Lady Gaga, Ukip and the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

Just back from the polling station in the village hall.

I won't say how I voted but before I went I watched Jeremy Paxman's interview with Nigel Farage which I'd recorded on Monday but hadn't seen.

The interview is already old hat (Paxman began by asking Farage: "What's your problem with Romanians?") so I was more interested in the preceding film which began with a shot of my erstwhile colleague Angela Harbutt deep in conversation with Farage in a bar (naturally).

I was trying to work out where they were when I saw the Comedy Store logo and I realised it was footage from 'A Beer and a Fag with Farage', the Forest/IEA event we hosted at last year's Conservative conference in Manchester.

(That's the second time that event has featured on national television in recent months. A clip of Farage on stage at the Comedy Store was also included in Martin Durkin's Channel 4 documentary about the Ukip leader.)

Even more interesting, my Sky+ box recording included the last few minutes of the previous programme, Lynn Barber's Celebrity Masterclass presented by Alan Yentob.

I've transcribed exactly what I heard because I thought it might interest you:

Yentob: Lynn Barber has been in the interview business for over 30 years now and her interviewees these days are getting younger and younger.

Barber: I like the fact that they somehow send me somebody who is famous to the young who I've never heard of so I have to do a crash course in Lady Gaga or whoever. The one thing I really admired about Lady Gaga, but you probably won't let me say this, is that I said 'Can I go on the balcony and smoke?' and she said 'Oh, we can smoke in here' and she very expertly did something or other with the smoke alarms. I mean she actually knew what to do to disable smoke alarms and I wish now I'd asked her how you achieve that.

Yentob (sounding very tongue in cheek): At this point I'm going to have to apologise for all the smoking in this film. I did try to stop her but she, um, doesn't listen.

As it happens the 'Demon Barber of Fleet Street' came to a Forest event a few years ago and wrote an article for the Guardian that fully justified her fearsome reputation.

The headline and intro said it all – 'This party's such a drag: When smokers met up to bemoan the one-year-old ban, Lynn Barber found the company made her choke - David Hockney excepted'.

I've just read it for the first time in almost six years and although it doesn't paint Forest in a very good light, it's interesting to note who our speakers were (I'd completely forgotten):

I hoped the speeches would bring illumination and they sort of did. The speakers were Simon Clark, director of Forest, Philip Davies, a Tory MP who supports smoking even though he doesn't smoke himself, and then - greeted with a cheer - Nigel Farage of Ukip who smokes 50 a day ...

Then we had a speech from the martyr of the cause, Hamish Howitt, who runs a pub in Blackpool and has had 22 prosecutions with another nine to come because he loves his regulars, who are all old and blind and disabled, and can't bear to stop them lighting up. He was sweet but also, I thought, doomed.

Presumably the party was meant to inspire us poor huddled masses to rise up against our oppressors, man the barricades and charge the gun emplacements or at least to write to our MPs. But frankly, we are a raggle-taggle, defeated army, never very disciplined at the best of times, and if it means getting into bed with Ukip, I think I'll pass.

Click here to read the full article.

Comments

[Frank]

The smoking ban is about forced social exclusion. It was reported how 250,000 people stopped going bingo when it came in and how one third of smokers about 4 million people stopped going to pubs entirely. Smokers should be allowed adult places in which to socialise just like any other group of people and not be marginalised and a minority discriminated against for doing something that's always been legal. The ban is an abomination and the likes of Forest and Ukip need to do much more in order to change.it. Choice must be brought back making it fair for everyone as it's not fair for people to be excluded.

[Junican]

The sad thing with Hewitt (and Hogan in Bolton) was that the tobacco companies offered them no support legally. Had they done so, the question of "allowing" smoking might have gone to the Lords and the 'duty' of publicans to physically stop people from smoking might have been overturned.
Tobacco Companies washed their hands of the effects of bans on their customers. They did not care, They have only 'gone to court' when their own interests were threatened.
Perhaps they believe that their customers are just hopeless addicts.