When two myths collide

Even without my cultural academic hat on, I would roll around the floor laughing at this nonsense (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/stormy-meeting-over-future-of-cregneash-church-1-6511315 ) in which two delusions, almost equidistant from contemporary society, go all handbags at dawn.

So, as Harry Enfield would say, which myth is more important, religion or heritage? Only one way to find out......F-I-I-G-G-H-H-T!!!!

Just to put off-island readers in the picture... this is not really a church, and Cregneash is not really a village; together they are more of a film or theatre set. Until somebody in government paid a visit to the Ulster Folk Museum, then saw the potential of the “living museum” concept in the Thatcher era, Cregneash was just a farm next to a semi-abandoned chapel, known only to Gaelic language pilgrims because Ned Maddrell (a Manx speaker whose chance introduction to an Irish language academic in the 1940's kicked off attempts to save Manx Gaelic) used to live nearby.

And ever since the beginning of the village's commodification for Manx touristic purposes there have always been historically inaccurate “improvements” to the church to make it look more “authentic”. In reality, like any other working church, it is a mish-mash of odd little bodge-ups according to liturgical and national fashions of times when money, labour or materials were available.

In the late 1980's, and again in the late 1990's, my job took me to every tiny chapel and church on the island. Most, however threadbare, at least have an air of being loved and used. Someone regularly running a duster over the pews and brasses, flowers changed, scattered hymn books and bibles indicating that acts of worship actually take place.

Cregneash chapel, by comparison to most, is more like a storeroom for a few religious props. When I last had to know, it held an evensong every couple of weeks but no Sunday morning communion, because the potential congregation refused to attend when tourists were milling round the museum proper (i.e. when it might just have drawn in visiting Christians eager for a rural religious experience).

The only time in recent decades either looked well was when they became a fictitious Irish village for the film Waking Ned. For which the church had subtle changes made so it seemed more like a rural Catholic church (which it has never been) and the village telephone box was painted green to look like a proper Irish one, and was not repainted for years – even at a time when the Baillie Scott design of it was being played up in a row over whether to keep it.

Why was it never repainted? I'm told because a nationalistic element within Manx Heritage at the time preferred it green so that it wouldn't look English, even though telephone boxes on the island throughout history have always been red, like the postboxes.

That tells you all you need to know about the difference between “history” and “heritage”, just as the single figure congregation's rows with “church management” reveal how wide the gap is between Manx Christianity as an inclusive act of faith and an exclusive means of cultural practice.

So many possibilities, so little creative thinking

Someone pointed me towards http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/08/wont-go-back-to-creationist-zoo-bristol , posing the question “How long before we see something like this on the Isle of Man?”

Strictly speaking, of course, we already do. For a start there's every Manx schoolchild’s nightmare “field trip” to the God World theme park (or as Manx Heritage insists on calling it, Rushen Abbey). There impressionable children are chased round a muddy field by the strange folk from Scripture Union, who want them to consider how much fun it would be to be a mediaeval monk. As any kid who watches Horrible Histories knows already, the answer to that is 'Absolutely none'.

Apparently SUMT get paid for this, which I've always found odd. It seems to me if little children are keeping care-in-the-community candidates off the streets it's the kids who should get paid for performing a public service, not SUMT. An over-literal interpretation of the Bible might well be an early sign of psychotic illness, but it doesn't excuse a failure to look for a proper job.

Then there are some of the Tourist Department's odd niche holiday breaks.

A couple of years back, I'm told, they were offering discreet discounts to off-island churches to organise Celtic Christian tours of the island. I suspect they got the idea from a wily cleric who used to strike deals with local travel agents for tours to various Christian pilgrimage sites, both UK and much further abroad. In return for rounding up a bus-load of punters, said cleric and Mrs Cleric got more annual free holidays than he already racked up as fact-finding missions to sunny climes for various government bodies on which he......well, not so much served as turned up and collected benefits.

