Youngsters today have got no disrespect for their elders
Sorry, but it’s got to stop. Something needs to be done. As a parent, I’m growing deeply concerned about the type of music that young people today are listening to. Quite frankly, it’s far too inoffensive. Put it like this. The latest Top 40 chart contains no fewer than 16 – yes, 16 – songs by Ed Sheeran. Ed Sheeran is an unassuming, likeable young man who performs pleasant, tuneful, old-fashioned love songs on an acoustic guitar.
Is this really what we want for our children?
Ever since the birth of pop, generations of young people have used it for its proper purpose: to scandalise their elders and alarm the press. Children of the Fifties did it with Elvis. Children of the Sixties with the Rolling Stones. In the Seventies it was glam, heavy metal and punk; the Eighties, goth and hip-hop; the Nineties, house, techno, drum and bass. In each case, music that – to the ears of older listeners – was new, strange, ugly, subversive, threatening and obscene.
Which is exactly how it should be. It is the duty of the young to shock the old – and then, when they grow old themselves, to be shocked in turn by the generation below. It’s the circle of pop-cultural life.
Yet today, disturbingly, we find young people listening in their droves to gentle melodies and innocuous lyrics. Not just by Ed Sheeran, whose new album has sold more than 500,000 copies this week – but by Adele, Coldplay, Olly Murs, Ellie Goulding, Taylor Swift. All respectable, presentable people who perform innocent, harmless music. This simply will not do. Parental horror is proof of a youth culture that is fresh, original and alive. If parents can enjoy their children’s music as much as their children do, something has gone badly wrong.
All I can say is, woe betide any child of mine who I catch listening to an acoustic ballad.
“What on earth is this rubbish? It’s totally unlistenable. The man’s singing completely in tune.” “It’s Ed Sheeran, Dad.” “Ed Sheeran indeed. Look at the state of him, with his glasses and his nice checked shirt and his little ginger beard. Don’t tell me – I suppose you’ll be wanting glasses and a nice checked shirt and a little ginger beard next, too. Well, if you think you’re leaving the house looking like that, young man, you’ve got another think coming. Why can’t you wear a rubber catsuit, or get some horrible piercings?” “But Dad, I don’t want a rubber catsuit or some horrible piercings.” “Don’t you talk to me like that. Far too polite. For pity’s sake, you don’t even swear. Show some disrespect to your elders and betters. Good Lord, are there no rude words on this album?” “Leave me alone. You don’t understand.” “Don’t understand? Too right I don’t. In my day we listened to proper music, full of blasphemy and profanity and drugs and sex. Now I find you polluting your mind with all this nonsense about romance and commitment. And do you really have to play it so quietly?” “Well, I’m sorry, Dad, but I’m afraid times have changed. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve got my geography homework to do.”
“Geography homework? I’ve had just about enough of this. You’re young. You’re supposed to be rebellious. Rebel against me! Rebel!” “But I don’t want to rebel.” “Rebel!” “No!” “Right. That’s it. If you refuse to disobey me one more time, I’m stopping your pocket money.” You know what the single biggest difference between men and women is?
I’ll tell you. Loose change. Men leave it everywhere.
On the hall table. On the bedside table. In a dish on top of the fridge. Personally, I have three mugs on top of a bookcase in the study. The first mug is for pound coins and 50p coins, the second is for 20p, 10p and 5p coins, and the third is for coppers. But all three mugs, which have stood there for God knows how long, are full, so now when I get home from work or an evening out, I just empty my loose change out of my trouser pocket on to the desk or a shelf. And then leave it there. Maybe I should use a load of the coins to buy another mug. Mind you, if I did, I wouldn’t need it any more. Talk about catch-22.
I even do it at work. In the office I have a compartment in my desk drawer filled with coppers and 5p coins I’ve accumulated from five years’ worth of cafeteria lunches. I know I should take it all to the bank, or put it in a charity collection tin, but… I just never quite get round to it.
Honestly. It’s embarrassing. All this coin-hoarding. I’m like some kind of dragon. A lazy, pathetic, badly organised dragon.
I know I’m not alone in this, though. When a friend of mine finally counted out his own loose change, he found he had more than £200 of it. More than £200, just lying around his house in little coins.
It’s definitely a male thing. I’ve never come across a woman with this problem. The other day I asked my wife how come she never ends up with heaps of loose change sitting around everywhere like I do. “Simple, dear,” she said. “I spend it.” Well, it’s certainly an idea. In fact, now I come to think of it, I honestly believe that if every man in Britain were forced immediately, by law, to spend every penny of loose change lurking in obscure corners of his home, our economy would soar. Next time Philip Hammond is writing a Budget, he should give it some serious thought.
As it happens, in October this year the round £1 coin will be withdrawn from circulation. Shops won’t accept it any more. Which means that the nation’s male misers have only seven months to spend their stash, before it becomes worthless.
Watch the GDP figures for the second and third quarters this year. I reckon business is going to boom.