycophancy and suspension of judgment. We are lofty (or furious) because they refuse to recognise it. Why. even Mr. Frayn seems half-ashamed of earnest- ness and didacticism. We aren't.
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