Thumbs For Hire

Lidl, you sexy, sexy bastards.

Nell Frizzell

Watching boring, misogynistic comedy whilst surrounded by a tent full of families and Radio 4 fans is a dispiriting experience. Watching boring, misogynistic comedy just hours after a seventeen year old girl has been raped a few hundred metres away is much, much worse.

For those who aren’t aware of the rape stories that emerged at this year’s Latitude festival, you can read about them HERE. A 17-year-old girl from Suffolk came forward to report she had been raped in a tent on the campsite on Friday night, while a 19-year-old woman told police that on Thursday night she was grabbed, held down and raped by a group of three or four men.

Now, Latitude is probably my favourite festival. I like its mix of book readings, comedy, film screenings, lectures, cabaret and music. But the news that two women may have been raped at this year’s festival has left me feeling depressed, disappointed and strangely guilty.

Guilty, partially, for feeling smug, safe and amused when something so monstrous was happening so close. Depressed and disappointed because these accusations seem to support the argument, made by stand up comedians like Rufus Hound and Richard Herring, that men are aggressive, sex-hungry neanderthals. ‘Men just want to spray around as much semen as possible,’ said Hound at his Sunday afternoon gig. At the time I found his set boring, unfunny and horribly outmoded. With hindsight, the joke seems painfully inappropriate. (Continued)

Thank you to my lovely friend Bev over at Super Excited for this.

There’s a band. Let’s call them, oh I don’t know, Mumbo and Sons. They are all nice, middle class boys born with, if not silver spoons, then certainly more than a hint of Earl Grey tea in their mouths. They have nice well-spoken accents and good skin. They are all Londoners.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “I bet these guys came over here from the home country to help the villainous English to build their railways and work in their docks. They probably sleep hanging on ropes slung across their building sites, they drink stout, chew on crusts of soda bread, wash only once a month in a tin bath and sing lilting, heartbreaking songs about missing their mammies. They probably smoke and drink and ‘have the craic’ in some little crowded pub in Kilburn, Liverpool or York Road.”

(Continued)

There are many things that, though obvious, withstand repetition.

Dogs in fancy dress costumes are amusing, for instance. Harem pants make you look like an incontinent bigamist, for example. Converse are shoes for children, as it were.

Just such a statement is the assertion that people make more effort in the North than in the South. Oh, okay, not necessarily the effort to pay eye-watering rents and retain an industry, I grant you. But in terms of making an effort in how you look, the South of England can barely touch the coattails of its North Country counterpart.

(Continued)