Behind Blue Eyes

Summer 2004, Portugal. The tabloids had been full of stories about one of England’s leading players in the run-up to the European Championships. On the streets of Lisbon and on the terraces of the shiny stadiums the English crowds were singing

He scores with his head
He scores with his cock
Wayne Rooney drinks Super Bock

Given the usual standard of football “humour”, I thought this was quite good. The revelations apparently had no effect on England’s performance in the competition: we went out at the quarters as normal.

When I think about the obsession of Britain’s newspaper buyers for stories like this I do not feel a swell of patriotic pride. We have a long way to go before we can consider ourselves a civilised nation. Only when the target customers of the main purveyors of “news” are not in the slightest bit interested in who has been fucking who will we be able to imagine ourselves to be a bit mature. I couldn’t give a toss, quite frankly. John Terry and William Hague can get their kit off or not with whoever they damned well please and I don’t need to know. I don’t want to know. I am in the minority in this country in September 2010. Which is why I don’t pay “journalists” to uncover the uninteresting truth in these matters.

The other month while I was out running I caught sight of a vaguely familiar face walking in the opposite direction. Only as I passed him by did I realise that it was David Laws. He cut a lonely figure in the late evening twilight. He didn’t look as though he was exactly full of joie de vivre. I didn’t have the time or lung capacity to offer words of support and even if I had been able I would not have known what to say, so I did the next best thing in the British lexicon: I turned my head towards him and moved my chin down and forehead forward about a quarter of a millimetre and then back up again.

Journalists might say that they are saving the world from corruption, nepotism and fraud but they know perfectly well that those who buy the papers are only looking for the gossip. I challenge any mainstream “journalist” or blogger to state unequivocally that there is nothing in their private life that they are not at least mildly embarrassed about. Would they want their petty trysts splashed on the front pages of the rags? Would they be happy for others to trawl through a list of their previous partners and then publish photos of the ugliest or least suitable? Would their readers?

There is nothing quite so unpleasantly British as tall poppy syndrome. Only people with nothing of interest in their own life can possibly be so obsessive about what others get up to legally in their own time. Only those with no reputation to be proud of would wilfully spend their time airing someone else’s dirty washing. In Britain no success story can be without scandal or rumour. No wonder so many people are scared to stick their necks out and get involved in anything.

I don’t blame the papers themselves, they are only businesses catering to their customers. I don’t want a privacy law. I don’t want regulation or publishing prudishness. I want my fellow citizens to grow up.