But as there aren't actually any functioning island churches which date back more than three centuries, and towns have changed so much since even the 19th century that these are in semi-abandoned villages, the Celtic Christian trail is a bit thin. The presumed sites of any worship prior to that are windswept places in the middle of nowhere, so in practice the tours consisted of dragging pious elderly types up moors, through bogs and down slippy cliffs on wet days during Force 9 gales. I'd have thought the insurance alone would have made the price too high for all but the most determined masochist.

And talking of masochism....maybe we could clean up on another Manx fetish - birching. I'm sure the UK S&M scene is over-run by wealthy ex-public schoolies who would pay through the nose (possibly even other orifices) for a spot of corporal punishment. At last, a useful and valid economic role for all those sensibly shod ladies, built like battleships, who marry diminutive Old Barrovian heirs to Manx businesses then spend decades angrily polishing churches to within an inch of their lives.

Or again, for those who remember the chimp's tea parties that used to be a feature at UK zoos, how about putting up public seating behind a splatter-proof screen at the side of the dining area in large Manx hotels which specialise in corporate affairs and political receptions? Surely foreign visitors would pay to watch what happens when one of our more excitable Rotarians or MHKs hears a polysyllable uttered by a fellow free-loader?

So many possibilities, so little creative thinking from the so-called experts.

Is it any wonder Manx tourism is dying?

Do E Mek E Larrff, Nelson?

As someone who during the 1980's (and even the late 1990's) got grief for constantly pointing out that our finance sector was originally built on helping apartheid era South Africa avoid economic sanctions I had to raise an ironic eyebrow at

http://www.isleofman.com/News/details/60035/island-s-south-african-community-pay-tribute-to-mandela .

So would that be the same Terry Toohey who (prior to being offered a job here by a former punter) ran publicity at Sun City, the notorious 'Seff Effrican' whites-only venue no international entertainer worth watching wanted to play?

And in the late 1980's didn't the Manx government, having just created a tourist policy based on subtly attracting ageing Brit racists to 'Look forward to going back' , then come up with a new resident policy intended to entice thick and wealthy 'white flighters' fleeing countries about to experience democracy?

What sniggering noise?

Me?

Lost in (cyber)space

As someone who has to use the thing daily, I take particular interest in the ‘improved’ new Manx government website.

Needless to say, ‘improved’ is not an accurate statement of affairs. Most of the pages professionals need to work with government have been moved around, not linked handily enough together to allow you to carry out necessary tasks smoothly or just taken down completely in some cases. Combined with a few major crashes of the office computer system which wiped out all our useful links it has been an …..interesting (!) experience for a week or two now just trying to get the basics done, get out, and go home.

But one vanishing link is worthy of comment here, and might even be indicative of a governmental rethink (though I doubt it).

There used to be a front page link to a page listing contacts for local religious groups – church postal and website addresses, phone numbers for clergy and that sort of thing. It also, more usefully, gave contacts for the obscurer Christian sects and non-Christian faiths. I say useful, firstly because it proved they exist (contrary to the ‘expert’ advice given to government less than a decade ago by a high-ranking Anglican) and more generally if, say, somebody Muslim or Jewish had been taken ill or died and you needed immediate advice on what to do next.

As far as I can gather, the page first appeared courtesy of the Tourist Department as a way to help tourists find the more obscure churches involved in the annual Flower Festival, and for religiously minded visitors to find a place of Sunday worship. This was in an era when links between Manx church and state were so strong that some worshippers were effectively getting a government salary to practice their faith. In recent years, that generation have retired and it  was also noticeable that the traditional churches took up less and less of the listings and new cults or non-Christian religions were becoming the majority.

I (luckily) knew the old government website so well that I was able to restore the new equivalents of all the vital professional links I use within a day, but after searching extensively I am 100% sure there is no longer any list of religious contacts. As I know for a fact it was the only source used by certain government departments to find a suitable cross-section of religious leaders to advise on ethical issues, it will be worth challenging future government pronouncements that they have consulted faith communities on their policies and met with no objections.

