Katie Price - On Merit

July 19^th – Joni Mitchell, John Mayall, Klaus Voorman, Ron Wood; all names we’re familiar with…right? Musicians, right?

‘Cos all this talk about a classless society where people get along on merit…’s’all smoke and mirrors. Like The Big Society that Pillow-Cheeks Cameron was banging on about since he grabbed power, it’s just another way of getting things to stay just as they are; that wonderful phrase talk is cheap comes to mind. With the government cutbacks…(which don’t stretch as far as effecting the MP’s £60+ thousand a year job or their subsidised breakfast in the HofP ‘cos, let’s face it, when all you earn is £60+K…from just one of your six jobs…well, you need a little help to buy brekkers, don’t you?)…with the government cutbacks affecting local government expenditure, The Big Society is a tailor-made replacement. This drop in services is because of less money coming from government (although Council Tax has remained at its high level and the services we pay for have risen) but they can be easily replicated by the people doing it for themselves…FOR NOTHING…! Aka: The Big Society! Win-Win! Treble breakfasts all round! But enough of this; on to non-breakfast related things:

When did this you can do anything if you try myth that’s peddled by recent governments and parents of pushy kids really take hold? At the end of the 19^th and early part of the 20^th centuries people knew their place, beautifully illustrated in that TWTWTS sketch with John Cleese and Ronnies’ Corbett and Barker, and because of that there was level of satisfaction in ones place in the community and ones lot. There was really no need to pine away about your position in society because there was no escaping it. The local coal baron wasn’t going to suddenly disassociate himself from his eldest son and leave his millions to the bloke that hews coal in shaft three was he? No, he wasn’t, so just best get on with the life you had and make the best of it, then someone mumbled something about no one should come second…and then Katie Price happened along… I know, I know, I’m playing fast and loose with history, I know. Trouble is, if I don’t cut to the chase you’ll all be reading this historical landslide in your dotage…and it aint that interesting, honest…so humour me… then Katie Price happened along.

What do you think it was, what was the mind track that led her to believe that her next venture should be literature? I mean, she had a burgeoning career as a glamour model and I believe her public appearances and endorsements were raking in a tidy sum; you know, stuff she actually knew something about; perfume, clothes, shoes, make-up and such, so there really was no need to venture into the minefield of writing an autobiography…or was it just the money? There are fewer worse things to get, as a writer, than a damning critique. That people may not like what you have written is one thing, that’s a given, it’s when someone reads your work then trashes it, kills it softly with a song then displays its entrails in every daily rag that will print it; it’s then the knife severs your vitals…if you cared about your work in the first place that is. I suspect that Ms. Price couldn’t give a stuff about whether some bloke in the Guardian liked it or not because, in honesty, if they did then any writer worth their salt wouldn’t show their face (or any other part of their anatomy for that matter) in public again. When someone writes that your work is;

‘…of hallucinatory and compelling awfulness’

and that it is;

‘…utter, total tosh’ (and those are the kind things that were written about Ms. Price’s efforts) then you can pretty much write off that years’ Booker…

The sad tragedy is that, in a world where publishing has a finite budget, the production of this work, whose;

‘…tackiness is intense…’

has taken away from other, aspiring writers who really do have a story to tell, something to add to the sum of our knowledge.

Joni Mitchell, John Mayall, Klaus Voorman, Ron Wood, all of them had works of art exhibited at the Gorpal Gallery in California on this day in 1980… I’m really hopeful that, unlike Ms. Price, they got their opportunity to display their work on merit alone; yeah, right, just like all other aspiring artists without contacts and fame who have to operate on the level playing field that is this classless society of England.