Last night (in true Les Mis fashion) Sordel dreamed a dream, and in this dream the Labour Party presented one of those surreal it'll-never-happen European Election Broadcasts in which the spokesman was inappropriate to a surreal degree. You know the sort of thing ... talking giraffe, Lord Lucan, badger in spectacles and a hat?
Except that in this case it was Eddie Izzard. And it wasn't a dream.
Back in the days of Cool Britannia it used to be the case that Labour liked to adorn itself with celebrity bling because it was so widely supported that even the likes of Oasis felt that it could take the Blair shilling without, um, shilling too conspicuously. The cash-for-bangers Popular Vote is a nice little runaround for most of the year, but to show off one's success one does like a rock star for the one dry Saturday in July.
Unfortunately, at a time when even the cabinet are high-tailing it out of Dodge like a bunch of banditos with the posse on their tail, watching a celebrity endorsement is rather like seeing a bag lady in a moth-eaten mink coat. There is a definite suspicion that Izzard was bumbling through the studio improvising a brilliant monologue full of hilarious non sequiturs when Jacqui Smith handed him a mic before casting a nervous glance over her shoulder and bolting for the nearest exit.
"Tell them why you're voting Labour, Eddie!" a director must have hissed, mopping sweat from his brow like the producer of the last radio station in government hands in the midst of a South American military coup.
And, like the trouper that he evidently is, Izzard ventured upon a heroic defence of The Labour Party (circa 1948) while, out the back, the editors spliced in some fanciful propaganda in which pensioners complained that David Cameron was intending to take away their bus passes. Short of suggesting that David Cameron was bayonetting babies, the broadcast could not have been more traditional in its selection of canards.
Of course, it remains open to Izzard to claim in future years that it was all a wry, ironic joke. Or, for that matter, he may don a woman's weeds and vanish in the crowd.
It will be a poignant moment, however, when darting a quick, mascara'd glance around him from under a Quaker bonnet he comes face to face with Gordon Brown, similarly arrayed and wearing the same shade of lipstick.
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Errata and Corrigendum
In a blog of 6th May, 2009, Sordel inadvertantly implied that Jacqui Smith "never would be missed". I wish to apologise to Mrs. Smith for any distress that this error may have caused either her or her family. What I should have said is that she never will be missed.
2 comments:
I did enjoy this blog, as always, but I feel that a link to the Izzard appearance might be useful. I have known for some time, of course, that he's one of their tame ... ahem ... "luvvies", but surely even he would not venture to put his head above the parapet during this particular storm.
I did have a poke around YouTube for the aforementioned broadcast before I posted but couldn't find it. Really, links are so much more deftly handled in the hands of the Rotwatcher, for whom hypertext etc. is like a second language.
Now I think about it, isn't there something under the Representation of the People Act about those broadcasts? It would be ironic indeed were I to fall foul of the law for accidentally promoting the views of Our Labour Masters.
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