But did the page vanish (a) because churches close to government cannot cope with evidence of their minority status, even when only measured against other faiths (b) completely by accident and rank civil service incompetence or (c) because some government bean-counter worked out that nobody goes to church any more?

Now THAT might be worth knowing. Unlike most of the endless, consistently pointless and fact free ‘media communications’ from government.

Turning a crisis into a cash cow

This (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/isle-of-man-news/jeremy-clarkson-loses-fight-over-langness-1-4490271 ) was sad news.

Stripped of legalese, what it means is that the daughter of the only Manxman ever to win a Victoria Cross cannot prevent rubbernecking ‘nature lovers’ pressing their noses up against her windows under the pretext of observing local wildlife. This is really a bad joke, considering such peeping toms are more of a freak of nature than any known wildlife, and get way more public subsidy than the endangered species that dwell in Sites of Specific Scientific Interest around Langness. Bit of a mystery how these freaks breed in the first place really, given that most seem to be of indeterminable gender or age (though all are startlingly bearded and/or otherwise hirsute) and with drab plumage which biologists would agree should repel rather than attract a mate.

As I have mentioned before, I once worked down the road from the cottages, and two workmates were sons of the last lighthouse-keeper, so I know the inside of the cottages, the footpaths and the Bennies (as we nicknamed them) who troll there quite well. So, I have no doubt that (a) there is no need for walkers to go so close to the window (b) the action of the Bennies is deliberately intrusive (c) many are so trapped in a deluded little bubble that they are mentally incapable of understanding that they have duties or that others have rights (in fact there are valid arguments as to why they should not be allowed in a public place without competent adult supervision) but (d) that any court or legal proceeding staffed by objective, capable professionals would be able to find a way through this which allowed decently minded nature lovers to wander around enjoying themselves without the Clarksons having to sit at home with drawn curtains all day. Sadly, the Manx legal system is the last refuge (outside politics and the civil service) of rich, self-serving thickos who would otherwise be begging in the streets, so common sense or justice were never options open to the Clarksons.

Which leaves them with a dilemma – what to do next?

If I was them I would consider turning the tables on the Bennies.

The thing is, when I first encountered examples of this species in the early 1980’s, it struck me I had not seen any offshoot of Homo Sapiens so odd since nursing patients stricken with GPI (General Paralysis of the Insane) in Devon back in the last decade of the Victorian asylums.

GPI was not, strictly speaking, a medical analysis. It was a polite term for the feeble-minded offspring of Plymouth prostitutes born in the days when that city was still a major military port, syphilis was rife and penicillin not widely available. As the poor creatures were inevitably institutionalized once diagnosed the last of them were dying out even as I worked there. Granted, rumour had it that 10p and a Mars bar still bought patients the favours their mothers once sold for slightly more, but in reality once confined to asylums for life they could not have children, and as anti-biotics and the downfall of Empire ended both the oldest profession and its side-effects outside asylum walls GPI ended too.

When you see horror films featuring old school mental hospitals, the wild-eyed stereotype of the patient in the straitjacket is the nearest you will see to the GPI sufferer. Needless to say, it has not been seen in a real mental hospital in decades. In the early 1990’s, while at college, I did a few night shifts at the last ‘old style’ Yorkshire asylum. Staff close to retirement vaguely recalled the name GPI, but no-one younger had seen a living example, which makes the Benny even more of an Object of Interest.

Who can account for it? More importantly, how much cash would you part with to see one?

So, instead of being trapped at home by slack-jawed yokels, why not turn Benny-watching into a business opportunity? If wealthy Brit tourists will pay a fortune to look at lions and tigers in Africa, they would surely shell out for a weekend break watching equally exotic wildlife closer to home? It would be far cheaper, far funnier and less dangerous. While getting the wrong side of a lion gets you half-eaten, the worst a Benny can do is drool on your sleeve – and if the glass between the two parties is thick enough, it need not even come to that.

