The Unrelenting Tide of Idiocy.

 Lord Sugar doesn't get Alan Partridge: "What the hell was that? Not funny. Lead Balloon. Am I missing the point?" 

I mean, it's hard to say, Lord Sugar. What you find funny is a personal thing. I think Cary Grant saying the word "Nutmeg" in an aggressively polite manner in The Awful Truth is very funny, but I suspect the subtlety would be lost on the Lord, who can't seem to come to terms with parody or satire, comic forms that have been around for quite a while now. Perhaps someone falling down a manhole is more his speed. Maybe Lord Sugar has never seen The One Show, or Top Gear, or Good Morning, or any light entertainment digest shows. Perhaps the only television he ever watches is The Apprentice. Presumably he thinks Prokofiev's "The Dance of the Knights", is a theme tune specifically written for his program, unless he remembers it from an advert for Levis in the eighties, and thinks its the theme tune for the former Soviet Union. 

What's odd though, as his Tweet went viral, was not how many people agreed with him, - there are always going to be snide lackeys enjoying the freedom of saying the unsayable because a famous person has already said it  and they didn't have to think of it themselves - but how many people seemed to believe that Alan Partridge is either something like Mrs Brown - a one note comic character - or that he was a real man attempting to present a TV magazine show.

Alan Partridge first appeared, as a comic character, on Radio 4 in 1991. He arrived on TV in 1994. He's been in TV, films, books and podcasts, on and off for thirty years. Steve Coogan started out as an impressionist on Spitting Image. He's had a Hollywood film career, won a Bafta for "Philomena", played himself in four series of The Trip, and was never out of the tabloids for his drugs 'n' cars 'n' girls lifestyle. He's properly famous, and when he plays Alan Partridge all he does is part his hair differently. How do people think Partridge is real? Even Superman's glasses trick as Clarke Kent was a more effective mask. If you do think Alan Partridge is real, surely that means you think This Time is an actual show that inexplicably started with the host trimming his nasal hair, and features regular interjections by an old woman coming on and telling him he's doing fine. What do they imagine is happening? 

Alan Sugar has been working on The Apprentice for the BBC for 16 years, an exercise in ritual humiliation that rewards the truly egregious, and gave the world Katie Hopkins - thanks again, Alan - but he apparently pays no attention to anything that's going on around him. I wonder what would make Alan Sugar laugh, what comic magic could get him to air his cruel little teeth? An overweight child falling over? Poor people being turned away from Langan's Brasserie? A cloud that looks like a cock? What would get him to uncouple his busted zip of a mouth and bark out an angry laugh? Schadenfreude, undoubtedly - something bad happening to someone who isn't Alan Sugar. Which, ironically, is Steve Coogan's stock in trade as Alan Partridge. Give it another week, Lord Sugar. See how you feel.  

I followed one of the people who agreed with Sugar on Twitter, and the first two posts were "China has weaponised Covid - its a conspiracy" and "That Dave Grohl/Mick Jagger song is brilliant". Posterity will show I was on the right side of history. 

The NME, a paper I used to often read, has decided to interview Anais Gallagher about her father, Noel, and his refusal to wear a mask while shopping. "If I get Covid then that's on me," says Noel, and you can only assume he's willfully misunderstanding the situation, as he's not a total idiot like his brother. 

Anais said: "I get where he's coming from but I'm not as full-on as him. I'm generally less revolutionary than my dad."

Wow. Imagine looking in the mirror and thinking: "I'm less revolutionary than Noel Gallagher". The NME went on to report (sarcastically?) that the Che Guevara of Dad Rock, Noel Gallagher, will be contributing to "a John Lennon tribute album" later in the year. I'm SHOOK, as the people of Anais' generation would say. She added "I think my generation is quite lenient and that's not necessarily a good thing. We do what we're told a bit too much, we come from the era of Fake News and Facebook telling us what the news is." 

Anais, your dad isn't revolting - at least in the manner you think he is. He's selfish and short-sighted. He's as entitled as any other middle-aged millionaire who's had everything his own way for thirty years. He doesn't want to wear a mask because he's special - he wrote fucking Wonderwall - and no busy-body do-gooder is going to tell him what to do. He's unlikely to die, either, as he breathes rarefied air, and doesn't have to mix with the hoi polloi: its been a long time since Noel Gallagher was on a bus or in a doctor's waiting room. It's been a long time since somebody pressed against him he didn't want pressing against him. Noel's not planning civil disobedience to make his point about the liberty of the individual, any more than a puce-faced toddler screaming and star-shaped on a supermarket floor is. He just can't be bothered to wear one, because why should he? He knows Paul Weller! He's important. He's better than you. When he goes to the restaurant the staff better be wearing masks, and gloves.  His safety must be assured. And don't meet his gaze either. Who do you think you are? 

Glenn Danzig, of whom I'm vaguely aware, has expressed dismay that there will now no longer be any new "punk bands" because of "cancel culture". Glenn doesn't seem to realise that music is not the world-changing social force it once was. He probably collects vinyl and names his guitars. He might remember the first single he ever bought, and he's definitely memorised a list of cool rock antecedents who influenced his work, that make Glenn look good. (He wrote songs for Roy Orbison and Johnny Cash, so...yeah, that's pretty cool) But music is like a tap these days, Glenn: you just turn it on and its there. I'm not happy about it - I'm old, like you. I still think in terms of albums and "A" sides and "B" sides. We're fucking quaint. But that's how it is. The ritual has gone. We're like old junkies remembering of the romance of the burnt spoon, the belt round the bicep...halcyon days. 

Glenn was born in 1955, a couple of years before rock and roll. He grew up with it. It's all he's ever known. But he does predate it - rock and roll wasn't always there. It was a cultural blip in the late twentieth century. He grew up with the Beatles, with the idea of a viable counterculture, where music was a huge part of your identity. Music was tribal: the sounds you listened to told the world who you were. 

That's not where we are now. Music is a mood enhancer, a bit of colour on an advert or high speed driving montage. And the thing that's worrying you about "cancel culture" isn't that there will be no more punk bands - there will be, fucking millions of them, the planets teeming with punk bands - its that you can't say and do anything you want any more. That time you said Hugh Jackman's performance as Wolverine was "gay", will no longer go unchallenged. I thought punk was about ideas, about stripping away the fat, about new conceptual approaches, about not conforming to received ideas about things are done. Glenn seems to think its about wearing cap sleeved t shirts and cranking up the amps. 

I'm not a fan of the worst excesses of cancel culture. I don't like bullies and I don't believe in screaming at something in an  attempt to make it just go away. Equally it doesn't seem to work - it can destroy people's lives, but a lot of the time the major irritants damaging society monetise their cancellation. You never stop hearing about them being cancelled, on multiple platforms, dollar signs dancing in their eyes. But that's not really what Glenn's talking about - like Noel, he's thinking of himself. When he thinks of new punk bands, he's thinking about all the stuff he did that he would never get away with now because society has changed and he doesn't like change. 

There are fucking millions of punk bands, Glenn. Too many. Just as there are thousands of indie bands, and funk bands, and dream pop* bands, and ska bands, and reggae bands, and metal bands, and electronic bands. There's still music, Glenn, people still like music. They just don't like paying for it any more. You wouldn't last five minutes out there, Glenn. It's TOUGH. Stick to your dirty comics and your conspiracy theories, they'll keep you warm and cosy. 

*this is what shoe gaze is called now. Like Glenn, I don't like change either.