Tea-towel platitudes are Strictly dreadful
IT WAS bad enough that Will Young left Strictly Come Dancing this week for unspecified ‘personal reasons’.
Worse was his fellow contestant Laura Whitmore tweeting a sanctimonious message in the singer’s support.
‘Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about,’ opined wise owl Laura, a model and TV presenter.
Aargh! Forget for one second that Young has lavishly discussed his battles with depression in interviews over the years. The point is that Laura had fallen prey to one of the curses of the age: the deployment of banal platitudes as if they were tablets from the gods.
The kind of so-called inspirational quotations that were once the preserve of cheaper greetings cards or displayed on posters in a sensitive teen’s bedroom have now invaded all corners of modern life.
There has been a quotation contagion. They’re everywhere: on cushions, on mugs, on key rings, on gifts, even on interior decor. Everyone has a syrupy homily they want to run up your flagpole.
B&Q sells a cushion that proclaims: ‘Live your life like a butterfly, take a rest sometimes but never forget to fly.’ Marks & Spencer’s most annoying tea-towel insists: ‘Cooking with love provides food for the soul.’ While a Matalan cushion reads: ‘All you need in life are best friends and a glass of Prosecco’ — which is patently untrue.
TV’s The Real Housewives Of New York star Bethenny Frankel is selling her Manhattan apartment. What grabbed my attention were the words painted 3 ft high on the wall of her children’s bedroom: ‘Night Is To Dream, Day Is To Make Them Come True’.
Yes, it’s humbug, but it’s not even grammatically correct humbug.
Another one that gets my goat is: ‘When life puts you through tough situations, don’t say “why me”, say “try me” ’ — which sounds like something David Brent might have said.
What I need is a god to ‘Grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can and wisdom to know the difference’ . . . the words on a £9.99 tealight holder from Amazon. Scream.