Forget the heritage-themed loser scripts on which the Manx tourist industry has bet our future. Forget scraping the barrel to try and find even one viable example of Manx life in past times which would interest more than half a dozen anoraks on limited incomes.

We have a real life freak show to sell the world, the Clarksons may own the theatre and they should clean up, if only to get compensation for the injustice and blinkered attitudes they have to put up with from the Manx government.

Nowhere to run to, Baby

Yes, I know, I haven’t blogged in a while. I could offer some feeble excuse, but the truth is I was off elsewhere having fun and I could not be bothered.
There is work, as in the unpleasant, done for the ungrateful in return for the stuff of which bills are paid, and then there is pleasure, shared free, gratis and for nothing with those I feel like sharing it with, when I feel like sharing it with them.
Look, my blog, done in my free time strictly for fun. As I keep saying, if you need more amusement, write your own.
Samuel Johnson may well have said that “no-one, except a blockhead, writes unless it be for money”, but in the 21st Century there are no blockheads offering to pay someone like me to write. Oddly enough though, I find it hard work reading anything contemporary produced by those who do get paid – sometimes lavishly – which is why recently I’ve taken to reading second hand books instead. Maybe Murdoch and his chums should pay the readers, not the writers, of this turgid twaddle. Until then, we should refuse to pay for it, and find ways to access the websites without racking up advertising.
But I had to giggle at this (see http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=36701) about Sentamu’s Apprentice going to Wales to play with Thomas the Tank Engine.
As keen observers of Manx tourist department bilge may know, he cannot play with it here because the Tourist Department cannot afford the licensing fees to run an event. Though even when the Bish was last photographed driving a Thomas train here one couldn’t help laughing at the irony.
We saw a clergyman, most of whose diocese does not exist, driving a train which serves no practical purpose dressed up for the day as another train from a work of fiction based on another C of E clergyman’s joke about one of the Bish’s predecessors – and particularly the non-existence of most of his diocese. Could you really make any of this up?
But maybe pontificating prelates could get fresh ideas from http://www.isleofman.com/News/article.aspx?article=36395 -a piece on the similarly non-existent Manx space industry.
When I read it for some reason I suddenly remembered Peter Sellers going to the Moon as the Reverend John Smallwood in Heavens Above , a 1963 film written by Malcolm Muggeridge, who went on to lend a hand to Mary Whitehouse’s Festival of Light cult and grumble about Life of Brian.
And I had a bright idea – well, bright by the standards of those pillocks in government who, not learning from our previous experience underwriting a Jurby airship that never flew, are now underwriting either new spaceships which will never get off the drawing board or old ones which will rust in a Jurby barn until the grants run out.
Manx evangelicals have a terrible predilection for ruining the lives of innocent people in poorer countries – or just stealing from them. I can never decide if we, the decent citizenry of the island, should get angry or just die of shame.
Alternatively, why not encourage them to follow John Smallwood into space?
An industry based around talking to the wall, led by freaks with monstrous egos who seem to have little difficulty parting the gullible from their savings? It ought to be a cinch.
Until then, we have to do something about these bozos instead of continuing to curl up in embarrassment every time they further inconvenience someone in another country run by crooks, charlatans and spook-fancying simpletons.
This, then, will be my contribution.
From this day, every time one of these nincompoops tells the Manx press about a ‘development program’ they are running, I will write a fulsome letter of apology on behalf of the Manx nation to the ambassador at the London embassy of the country concerned.
This is no idle threat. When some loathsome homophobes called the Christian Party started getting media coverage I discovered that their founder, a retired producer of gay anthems, ‘got religion’ on the island out of sheer boredom caused by our lack of any nightlife. From that point on, every time I see a mention of the Christian Party in any publication I write expressing regret on behalf of the entire Manx nation for any part we may have played, unwittingly or through sheer apathy, in the creation of this monster.
As I point out, we are one sad and sorry nation, but while this apology probably ought to come from our Chief Minister or the President of Tynwald, both are sad characters and neither appear to be capable of spelling the word ‘Sorry’.

