Kim’s crazy...but what about us?
AN £800,000 project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and researched by the University of Roehampton, finds that the “disproportionate representation” ofwilliam Shakespeare in the theatre has propagated – you guessed it – “white, able-bodied, heterosexual, cisgender male narratives”.
Project leader Andy Kesson says we “need to be much, much more suspicious of the Bard’s place in contemporary theatre”. Do we now?
In order to put Shakespeare firmly in his place (good luck!) the researchers are staging John Lyly’s Galatea, which has had “almost no stage history since 1588” and which features characters disguised as the opposite sex (something Shakespeare does frequently, by the way).
Now I completely understand that academics have their pet projects and re-assessing a neglected writer like Lyly is fine.we all need a hobby.
But there is a reason why Galatea is never produced, which has nothing to do with cisgender male narratives and everything to do with the fact that it is terribly boring.
“IFYOU are a true couple, and love each other, then you trust each other,” said TV property queen Kirstie Allsopp, explaining why she doesn’t mind that her partner Ben Anderson has bought (at different times) three homes for them without consulting her. “In one case,” she admits, “I was a little cross.”
Kirstie is very good at stirring up mini controversies and this had women screaming with indignation, adamant that they wouldn’t let their idiot partners pick a new saucepan let alone a whole house.
I think she’s on to something. Life is an endless round of making small and not very interesting decisions. So much so, that if I’m in a restaurant I like it when someone simply orders for me.
How exciting it would be to come home and be told: “Darling, I’ve bought us a whole new house.”
See what I mean?
CHINESE shopping websitetemu is now offering £100 for those who sign up to its app and send invitation codes to others. It is like one of those old-fashioned “chain letters” which were always faintly threatening.
In exchange for the “free” money, the newly signed up “Member” gives Temu permission to “use and publish such Member’s photo, name likeness, voice, opinions, statements, biographical information, and/or hometown and state for promotional or advertising purposes in any media worldwide”.
We can safely assume the Chinese know everything about all of us already. But that’s no reason to give it to them on a plate.
ITWAS the story that made us all titter. Those funny North Koreans (with their funny little leader and even funnier little nukes) censored Alan Titchmarsh’s jeans. The newsreaders put on their “ain’t life fun?” faces. Trouser row flares! What a turn-up eh?!
In Pyongyang, they watch Alan’s gardening shows, keen to know what horticultural tasks they should be performing over the weekend. But his dad jeans were deemed politically unacceptable.
Filmed kneeling in a flower bed in a 2010 edition of Garden Secrets, dubbed in Korean, doing a bit of fiddly espalier-ing with an apple tree, the censored Titchmarsh jeans appear blurred and shapeless. To be brutal they are a little shapeless even without additional blurring. Alan’s personal style has never been exactly edgy and he admitted that he was chuffed to find himself (for once) and at the age of 74 in the same outrageously trousered company as Elvis Presley, Tom Jones and Rod Stewart.
Jeans have been banned in North Korea since the 1990s, though that could be because Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un can’t find any that fit.
And as all good Commies know, jeans are a well-established symbol of Western decadence and imperialism.
There are many other things in North Korea to make us chortle.
You cannot wear your hair any old way you fancy.
There are just 15 state-sanctioned hairdos and don’t even think about touching up your roots.
Women may not wear shorts and their skirts must reach below the knee. (They used to have a similar rule at the Henley Regatta and probably still do.) And dogs are only for eating or fur because pets are “incompatible with a socialist lifestyle”.
Along with Alan Titchmarsh’s gardening programmes, Teletubbies, Dr Who and old Top Gear shows are among the few imperialist TV programmes that North Koreans are allowed to watch.
It must give them a pretty spaced-out view of what life is like elsewhere – a world of sonic screwdrivers, Tinky Winky and Jeremy Clarkson.
This would all be hilarious if Britain was – in comparison – a sane, sensible and well-ordered place. But before we laugh our heads off let us remember that we live in a country where five-yearolds are sent to school in nappies and schoolteachers run scared of their pupils and their parents. The general public (as we discovered last week) now believes the NHS is useless and most women would no longer get in a car with a police officer in case he turns out to be a sex killer.
Meanwhile, our rivers and seas are awash with sewage and sanitary products, and university authorities cancel and threaten staff who do not agree with permitted views and cringe before the absurd demands of 18-year-old students.
And if that’s not enough, our politicians argue about what a woman is, the children who do bother to go to school identify as cats and apparently sane people will happily ask you what your preferred pronoun is.
And we think they’re crazy in North Korea?
The clocks have gone forward. Spring is kind of sprung. And a happy Easter to all my readers.