Effete Wankers
I've never been a fan of Morrissey, but the former 'Smiths' front man appears to have taken leave of his sense altogether if this recent article in The Independent is anything to go by. update
Apparently, Morrissey has previously compared eating meat to paedophilia which just goes to prove that there is such a thing as consuming far too many hallucinogenic drugs in your early life.
Will Self also has a real 'downer' on the Naked Chef, but I imagine he's probably just jealous of Jamie Oliver because his own cooking skills don't extend as far as boiling an egg.
And can it possibly be that this Morrissey is one and the same as the David Morrissey who called the other day for Scotland to vote No in the forthcoming independence referendum?
If so, that's another good reason to vote 'Yes' - because the man's a complete arse.
And apparently Princess Anne is the right person for the job
By ELLA ALEXANDER - The Independent
Morrissey wants Jamie Oliver dead and the unlikely Princess Anne to do the honours.
The reason for his extreme hatred? Because the chef sometimes cooks meat, obviously.
“It would be a great help if Princess Anne gassed Jamie Oliver,” he told Irish magazine Hot Press. “He's killed more animals than McDonald's.”
The singer previously lambasted Oliver for cooking “flesh food” before in January this year.
“If Jamie ‘Orrible is so certain that flesh-food is tasty then why doesn’t he stick one of his children in a microwave?” he asked somewhat strongly.
He isn’t the only one to have denounced the “wholesome word” of the chef. In October 2013, Will Self dedicated an entire column detailing the many reasons for his dislike of the man who revived the term “lovely jubbley”.
“Oliver sticks in my craw and I’d walk a c**ty mile to avoid him and all his works,” wrote Self in a column for New Statesman.
“What this society needs is a culture that values its eternal soul above its lemon sole and a form of social justice that doesn’t depend on the tit-beating self-righteousness of charity – with all the patronising bullshit that goes along with this.
But anyway, back to Morrissey. In a completely unsurprisingly show of morbidness, he also talked about his funeral, saying it will only be upon his death that the media and the public finally give him the respect and appreciation he so desperately needs.
"They'll all turn up finally ready with praise once I'm out of earshot,” he said. “Who cared...about John Lennon in the years leading up to his death? No one. I'm not saying I'm as known as John Lennon because obviously I'm not."
The ever-cheery singer launched his tenth solo album, World Peace Is None of Your Business, last month.
Morrissey wants Jamie Oliver dead and the unlikely Princess Anne to do the honours.
The reason for his extreme hatred? Because the chef sometimes cooks meat, obviously.
“It would be a great help if Princess Anne gassed Jamie Oliver,” he told Irish magazine Hot Press. “He's killed more animals than McDonald's.”
The singer previously lambasted Oliver for cooking “flesh food” before in January this year.
“If Jamie ‘Orrible is so certain that flesh-food is tasty then why doesn’t he stick one of his children in a microwave?” he asked somewhat strongly.
He isn’t the only one to have denounced the “wholesome word” of the chef. In October 2013, Will Self dedicated an entire column detailing the many reasons for his dislike of the man who revived the term “lovely jubbley”.
“Oliver sticks in my craw and I’d walk a c**ty mile to avoid him and all his works,” wrote Self in a column for New Statesman.
“What this society needs is a culture that values its eternal soul above its lemon sole and a form of social justice that doesn’t depend on the tit-beating self-righteousness of charity – with all the patronising bullshit that goes along with this.
But anyway, back to Morrissey. In a completely unsurprisingly show of morbidness, he also talked about his funeral, saying it will only be upon his death that the media and the public finally give him the respect and appreciation he so desperately needs.
"They'll all turn up finally ready with praise once I'm out of earshot,” he said. “Who cared...about John Lennon in the years leading up to his death? No one. I'm not saying I'm as known as John Lennon because obviously I'm not."
The ever-cheery singer launched his tenth solo album, World Peace Is None of Your Business, last month.