Evidence that Ramsey isn’t quite sane, number 99

The number of people at an outdoor religious ceremony to mark the 101st anniversary of a ferry sinking: 86 (see http://www.manxradio.com/newsread.aspx?id=48954 ).
That includes a grief-mining local politician, lifeboat volunteers whose obligatory attendance required time off from work, directors of the foreign-owned, over-mortgaged ferry company which poses as the national ferry service and some Scousers on a freebie holiday.
The number of people at the switch-on of the town’s Christmas lights (see http://www.manxradio.com/newsread.aspx?id=48956 ): 6.
These were the Chairman of Ramsey Commissioners, his daughter and one other kid, someone from the bank sponsoring the lights, someone from the bank’s nominated charity and the obligatory health & safety officer.
Sometimes people wonder why Ramsey’s retail and tourist sector is in decline.
Could it be because neither the Black Death nor Foot and Mouth hit the town?
Or is it just that Ramsey events are only run for the benefit of the retired, the feckless and semi-professional parasites, and while those whose taxes keep them in comfort are at work (mostly in Douglas as there are no Ramsey jobs, and no government policies for creating any)?

Heritage strategies from La La Land

Ah well, I’m not the only one then. The great Manx public also think Tynwald Day is rubbish, and in particular we think all that churchy twaddle sucks.
Last week’s IOM Newspapers online poll asked: “What do you enjoy best about Tynwald Day”.
Today the results are up on the site. For 74% it was “Having the day off to stay at home”, for 10% “The ceremony on the hill”, for 7% “Looking round the fair's stalls”, 6% “The music and entertainment” and a mere 3% like the church service.
The other local rabble-rousing atheist media whore called Stuart (Peters) even took a pop at it in his weekly Indie column today, ending by suggesting it might be time to: “make Tynwald a truly Manx occasion, celebrating all the good things about the Isle of Man, sidelining the preening politicians in their top hats and chains of office, and bringing it more up to date and much less a reminder of how grateful we should be to our ultimate landlady.”
Now you might imagine that public bodies – especially those ‘marketing’ the gaff – would have sussed the public mood, maybe done a survey or two of their own to ascertain how we like to spend our time and what would get the ‘bucket and spade brigade’ back on boats and planes to spend some loot.
Well….no! At least not if a government press release (see http://www.gov.im/lib/news/mnh/songsofpraiseatr2.xml ) for an event this Sunday is anything to go by.
We are invited to:
“join Manx National Heritage at Rushen Abbey and enjoy the sounds of choral music at the annual Songs of Praise service in the Abbey Gardens.
The service begins at 2.30pm and visitors will be invited to join in with the well-known hymns performed by the Meadowside Choir, with an accompanying dance display provided by Ballasalla Dance Group ‘Academy of Dance’. “
Oh yes, let’s….................not bother getting out of bed.
This is actually quite worrying.
What it tells us is that not only are our politicians way out of touch and stuck in a tiny, fast-dying myopic subculture that still thinks religion is a big deal, but that the ‘professionals’ they employ to advise on what constitutes Manx life and culture are equally clueless, equally trapped in some sepia-tinted time-warp.
Where they live on our money and make our lives ever duller, all the time covering their ears and singing ‘La, la, la’ tunelessly.

Tourism revival? Not a prayer!

