Rude and patronising Left-wing arts luvvies just haven’t a clue about life on the inside

Why the North London theatre that wanted an applicant from the ‘criminal class’ to be its £50,000 boss shows...

My MATE Simon has a glittering new career ahead of him, if he can only stay out of prison long enough to attend the job interview.

In his old role as a thief, druggie and allround social menace, Simon has been prosecuted for more than 80 criminal offences. He keeps getting arrested for being homeless — though, as he points out, he can’t really help it since the council refuses to give him anywhere to live.

But Simon ticks almost all the boxes on the application form to be the chief executive of Camden People’s Theatre in North London. It’s offering £50,000 a year for the right person to be the new artistic director and joint CEO. Preference was to be given to candidates with little or no formal education, and those who ‘identify’ as being ‘working class, benefit class, criminal class and/or underclass’.

Applications were encouraged from members of the ‘global majority’, which was called ‘BAME’ until recently and refers to people from African, Asian and other ethnically diverse backgrounds, along with those with a Romany or Irish Traveller heritage.

Simon will swear on his gran’s grave that he’s descended from a long line of Inuit fisherfolk if it improves his chances of landing that 50 grand.

The ad also stipulated that anyone who is deaf, LGBTQ+ or ‘neurodiverse’ — that is, autistic, dyslexic or those with other cognitive conditions — would also be automatically guaranteed an interview. Like many offenders, Simon has a litany of mental health problems so that’s another box ticked.

I would love to see him turn up for the first day’s rehearsals with a skinny soya milk latte in one hand and the Complete Shakespeare under his arm, ready to impose his vision on an interpretative dance restaging of King Lear.

SIMON, though, is likely to struggle to create a stage adaptation worthy of an Olivier award as he’s functionally illiterate — as are 50 per cent of the prisoner population.

What else are the theatre trustees expecting to achieve by placing this ridiculous advert, which is not so much woke as wide-eyed and raving mad?

Who do they think the ‘criminal classes’ are? Do they picture Reggie and Ronnie Kray in their tailored suits, breaking the fingers of patrons who fail to keep their phones on mute during the performance? That’s like a Monty Python sketch.

Arts Council England funnelled a quarter of a million quid of taxpayers’ money into Camden People’s Theatre during the pandemic. If the modern-day Krays get their hands on the finances, it’s unlikely that subsidised tickets for the unemployed and immigrants will be their first priority.

On Friday, the theatre belatedly removed the offensive and patronising language from the advert. But the damage had already been done.

The obvious fact is that none of the luvvies has any idea what Britain’s ‘criminal class’ looks like. I certainly didn’t when, eight years ago, as an Oxbridge- educated filmmaker convicted of tax fraud, I was sentenced to five years in prison.

Until then, my conception of career criminals came entirely from TV and the movies. One favourite was The Sopranos, a mafia epic set in the New Jersey underworld, starring actors such as Tony Sirico who played henchman Paulie Walnuts and was once a member of the Mob himself.

I loved Guy Ritchie’s gangster romp Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels, which spawned an entire genre of copycats. Ritchie is still repeating the formula with his Netflix series The Gentlemen, and actors such as Danny Dyer and Jason Statham have made a lucrative living from playing lovable villains with a few rough edges — quaffing red wine and quoting Keats.

But when I found myself in HMP Wandsworth, there were no characters like Dyer or Statham. Most of my fellow prisoners were mentally ill drug addicts who could barely read and write. The education system had failed them, leaving them unable to negotiate the benefits labyrinth, let alone apply for work.

Perhaps Camden People’s Theatre is offering English literature classes to bring their new joint CEO up to speed. Or, more likely, there is no substance behind their empty virtuesignalling and their advert is nothing but a condescending joke.

Real crime is not masterminding a diamond heist or hijacking a multi- million- pound transfer between Albanian drugs barons. That makes a great plot for a TV thriller — but the reality is heroin addicts mugging people for their phones to pay for a fix, and alcoholics lashing out at police officers in the hope of spending a couple of nights in a warm cell instead of a shop doorway.

I’ve spent the past eight years writing about repeat offenders for my book, Time After Time, and I know plenty of people who describe themselves without irony as ‘criminals’. Ed is one, a drug dealer I met in HMP Spring Hill. He was serving ten years and eight months for drugs and firearms offences. ‘The state sees me as a criminal, so that’s what I am,’ he told me. ‘They’ve made sure I can’t do anything else.’

But I’ve never seen a census or a government form that offers an option to identify as ‘criminal class’ or ‘benefits class’. It’s indicative of how remote and high the ivory towers in Camden must be if they suppose anyone actually ‘identifies’ that way.

Surely people on benefits will be deeply insulted, even mortified, to be lumped together with criminals. There’s an implicit, almost Victorian assumption in the advert that the two are interchangeable, and that the same applies to working class and disabled people. One wonders if staff there have met anyone who withholds their pronouns, let alone an actual criminal.

There’s no doubt that the arts are run by people like me — public school-educated, from middleclass families, articulate, wellconnected and living in London. That’s a narrow demographic and it makes for an unhealthy culture. The plays, ballets and operas we stage lack broad appeal — and so audiences dwindle, and theatre becomes a minority hobby.

THE industry needs to encourage actors, writers and stagehands from every background, regardless of colour, gender or politics. That’s the only way theatre can attract more talent. Box-ticking exercises do the opposite: they ensure that only the applicants who mirror all their smug Left-wing prejudices will be considered.

Most jobs in theatre are precarious at best, unable to guarantee a steady income. So it’s no surprise that most schemes to help convicted criminals turn their lives around do not focus on the arts.

It’s also a highly competitive field: successful actors and directors have often dreamed of doing nothing else since their schooldays and come from a life of wealth and privilege. Why should they lose out to an ex- criminal who has been shoehorned into a role he didn’t particularly want and can’t do very well?

The great majority of prisoners, about 80 per cent, are released with no job to go to. That inevitably means they need money simply to survive and are more likely to reoffend. It’s a vicious cycle.

The surest way to prevent reoffending is to help people into real jobs, as companies including Pret A Manger, McDonald’s and Iceland do. Last week I was in HMP Brixton to meet its employment board to discuss exactly those initiatives.

Timpson, the High Street keycutters, has been doing this with great success for many years. As a result, it has a loyal, hardworking, reliable pool of employees thanks to a policy that makes a real difference to society.

Camden People’s Theatre makes a mockery of genuine schemes. Its advert was selfish, self-deluding and shameful.

I’d like to invite everyone on its board to join me on a series of prison visits — not to perform Shakespeare, which wouldn’t be widely welcomed, but to meet some of the inmates and listen to them. Perhaps then they will see how rude and patronising the arts can be.