Celebrity Politics (9 August 2014)
I don't know who half the folk are who signed the 'celebrity' letter calling on Scots to vote No in the independence referendum and even though I'm voting 'Yes' I think it's good that so many people are taking an interest in a big political question because all too often politics is surround by cynicism and apathy.
As far as I can see, George Galloway is the only politician arrogant enough to consider himself a 'celeb', but as they say if the old pussycat was made of chocolate he'd eat himself.
The full list of celebrities who signed the letter:
David Aaronovitch/ Jenny Agutter/ Sir Ben Ainslie/ Kriss Akabusi/ Roger Allam/ Kirstie Allsop/ Alexander Armstrong/ Sir David Attenborough/ Steve Backley/ Baroness Joan Bakewell/ Frances Barber/Andy Barrow/ John Barrowman/ Mike Batt/ Glen Baxter/ Stanley Baxter/ Martin Bayfield/ Mary Beard/ Sarah Beeny/Antony Beevor/Angellica Bell/ Dickie Bird/ Cilla Black/ Graeme Black/ Roger Black/ Malorie Blackman/ Ranjit Bolt/ Helena Bonham-Carter/ Alain de Botton/ William Boyd/ Tracey Brabin/ Lord Melvyn Bragg/ Jo Brand/ Gyles Brandreth/ Rob Brydon/ Louisa Buck/ Simon Callow/ Will Carling/ Paul Cartledge/ Guy Chambers/ Nick Cohen/ Michelle Collins/ Colonel Tim Collins/ Olivia Colman/ Charlie Condou/ Susannah Constantine/ Steve Coogan/ Dominic Cooper/ Ronnie Corbett/ Simon Cowell/ Jason Cowley/ Sara Cox/ Amanda Craig/ Steve Cram/ Richard Curtis/ Tom Daley/ William Dalrymple/ Richard Dawkins/ Dame Judi Dench/ Jeremy Deller/ Lord Michael Dobbs/ Jimmy Doherty/ Michael Douglas/Simon Easterby/ Gareth Edwards/ Jonathan Edwards/ Tracey Emin/ Sebastian Faulks/ Bryan Ferry/ Ranulph Fiennes/ Ben Fogle/ Amanda Foreman/ Sir Bruce Forsyth/ Neil Fox/ Emma Freud/ Bernard Gallacher/ Kirsty Gallacher/ George Galloway/ Sir John Eliot Gardiner/ Bamber Gascoigne/ David Gilmour/ Harvey Goldsmith/ David Goodhart/ Lachlan Goudie/ David Gower/ AC Grayling/ Will Greenwood/ Tamsin Greig/ Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson/ Lord Charles Guthrie/ Haydn Gwynne/ Maggi Hambling/ Mehdi Hasan/ Sir Max Hastings/ Stephen Hawking/ Peter Hennessy/ James Holland/ Tom Holland/ Tom Hollander/ Gloria Hunniford/ Conn Iggulden/ John Illsley/ Brendan Ingle/ Eddie Izzard/ Betty Jackson/ Sir Mike Jackson/ Howard Jacobson/ Sir Mick Jagger/ Baroness PD James/ Griff Rhys Jones/ Terry Jones/ Christopher Kane/ Sir Anish Kapoor/ Ross Kemp/ Paul Kenny/ Jemima Khan/ India Knight/ Martha Lane Fox/ Baroness Doreen Lawrence/ Tory Lawrence/ Kathy Lette/ Rod Liddle/ Louise Linton/ John Lloyd (journalist)/ John Lloyd (producer)/ Lord Andrew Lloyd Webber/ Gabby Logan/ Kenny Logan/ Sarah Lucas/ Dame Vera Lynn/ James May/ Margaret MacMillan/ Stephen Mangan/ Davina McCall/ Sir Ian McGeechan/ Heather McGregor/ Andy McNab/ John Michie/ David Mitchell/ Lord John Monks/ Lewis Moody/ Michael Morpurgo/ Bill Morris/ David Morrissey/ Philip Mould/ Al Murray/ Sir Paul Nurse/ Andy Nyman/ Peter Oborne/ Sir Michael Parkinson/ Fiona Phillips/ Andy Puddicombe/ Lord David Puttnam/ Anita Rani/ Esther Rantzen/ Sir Steve Redgrave/ Derek Redmond/ Pete Reed/ Lord Martin Rees/ Peter Reid/ Baroness Ruth Rendell/ Sir Cliff Richard/ Hugo Rifkind/ Sir Tony Robinson/ David Rowntree/ Ian Rush/ Greg Rutherford/ CJ Sansom/ June Sarpong/ Simon Schama/ John Sessions/ Sandie Shaw/ Helen Skelton/ Sir Tim Smit/ Dan Snow/ Peter Snow/ Phil Spencer/ David Starkey/Sir Patrick Stewart/ Lord Jock Stirrup/ Neil Stuke/ Sting/ Tallia Storm/ David Suchet/ Alan Sugar/ Graeme Swann/ Stella Tennant/ Daley Thompson/ Alan Titchmarsh/ James Timpson/ Kevin Toolis/ Lynne Truss/ Gavin Turk/ Roger Uttley/ David Walliams/ Zoë Wanamaker/ Robert Webb/ Richard Wentworth/ Sir Alan West/ Dominic West/ Kevin Whateley.