The Tourist Department put out a press release to justify their 2010 TV advertising campaign today. You can see it at http://www.gov.im/lib/news/tourism/tvadvertisingcam.xml before it hits the press.
Wow, they must have spent all of half an hour working that out down at the ad agency, and all of five minutes at a departmental meeting approving it.
In the interests of decency and honesty I also feel it only right to warn off-island readers that there’s absolutely nothing natural about the family involved. They’re amongst the religious zealots who last year set up what looks worrying like becoming an annual freak show, as described at Disaster alert . Given half a chance, such zombie worshippers will also turn St. John’s, venue for our national day each July 5th, into the set from Dawn of the Living Dead the rest of the year. Not that it’s much different on July 5th, of course.
Look, I’m trying to be fair. I don’t really care who comes here as long as they bring their wallets.
If the Tourist Department really want to entice folk like the elderly godbothering masochists who stumbled round hills to find ruined Celtic chapels on a foolfest called Praying The Keills that’s up to them. I can think of better, more productive, niche markets, but you have to start somewhere, and we have enough local evangelical halfwits already to take up any empty coach places.
On the other hand, considering the increasing time our emergency services spend pulling crazed biblebashers out of the sea or off cliffs, maybe we need a new tax which, in the interests of fairness, should only be paid by superstitious visitors. Alternatively, local churches could put up a bond against the cost of the rescue helicopters if they're so keen to 'share their faith', instead of expecting taxpayers, Civil Defence and RNLI volunteers to keep their foolish friends alive.
I also loved
“The campaign aims to reflect the Island’s lifestyle and position the Isle of Man as a place where visitors are free to take part in a variety of outdoor activities. “
In plain English, you’d better be a hiker, because there’s no shops, no night life and very little public transport, so you may spend most of your time here standing around in a Force 9 gale wondering why you came.
Or there’s also
“It is again in line with the Island’s branding project as a destination where people have the ‘freedom to flourish’.”
Freedom to continue living in the Bronze Age at everyone else’s expense, more like!

Manx myths - buy one, get one free

Barry over at the Freethinker blog has a hilarious story today (see http://freethinker.co.uk/2009/11/26/did-jesus-ever-visit-britain/).
A Dr Gordon Strachan, who lectures on the history of architecture at Edinburgh University, is reviving the old ‘Jesus came to Britain’ legends. In fact he’s not only recently written a book about it (which explains the publicity), but the book’s inspired a recently released film entitled And Did Those Feet? (which explains the other publicity). Oh, and when Dr Strachan isn’t lecturing he’s ministering for the Church of Scotland (which explains a lot of things).
I dread to think what’s going to happen if Manx Heritage or the Tourist Department get inspired by this twaddle.
You see, in the late 1980’s there was brief talk of jumping on the ‘research’ of another barmy academic with an even loopier theory. In that case the academic was American, and the ‘theory’ centred on the idea that the Isle of Man was the Avalon of Arthurian myth, and that King Arthur might be buried here.
Thankfully I’ve long forgotten the small detail, but what I do know is that the Tourist Board (as it then was) bought it lock, stock and barrel and even ran an exercise on how the legend could be flogged, with the help of the academic, to the more gullible of her countrymen.
Two things put a stop to that nonsense. One was agitated pleading to politicians behind closed doors by an honourable local historian to the effect that, rather than bring tourists rushing here, it would send a signal to the world that the Manx were either totally dishonest or certifiably mad. The other was the Lockerbie bombing, following which Americans and their money stayed home for a while.
The thing that worries me is that honourable Manx academics may now be extinct and neither honour nor common sense have been seen in the Tourist Department within living memory. In fact, judging from the spread of Freedom to Fester fever, telling fairy tales while going about with our eyes closed and singing ‘La La La’ to drown out the last voices of dissent is the new traditional (and government underwritten) Manx way of life.
We should not be surprised at this. As the Anglo-Indian academics Bhikhu Parekh and Homi K. Bhabha pointed out at the time of the Satanic Verses saga, the liberal mistake is to take fundamentalists at their word and believe fundamentalism is steeped in tradition, when in fact it is a current and pragmatic reaction to the modern world by folk no longer fit to run it. To be blunt, bullshit merchants who know there is a sucker born every minute, and that all such BS merchants need do for a regular income is embroider some myth, however ludicrous, the suckers would like to believe.

