BLOG 102: BIG MOUTH strikes again...

"Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare." GEORGE BERNARD SHAW Irish Dramatist

Ahhhh... the lyrical tongue of Ireland's greatest... Mr Shaw. He was so accurate when he noted that very few people think for themselves more than say two or three times a year which was the gift that allowed him to make an international reputation for himself by thinking once or twice a week It is a cause of much amazement to me how most people are not able to process a thought and arrive at a conclusion and how it is that they depend on the likes of the loquacious to give them an opinion.

I am amazed, but eternally grateful... In much the same way I suspect that a plumber is grateful for the fact most of us do not know how to tighten a washer in a tap. It feels bogus on some deeper level to relieve people of money for something that comes so easily... but on the other hand people will pay to have a bone-fide need sated.

As a writer I live in the most illiterate age… never have more people who are able to read not pick up a book… however never before has a writer had so many mediums in which to be read.

Unlike poor Will Shakespeare or even dare I say it Mr Shaw… I have endless demand for my scribbles from sources unavailable to the great scribes. (UNFAIR I know). But somehow despite no one reading books, there is a desperate need for someone to write… Newspapers need people to write to tell us what to think, magazines need people to write to tell us what to aspire to, social networking sites need people to write to tell us what to care about, radio need lyrists to write the words of the ditties we parrot all day and TV needs people to write scripts that show us how stupid everyone else is.

It is slightly worrying that writers – once a maligned breed to weirdos who think too much - now have their every word given a focus unique attention. Of course a multi media stage means that celebrity for a writer is now a rarity, Shakespeare and Shaw would have to work much harder today to gain the attention they received in their lifetimes. But none the less, the multi media stage has given a writer more power than Mr Shakespeare and Mr Shaw could have ever imagined.

It seems to concern few that such power is in the hands of those blessed few who are able to play with words to capsule an emotion you probably would have never felt if we have not told you to.

In my life time I’ve been told that brown is the new black, that I should ‘house-doctor’ my home before I sell it, that there are 7 signs of ageing, that Abba were good, that Bingo is young and sexy as are Vampires, that Janice Dickenson was the original supermodel, Katie Price is a brilliant Business Woman finding markets where no one thought there could be, that love is all you need, that add the word NEW in front of anything and the past doesn’t exist, that gardening is an art form, that if something is worthy someone will hold a concert for it, that greed is good and above all…I’m worth it.

Of course none of the above is true…

Black is Black. Houses sold before they started painting everything magnolia. There are zillions signs of ageing. Abba were never popular before their renaissance. Bingo is for retired women. Vampires are middle aged mid European aristocrats. Janice Dickenson is her own creation. Katie Price has made over 30 million by aiming for the lowest common denominator – neither the first nor the last to think of that. Love unaccompanied by status and compatibility will not cover anyone’s needs for long. Worth is identified by meaningfulness and merit and not by the attentions of Bono, Geldof, Clooney or Wyclef Jean. And I’m sorry L’Oreal… it’s just a beauty product.

But someone wrote that it was.

• So you bought more brown and figured it’d be useful.
• You made your house neutral so attract more buyers.
• You don’t worry about mortality… just the 7 separate signs that you ain’t 21 no more!
• You have false memories of Abba being mobbed in the streets.
• You think of Bingo as completely revamped (even though you know no one under 50 who will admit to have ever been)
• You run out and buy the whole Twilight series and notify Amazon you need the Sookie Stackhouse series and the Riley Jenson Guardian series STAT!
• You have false memories of Janice Dickenson on billboards everywhere.
• You feel that Katie Price ‘s 23 books, perfume, electrical products and glamour posters have left you cold BUT she has filled your need for equestrian clothes, mainly in pink, underwear, mainly in pink, and are currently popping into Matalan to get some bedlinen from her range, which are, unsurprisingly, mostly pink.
• You start to believe that you could lose it all… but not the lurve.
• You believe charity does beginning at home… when you see the telethon
• Your bathroom is a testament to the worlds biggest beauty company Headquartered in the Paris suburb of Clichy, Hauts-de-Seine, France.

And all because someone wrote that somewhere the words the told you that you should.

But have no fear… we’re all not just a load of puppets being manipulated.

The words keep coming, this is true. The words keep telling us what to do… and you know why?

It has to be repeated because despite the barrage of words from the internet, the television, the radio, the newspapers, the magazines and a zillion other sources…we have the pub to give us a place to erase it all.

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