Where I stand
In exactly seven days I will be 57 years old. It’s not an age that one ever considers reaching, not a great or monumental point in one’s life, hardly worthy of consideration – or so I thought. Then I saw Janet Street Porter on the telly.
My word, how that woman can excite me – and no, of course not in that way, not in that way at all, and black marks for anyone who even thought that; go stand in the corner facing the wall with your hands on your head. Shame on you!
It was on a recent episode of Room 101, a great format that went from radio to TV and then, from a great show with humour, depth and insight, to yet another boring panel game.
Anyway, there she was, the grand dame, the doyenne of yoof culture now re-invented as the doyenne of pensioners. I know, Street Porter the pensioner, who’d have thought it? Well, quite clearly she did because she doesn’t half go on about it, on and on and on and on…
So much so that her other regular rant about being working class almost, and I mean almost, takes second place. She had a fairly good dig at poor old Ben Fogle about being posh as if it were his own fault, popping innocently from his mother’s womb and ticking a box saying, yes please to the notion of being a posh person.
If this sounds like I’m not a JSP fan then be assured I am. In so many ways she has changed the way the media works. Her infiltration of the system helped blow apart the old public school hold on broadcasting. Her accent made way for regional presenters of all kinds, so much so that these days I turn on the radio on a regular basis just to get a shot of old school announcing, especially from Neil Nunes, a British Jamaican continuity announcer on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service. Now there is an accent worth savouring and, whilst clearly having a ‘difference’, he speaks the Queen’s English so beautifully.
Anyway back to JSP who had put forward the notion of putting people who hold doors open for ladies into Room 101. Come on! It’s an age thing Janet, and it’s about being nice too. I hold doors open all the time, for ladies and for men, for people with prams and in wheelchairs and those with huge amounts of shopping.
I stand up on the bus too, if I need to, and for all the same reasons.
Now if that makes me sexist or patronising, I can live with it, but I do think it’s time we started worrying about the bigger issues and stopped pandering to out of date concepts relating to men’s attitudes to women at least as a blanket complaint. Not all men are sexist.
Perhaps there would be more balance if Janet were complaining about women who don’t open doors for men, now that would be a question of equality. Our lives are riddled with nonsense relating to sexism, political correctness and the ubiquitous health and safety. Perhaps if we concentrated more on the nice things that we could and should do the world would be a better place.
If I were given the dubious chance to put things into Room 101 one I would immediately dispense with the new, dumbed down format, not Frank Skinner, I think he’s rather good. That done I would put people who cannot be bothered to be nice in there and, much as I like you Janet, I’m afraid with this tedious old feminist attitude you would be going in there with them. A sad loss in so many ways – but for goodness sake woman, grow up, after all, as you keep reminding us, you are a pensioner now.
Next Tuesday I will be eight years away from being of a pensionable age, not that it bothers me. By the time I reach 60 I predict that the pensionable age will be 68, by the time I reach 68 (if I am lucky enough to do so) it will no doubt be 70 and by the time I reach 70… well by then there will probably be an option of carrying on working – or accepting that one-way ticket to Geneva.
