In The Guardian, Chris Floyd presents photographs of his favourite Twitter users. Forget Stephen Fry and Ashton Kutcher, though: one or two of them, refreshingly, are those mythical beasts, “ordinary people”, not actors or musicians or even, um, Guardian writers (three of whom are on Floyd’s list). Although now that the temp and the civil servant have achieved this random jolt of mainstream media attention, they will of course cease to be ordinary people, and at same time, cease to inhabit a nice little secret corner of social media; perversely, when they stop being ordinary, they also stop being special. Everybody knows them, and they are ruined. “Ignorance is like a delicate, exotic fruit,” said Lady Bracknell, accidentally inventing quantum theory while she was at it. “Touch it and the bloom is gone.”
"When you're young -18 or 19 - you have the energy and drive. That's the time to work as hard as you can," she said. "Now I'm a woman and because I gave it my all, I can focus on my marriage. I can decide I want to have kids. I can be the mother I want to be and dedicate myself to my children."
The new Mrs Hince posed in the sunshine outside the church with her team of 15 bridesmaids with her new husband - who was the essence of rock 'n' roll, wearing a pair of sunglesses with his YSL tuxedo. As for the bride, she wore a bias-cut silk satin, gold sequin-smattered dress by John Galliano.
As time passes, which is what it usually does, my instinct grows stronger and surer that I will never be offered a royally sanctioned honour. I trust that, in the event of a catastrophic administrative error (“...for services to writing about fey Swedish indie bands and vaguely competent Japanese restaurants”) I would have the presence of mind to refuse such a bauble; although, every New Year’s Eve I find news of one or two people whose acknowledgment by the shadowy decision processes seems entirely right and just, and I can’t begrudge them their fleeting date with Her Maj, or whoever happens to be doing the pinning. This time round it’s the thoroughly splendid Burt Kwouk, OBE. Bloody well done, sir.
What I can’t be doing with is the sort of response that Dame Harriet Walter gave: “I have reservations about some parts of the honours system. I fear it’s not very fair and I think there are lots of people not recognised who should be,” she said, before claiming that she accepted her promotion because it would allow her to speak up in defence of theatre. It’s beyond me why she feels a daft title gives her this right more than, say, the fact that she once simulated acrobatic rudeness with Bill Nighy. If you turn an honour down, it’s up to you whether you make the fact public; if you accept the gong, you implicitly accept the whole idiocy that goes with it. The only exception is people who accept peerages, who really do have the opportunity to boot down the edifices from the inside. Not that many take it, mind you.
Anyway, I’ve just received a text message from some poncy sunglasses shop, advising me of an “Aggressive new year sale”, so I’m rather concerned that 2011 will arrive wielding a sock full of snooker balls. I trust that all my lovely readers have a less traumatic transition to the new twelvemonth, even those of you who haven’t been awarded anything. And to play you out, here’s something from someone else who’ll be ambling to the palace in the next few months:
You see, I’m in two minds about Michael Jackson. Of course, he was a genius, despite everything. So what I really wanted to do was to find a copy of the NME cover that ran after Elvis died, when they used a pic of him in his ducktailed, knock-kneed, 1956 glory with the legend: “REMEMBER HIM THIS WAY”, acknowledging that he was so much more than the bloated Vegas abomination.
But I couldn’t find the cover, and anyway it would probably have just looked stupid and insulting if I stuck a shot of ‘I Want You Back’ or ‘Wanna Be Starting Something’-era Jacko in the middle of it. And of course there was all the other stuff as well. If we’re really going to look back on his life, we need to include this as well:
