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The Herald Scotland
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
I'm a shock-seeker, I watched Masterchef and chucked my morality away
I've always been drawn to the forbidden. When tabloids scream 'ban this filth', the pearl-clutching works on me like candlelight on moths. The more I'm told something is wicked and depraved, the more I'll have to find out for myself. I've got Mary Whitehouse to thank for turning me on to the most messed-up material of my teens. Where there's shock value, I'll venture. In university, my English professor described the Earl of Rochester's Restoration poetry as the most corrupt in literature. By graduation, I was an expert in his work. Nor do I have any problem separating art from artist. Harvey Weinstein is a disgusting pig who deserves his fate, but I'm not cancelling Pulp Fiction, Shakespeare in Love or The English Patient. That mix of curiosity, voyeurism and critical detachment informed my thinking on whether to watch the new Masterchef series. I've followed it since Lloyd Grossman's days. I love cooking and the show gives good tips. However, neither reason is an excuse for watching a series stained by the behaviour of its hosts Gregg Wallace and John Torode. Though, evidently, that begs the question: is to watch, to endorse; to view, to agree; to tune in, to validate? Some may say yes, others no. Morally and philosophically, I was unsure. Read more from Neil Mackay: I've been a TV producer, so was intrigued how on Earth the BBC would reedit the show, as promised, to make it more acceptable to viewers. However, technical and professional interest isn't a justification either, if you accept that viewing equals approving. What finally convinced me to peek was the UK Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy on BBC Breakfast telling us she 'certainly won't be watching'. If politicians say X, I'll do Y. So I watched the first few episodes. You can watch the lot on BBC iPlayer, if you want. The experience was, in truth, an exercise in being morally compromised. I'm a big boy, though, so being morally compromised was entirely on me. The reason I explained my views on art and acceptability was to make the point that nobody made me watch Masterchef, I chose deliberately to seek it out. However, the method of being compromised is what interests me. I watched the show with my wife and a couple who are friends of ours, a man and a woman roughly the same age. They came for dinner, we turned Masterchef on after the meal was over. Everyone felt a bit guilty. I guess the other two million people who tuned in were much the same. The show is down on last year's ratings by about 700,000. So obviously there's a fair chunk of the previous audience who take a different view from me, my wife and our pals. Which is entirely fair and their right. After the initial ick of seeing the hosts – particularly Wallace – it was strange how quickly we settled in as viewers. I noticed my wife pick up on a recipe which interested her, and our friends talked about how they would have used a different cut of meat to one of the contestants. Quite quickly, we weren't sitting in moral judgement, but engaging as viewers. I mentioned this to the group, and suddenly the ick returned. To be reminded of the scandal, was to be knocked out of the comfort of merely viewing. But soon the magic of TV was at work again. The contestants were determined, the guest judges were friendly faces from the past, Torode was giving kitchen tips, and Wallace was doing his hail-fellow-well-met act. The knowledge of what had gone on was swept to the back of our minds once again – because that's what TV does: it's immersive, it takes you out of yourself, it suspends reality. So the very act of watching Masterchef partly – at least momentarily – erases the knowledge of what the hosts have done. There's a real risk that over 21 one-hour episodes, Wallace and Torode are effectively rehabilitated simply by the longevity of the process of watching them. The more you watch, the more you forget. And then, when you do remember, the ick will have lessened a little more each time, until by the show's finale the ick might not even be there at all. The BBC seems to be playing a morally bankrupt game here, though it's entirely in tune with the times. There are no real rules in this era. A president who is a predator can be reelected. It is the power of his celebrity which renders Donald Trump teflon. Are we now seeing that immunity spill down to the Z-listers of British TV? Wallace and Torode were sacked, but they're not off air. If this is being cancelled, it's a weird cancellation. Racism and sexism no longer hide their faces in our societies. It is somehow okay to once again behave very badly. Masterchef plays its part in allowing racism and sexism to become enmeshed in notions of acceptability. Fundamentally, this is an era of no shame and no consequences. We see that in the lofty heights of international politics and now in the tawdry depths of low-rent entertainment. In that sense, watching the first few episodes of Masterchef was instructive. It was interesting to be subjected to an experiment in compromising my own morality. But I will drop out now, thank you very much, BBC, and leave the channel's executives to mirror our corrupted zeitgeist so perfectly. Neil Mackay is The Herald's Writer-at-Large. He's a multi-award-winning investigative journalist, author of both fiction and non-fiction, and a filmmaker and broadcaster. He specialises in intelligence, security, crime, social affairs, cultural commentary, and foreign and domestic politics.
