Phillip Schofield meets Gordon Brown
This post isn’t about Phillip Scofield. Well, it kind of is, and it isn’t, but what it definitely isn’t about is the scandal that has engulfed him, causing him to lose his jobs, his reputation and well everything. Because I know as much about all of that circus as I do about the weather on Mars.
Gordon Brown, remember him? The dour faced misrerabilist who was inexplicably our Prime Minister a while back? Scottish chap, permanently looking like he’d just been given some bad news, and when he tried to smile it was as he’d read how to do it in a book but had never quite got the hang of it? Coming back now?Couldn’t answer in an interview what his favourite biscuit was? Now you do!
The reason I mention him is that he immediately came to mind when I read that Scofield had said in, an interview on the BBC with Amol Rajan,
“I fully appreciate there is a massive age gap, but that happens in life. I think there is an enormous amount of homophobia that it happens to be male, but if it was male-female then it wouldn’t be such a scandal,”
See what he did there? Possibly, just possibly, it was a combination of him lying about the fact that the affair had even happened, the bosses at ITV being worried by all the negative press that this created and their urgent need to be seen to take immediate action, that they were more of the causative factors here. But Phillip thought, instead of seeing a downfall largely created by himself and the consequences that ensued from them, saw homophobia. A nicely self-serving swerve, where he sought to reframe the narrative and muddy the waters in which he’s drowning by giving the media yet another angle to discuss. Exactly how homophobic is is the British media? Classic swerve, hinting at the shadowy motives that only he imagines can explain his accusers actions.
Anyway, Gordon Brown. On the election campaign trail in 2011. Meets Gillian Duffy. Now you remember. When he is safely back his the car, forgets he is still miked up and calls her a bigot. So that became the story, not her concerns about unchecked immigration from Eastern Europe, not the fact that the previous Labour government had been politically naive enough to imagine that it wouldn’t be a problem. Instead, call her a bigot and when that leaks, make the story all about that and not her concerns that lead to the story in the first place. And the media will be so thankful as well, it being a lot easier to pontificate about how a politician should behave, is someone a bigot or not, rather than to seriously discuss the problems of unchecked immigration.
Granted, it might have been an accidental swerve, but it served the same purpose. And although history is no doubt littered with other swerves, I always think this one the best, because not only did it immediately dominate the campaign for days and act as distraction from more weightier issues, it was the media themselves that leaked the story and made more of it than it deserved.
Nowadays, it seems that live in an increasingly reframing of the narrative – swervey – times. Been accused of something and are as guilty as fuck? Why not swerve the whole thing, make out that your the real victim, that the whole thing is fuelled by an ‘ism, a ‘phobia, a toxic this, a misogynistic that or something, anything, that’ll give the Twatterati something else to froth over instead? Indeed, we live in times when we almost expect a swerve to happen. I mean, can you recall the last time when someone embroiled in a very public scandal didn’t try and swerve out of it, but instead said ‘Yeah, fair do’s, I’m bang to rights and I’ve only myself to blame.’
Swerving doesn’t work all of time, but throw enough mud, and who knows? Maybe even Gordon the Gopher will believe it?