Beware rabbits in waistcoats

After reading some of the PR twaddle produced by Manx government departments and drifting into the local press I have to declare a state of national emergency. This island is now being run solely for the benefit of whimsical geriatrics who collect pictures of rabbits in waistcoats.
Take this (http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Tea-room-plan-for-Fairy.5263876.jp ) for example. Sentamu’s Apprentice has chuntered about fairies, the Tourist Department chunters about fairies, now some finance sector dropout wants to run a café where you can talk to them.
Or maybe the café is for the fairies too. Whatever! The owner is away with them anyway.
Then you have the godbothers getting Tourist Department help to try and get in touch with their Celtic roots (see http://www.gov.im/fsc/ViewNews.gov?page=lib/news/mnh/candlelitpilgrim.xml&menuid=11570).
For the benefit of the non-Manx, the keills were the chapels built by the first Christian monks in remote hilly areas. For the best part of a thousand years they were happily abandoned except by a few sheep or the odd hippie having a sly toke.
I blame Clannad myself. Until they did that spacey Robin Hood theme music Celtic traditionalists were content with folkdancing and incest: now new age mystic malarkey is an international industry. With all that money for old…….knotwork(!) on offer no wonder the churches are in there with a collecting bucket.
Oh well, if a bunch of superstitious crinklies want to wander the hills at night in rain and fog getting inspired but soaked I suppose that is their business. Maybe there’s a niche tourist market for ‘extreme praying’. Let’s just hope our emergency services won’t be too tied up rescuing bonkers biblebashers when saner folk need an ambulance.

Clunes meets our Loons

Looks like the island is gearing itself up for another A.A. Gill moment.
The non-Manx won’t know what an ‘A.A. Gill moment’ is, so try http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/eating_out/a_a_gill/article788124.ece and
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/eating_out/a_a_gill/article2162693.ece.
Yes, it’s painfully accurate, and no, we shouldn’t snigger, though I almost broke a rib laughing when the first one was published, and couldn’t believe it when he came back for a second shot. Absolutely nothing to do with local ramblers and their scabby dogs who caused sheep to bolt over a cliff on land owned by Gill’s mate Jeremy Clarkson either, I’m sure.
The latest ‘Gill moment’ is actually a ‘Clunes moment’. That’s Martin Clunes, once a badly behaved man, now the new Reggie Perrin.
Clunes is fronting a TV series about the smaller British isles which next features the Isle of Man, and in this week’s Radio Times he commented of the island: 'I just got a bit sick of everybody coming up to me saying, "It's great, you don't pay any tax and none of my money goes in Gordon Brown's pocket. And I thought, "Well none of mine does either, you t**t". It's just unattractive.'
Seems fair enough, as he’s not having a go at ordinary locals. Sounds to me like he bumped into some of the white flighters who were enticed over here by a cretinous new resident policy in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.
Can’t blame him for taking a dislike to such folk. Very few people here like them either, so it is a shame if Clunes throught they were typical Manxies.
Actually, when you see the decidely twee agenda the Tourist Department dreamt up to show off the island (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Martin-Clunes-to-explore-Isle.5224785.jp) my only surprise is the poor man didn’t leave us in a straitjacket. Manx cats, fairies, tin baths, our Glorious Leader in his shop…..even Guantanamo would be a summer holiday by comparison with that lot!
The local paper picked up on the story (see http://www.iomtoday.co.im/news/Wait-to-see-what-Martin.5241658.jp) and now we wait with baited breath to see if his on-air views match his press comments.
… or maybe the whole thing is just a cunning plan by the TV production company to get people watching when there’s more interesting fare on the other channels.