I don’t know
what Nutter thought of inviting Bob Geldof to appear or be heard on television
in a programme celebrating the survival in beauteous old age and acclamation as
“SAOI” or “SAGE” of Edna O’Brien.
Geldof hasn’t the grace to wash, shave, visit a barber, comb his hair and tidy
his appearance when invited to appear on television, His appearance on a screen
is an
insult to John Logie Baird and a distortion of Marshal McLuhan’s assertion that
the Medium is the Message. The Medium that hosts Geldof is both a Mess
and amiss.
Averting one’s eyes from the screen is not enough when Geldof spews
witless obscenities in a mock working class Dublin accent. He poses as a
Ragged-Schooled
Philanthropist. Entertainers from the slums and stews of New Orleans and other
poor backgrounds have generally dressed smartly in life. And, before
dying from
Syphilis in “St James’s Infirmary” left instructions that
they be buried in style with a gold watch and chain, Scruffiness is an
affectation of grammar school and public
school rockers in England.
King Leopold of the Belgians posed as the Benefactor of
Africans but was exposed as a fraud by the South-Dubln-born Roger
Casement . A later King of
the Belgians, apparently unaware of the exposure, gave glowing account of
Leopold’s conduct when supposedly bestowing
“Independence” on the Congo
in 1960, provoking an outbreak of violence that is now in its 60th year.
By appealing for our contributions to Live Aid, Geldof assumed the mantle once
worn by Leopold, and acquired the immunity enjoyed by Jimmy Savile,
RolfHarris and the
(better-dressed) Bill Cosby, Geldof assumed the mantle of Leopold, and a sense
of entitlement that convinced him he was immune from criticism. He hob-knobbed
with
influential people, not least the Prince of Wales, who used his position to
keep Wilfrid Ball, convicted paedophile and Bishop of the Church of England,
out of prison and
comfortably embedded in a Grace and Favour pad on his estate. Geldof’s
foul-mouthed diatribe against the Catholic Church in these circumstances
suggest a lack of irony.
A lack of self-awareness goes with his lack of irony. Edna O’Brien was punched
as a child by her drunken father, and as a young woman abused and her earnings
from
her writing misappropriated by her husband, In her ninetieth year she
presents as healthy, happy and beautiful.
Perhaps she is lucky that as a girl or as a woman she was never kissed by the
likes of Bob Geldof or indeed a Prince of Wales.
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