Hatchet Job (18 February 2014)
Here's is the prize winning 'hatchet job' by AA Gill in The Sunday Times on the publication of Morrisey's autobiography as a Penguin Classic.
After reading this funny, if at times rather cruel, assessment of Morrisey's talent as a writer, I certainly wouldn't waste my time and money in buying the book - although to be fair I had no intention of doing so anyway.
Because Morrisey is such an effete wanker as we're fond of saying in this part of west central Scotland.
A A Gill on Autobiography by Morrissey
THE SUNDAY TIMES
AS NOËL Coward might have said, nothing incites intemperate cultural hyperbole like cheap music. Who can forget that the Beatles were once authoritatively lauded as the equal of Mozart, or that Bob Dylan was dubbed a contemporary Keats? The Beatles continued to ignore Covent Garden, and Mozart is rarely heard at Glastonbury; Dylan has been silently culled from the latest edition of the Oxford Companion to Modern Poetry in English.
The publication of Autobiography was the second item on Channel 4’s news on the day it was released. Krishnan Guru-Murthy excitably told the nation that Morrissey really could write — presumably he was reading from an Autocue — and a pop journalist thrilled that he was one of the nation’s greatest cultural icons. He isn’t even one of Manchester’s greatest cultural icons.
This belief in high-low cultural relativity leads to a certain sort of chippy pop star feeling undervalued and then hoitily producing a rock opera or duet with concert harpsichord. Morrissey, though, didn’t have to attain the chip of being needily undervalued; he was born with it. He tells us he ditched “Steve”, his given name, to be known by his portentous unimoniker because — deep reverential breath here — great classical composers only have one name. Mussorgsky, Mozart, Morrissey.
His most pooterishly embarrassing piece of intellectual social climbing is having this autobiography published by Penguin Classics. Not Modern Classics, you understand, where the authors can still do book signings, but the classic Classics, where they’re dead and some of them only have one name. Molière, Machiavelli, Morrissey.
He has made up for being alive by having a photograph of himself pretending to be dead on the cover. The book’s publication was late and trade gossip has it that Steve insisted on each and every bookshop taking a minimum order of two dozen, misunderstanding how modern publishing works. But this is not unsurprising when you read the book. He is constantly moaning about record producers not pressing enough discs to get him to No 1. What is surprising is that any publisher would want to publish the book, not because it is any worse than a lot of other pop memoirs, but because Morrissey is plainly the most ornery, cantankerous, entitled, whingeing, self-martyred human being who ever drew breath. And those are just his good qualities.
