LRN No.11: the subtle art of flipping the bird
Plus: journalism skills via Graham Norton and Lionel Richie
When finally I left a job that I hated, I bought myself a little leaving gift:
I rarely buy myself jewellery, but this hand made sterling silver pendant on a 14k gold chain by Karen Cheung (Kerchung) summed up how I felt far more eloquently than I ever could. I couldn’t resist it.
I’m not brave enough to wear it as much as I want to. My kids know I have a rude necklace I hide from them. I haven’t yet had it on for work Zooms. I’ve never worn it on television, even though there are few cameras powerful enough or TVs big enough for any viewer to actually work out what it is. But when I wear it, I feel good. It’s a tiny little act of defiance. A baby bit of subversion. Some grit.
The necklace is now sold out, which is a shame, because I would like to buy one for my friend, the BBC News anchor Maryam Moshiri, who got caught out flipping the bird when she thought she wasn’t on camera on Wednesday. By Thursday, that bird had flown far and wide, and the Tories were using her middle finger in some horrible Twitter campaign. She has been giffed, clipped and turned into a meme, condemned for “swearing down camera” by GB News, praised by everyone from Piers Morgan to Trevor Phillips. On the day Boris was giving evidence to the Covid inquiry, it was most read news on the Guardian website.
A certain kind of person who signs off every message off with #DefundTheBBC was offended by it, but not really anyone else. In the absence of anything to laugh at in the news at the moment, people seemed to want to see Maryam’s middle finger.
The takeaway is - if you’re going to do it you must keep it small and elegant, always with a smile, but probably not live on TV.
In other news, this finally went up on the wall.
My first proper job was as a researcher on Graham Norton’s Channel 4 chat show. I did the guest briefs, found the websites of the fans Graham sometimes phoned up live on air, and funny things for Graham to discuss with his guests. I got really good at finding weird stuff on the internet. My introduction to sex robots probably began there. And I learned how to find extraordinary people with remarkable stories. That’s where it all started.
When Lionel Richie was booked, I was tasked with finding the cheesiest pictures possible for Graham to embarrass him with. He signed this one for me after the show. We put it up in the downstairs loo at the weekend, 21 years later.
Things that have caught my eyes and ears:
Finally began watching the first series of The Morning Show, which I had so far avoided because anything featuring a 3.30am alarm give me harrowing flashbacks to my time as a Breakfast radio presenter (you never get over those alarms)
Loving Rory Stewart’s audiobook of Politics on the Edge. I’m recording my own, The Price of Life, just before Christmas, and will be channelling his flair for accents
Saw Kenneth Branagh doing King Lear, with subtitles, which I liked (I liked the subtitles, I mean. But Ken wasn’t bad at all)
Enjoyed Marina Abramović at the Royal Academy. Weird, disturbing, intriguing and funny