Sordel is feeling somewhat soiled today, having been forced to visit the Daily Mirror website so that you, Dear Reader, do not need to.
The poor old Mirror (broadly speaking a distorting mirror, given that the people therein reflected are always wickeder, more repulsive or otherwise just more than they would be in real life) is up in arms because of the injustice of a largely random competition having a largely random result.
Nathan Hageman (separated from the hangman by one small letter) is evidently a "thug" and a "brute", as well as being £1 million pounds the richer as a consequence of a roulette spin on the new Ant & Dec vehicle, Red or Black?. Contrary to all reasonable expectation, the roulette ball seems to have paid no attention whatsoever when bouncing around the wheel to the fact that Hageman was sentenced to five years for beating up his ex-girlfriend.
In this, as usual, God has had his little joke at the expense of those who care. Some might say it was affliction enough on His part to have permitted Red or Black? be green-lighted in the first place, but now He compounds the misery by allowing the sun to shine on the unjust man while the rest of us get the thorough drenching that only ITV on a Saturday night can bestow.
Simon Cowell is reportedly livid that someone of such low moral character should get rich from reality television which (apart from setting up an obvious but quite unwarranted joke) merely suggests that Cowell did not understand the rules of the competition that he himself had scratched on the back of a beer-mat.
Before we castigate the creator (and the Creator) too energetically, however, it is worth noting that there evidently was another and more immediate failure: on the part of the show's producers when they were "vetting" contestants. Evidently, Hageman admitted to having a criminal conviction for ABH and aggravated burglary, but claimed that the victim was a man and not his ex-girlfriend.
It reveals the mentality of the producers to a nicety, then, that their consciences (which would have been untroubled by a violent criminal winning the prize had his victim been a man) pinch somewhat when the victim is revealed to be a woman.
Sordel, meanwhile, is willing to admit to having watched roughly five minutes of Red & Black? last Saturday and would like several series of The X Factor to be taken into consideration. I consider myself to be the principal victim and can assure you that no women were harmed.
Can I haz my million still?
