Danny’s refreshing rant proves once and for all we’re in Dyer straits
This was the week D-list celebrity Danny Dyer attained unexpected national treasure status in the space of 45 seconds of live television.
As part of a delightfully Catholic assortment of guests – including Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, Pamela Anderson, the former
Baywatch star, current acolyte of Julian Assange and an animal rights activist and someone from, household sources barely more informed than myself tell me, The Football – talking about Brexit on Good Evening Britain.
Dyer took three-quarters of a minute out of his day to confess himself completely mystified by the whole thing. “It’s like this mad riddle!” he cried, before launching into an expletive-strewn tirade about
former prime minister David Cameron in particular.
We have always known, at some level, that what comes out of politicians’ mouths has not been strictly understood as language.
It is not a communicative tool. It is a blend of deliberate lies, accidental misinformation, hopeful obfuscation, irrelevant self-protective anecdote, posturing, blustering, covering, attention-seeking, ignorance-shielding and agenda-furthering.
In politics, the frothing word torrent designed to wash you downstream so that you become someone else’s problem is so constant as to have become the accepted norm.
But in the rare moments when someone comes along who doesn’t have skin in the game and speaks instead like a normal, frustrated, unfiltered human being, the scales fall away and the trick – and the contempt that lies at its heart – stands revealed.
We could do with more such moments.
And thus a new challenger for the Dimbleby Question Time crown arises. Go, Danny – for there are many, many mad riddles to solve.