The book falls into two distinct passages. The first quarter is devoted to growing up in Manchester (where he was born in 1959) and his schooling. This is laughably overwrought and overwritten, a litany of retrospective hurt and score-settling that reads like a cross between Madonna and Catherine Cookson. No teacher is too insignificant not to be humiliated from the heights of success, no slight is too small not to be rehashed with a final, killing esprit d’escalier. There are pages of lists of television programmes he watched (with plot analysis and character criticism). He could go on Mastermind with the specialist subject of Coronation Street or the works of Peter Wyngarde. There is the food he ate, the groups that appeared on Top of the Pops (with critical comments) and the poetry he liked (with quotes).
All of this takes quite a lot of time due to the amount of curlicues, falderals and bibelots he insists on dragging along as authorial decoration. Instead of adding colour or depth, they simply result in a cacophony of jangling, misheard and misused words. After 100 pages, he’s still at the school gate kicking dead teachers.
But then he sets off on the grown-up musical bit and the writing calms down and becomes more diary-like, bloggish, though with an incontinent use of italics that are a sort of stage direction or aside to the audience. He changes tenses in ways that are supposed to be elegant but just sound camp. There is one passage that stands out — this is the first time he sings. “Against the command of everyone I had ever known, I sing. My mouth meets the microphone and the tremolo quaver eats the room with acceptable pitch and I am removed from the lifelong definition of others and their opinions matter no more. I am singing the truth by myself which will also be the truth of others and give me a whole life. Let the voice speak up for once and for all.” That has the sense of being both revelatory and touching, but it stands out like the reflection of the moon in a sea of Stygian self-justification and stilted self-conscious prose.
The hurt recrimination is sometimes risible but mostly dull, like listening to neighbours bicker through a partition wall, and occasionally startlingly unpleasant, such as the reference to the Moors murderers and the unfound grave of their victim Keith Bennett. “Of course, had Keith been a child of privilege or moneyed background, the search would never have been called off. But he was a poor, gawky boy from Manchester’s forgotten side streets and minus the blond fantasy fetish of a cutesy Madeleine McCann.”
It’s what’s left out of this book rather than what’s put in that is strangest. There is an absence of music, not just in its tone, but the content. There are emetic pools of limpid prose about the music business, the ingratitude of fellow musicians and band members and the lack of talent in other performers, but there is nothing about the making of music itself, the composing of lyrics, the process of singing or the emotion of creation. He seems to assume we will already know his back catalogue and can hum along to his recorded life. This is 450 pages of what makes Morrissey, but nothing of what Morrissey makes.
There is the peevishness at managers, record labels and bouncers, a list of opaque court cases, all of which he manages to lose unfairly, due to the inherited stupidity of judges. Even his relation with the audience is equivocal. Morrissey likes them when they’re worshipping from a distance, but he is not so keen when they’re up close. As an adolescent he approaches Marc Bolan for an autograph. Bolan refuses and Morrissey, still awkwardly humiliated after all these years, has the last word. But then later in the book and life, he does exactly the same thing to his own fans without apparent irony.
There is little about his private life. A boyfriend slips in and out with barely a namecheck. This is him on his early sexual awakening: “Unfathomably I had several cupcake grapples in this year of 1973… Plunge or no plunge, girls remain mysteriously attracted to me.” There is precious little plunging after that.
There are many pop autobiographies that shouldn’t be written. Some to protect the unwary reader, and some to protect the author. In Morrissey’s case, he has managed both. This is a book that cries out like one of his maudlin ditties to be edited. But were an editor to start, there would be no stopping. It is a heavy tome, utterly devoid of insight, warmth, wisdom or likeability. It is a potential firelighter of vanity, self-pity and logorrhoeic dullness. Putting it in Penguin Classics doesn’t diminish Aristotle or Homer or Tolstoy; it just roundly mocks Morrissey, and this is a humiliation constructed by the self-regard of its victim.
This article originally appeared in The Sunday Times on 27/10/13