Scotsman
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Readers' letters: We must not return to the days of Mary Whitehouse
A reader says freedom of expression should be defended, even if it might offend some people Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Speaking as someone who is usually in agreement with Susan Dalgety, it's also necessary to agree with her when she admits to being at risk of 'sounding like Mary Whitehouse' (Scotsman, 2 August) when criticising Channel 4's recent documentary on Tia Billinger – aka 'Bonnie Blue'. Such a broadcast might well make Ms Dalgety's 'skin crawl', but in a liberal democracy freedom of expression (within reason) must be respected even if it might offend some of us. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Those taking part in the event Ms Dalgety describes were all consenting adults participating in an entirely legal activity. Thankfully, we are not living in Franco's Spain or the repressive Roman Catholic Ireland of the 1930s-1980s as portrayed in Edna O'Brian's novels, once banned by Irish censors. Mary Whitehouse, as president of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association, was a vigorous campaigner against what she perceived to be excessive sex, violence and bad language on screen and stage (Picture: Les Lee/Daily Express/) Radical feminists might wish to reflect on the irony that those countries which prohibit pornography (such as Iran and Afghanistan) are the very same states where women are most oppressed and are denied human rights. By objecting to this Bonnie Blue documentary, Susan Dalgety unwittingly aligns herself not only with Mrs Whitehouse's campaign to 'clean up' television, but also President Ronald Reagan's failed attempt to close down America's adult entertainment industry back in the 1980s. Martin O'Gorman, Edinburgh Spanish Inquisition Jenny Lindsay (Scotsman, 2 August) quite correctly criticises John Swinney's reference to Scotland as 'the birthplace of the Enlightenment" when he and his government and his acolytes, have spent years introducing and enacting laws to strangle freedom of thought and expression in Scotland. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad I'd add to Ms Lindsay's list ot taboo subjects any hint of challenge to the current diktats on measures to live with climate change, as Christine Jardine points out in her article, 'Milliband's moving to end North Sea oil too quickly' (Scotsman, 4 August). Also that successive governments' policies on housing the increasing number of asylum seekers entering the country illegally have driven so many people to protest in public, often for the first time in their lives, and are dismissed as being members of 'the far right'. As Ms Lindsay notes, in the context of gender issues and Israel/Palestine, 'perfectly ordinary viewpoints are twisted erroneously by people seeming incapable of critically analysing anything other than cereal packets'. The 1998 romcom Sliding Doors had a running trope: 'No-one expects the Spanish Inquisition.' Little did we think when we laughed then that we'd be living through a modern version of the Inquisition in 2025. Lovina Roe, Perth, Perth & Kinross Bank balance I agree with the granting of consent to Berwick Bank wind farm. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Two correspondents to your letters page (2 August) mention an estimate of 31,000 bird deaths over the wind farm's 30-year life span. This is about 1,033 a year, averaging 2.83 bird deaths a day. For perspective, estimates of the number of garden birds killed by domestic cats in the UK each year are in a range of 40 to 70 million. The Mammal Society's study in 2003 estimated UK cats kill 55 million birds annually. That's an average of 150,684 bird deaths a day. The Civil Aviation Authority's 2017 report on 'Wildlife hazard management at aerodromes' shows that where deterrence fails to reduce the risk of birds to aircraft, birds will be shot. So human desires to have cats and to fly in aircraft have priority over the lives of birds. SSE Renewables said on 31 July that Berwick Bank has secured two connection points, at Dunbar and Blyth in Northumberland, to the UK electricity grid, and the trade association Renewable UK said on 31 July 'the approval of Berwick Bank Offshore Wind Farm is a pivotal milestone for Britain's energy transition'. Berwick Bank wind farm will benefit people in Scotland and England, and I think many of your correspondents and readers will agree with that. E Campbell, Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire Sheer madness I recently read in horror that the Berwick Bank wind farm array had been provisionally approved despite the number of complaints and the fact that it will kill thousands of seabirds, (some breeds of which are in decline), due to the relative proximity of the array to their breeding sites. I can also only assume that the decision-maker have not seen, or totally ignored the figures being produced on the Octopus Energy 'UK's Wasted Windpower tracker' site which not only shows that as I write, to date this year more than £716m in wind power has been wasted but also that the nearby Seagreen array (also owned by SSE) has been closed down 71 per cent of the time because the grid cannot handle the amount of energy generated in higher wind situations. Although producing nothing, SSE is paid millions of pounds in 'constraints payments' which are added to every electrical bill. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad It is widely accepted that Scotland has a major issue with the amount of energy it can handle from its wind farms and that this issue will take years to resolve. In the interim adding another extremely large array. which will only increase energy bills and kill thousands of seabirds when it is operating, is sheer madness. Ralph Bebbington, Crediton, Devon Not so green In an open letter to John Swinney, signed by 18 environmental and civic groups including Friends of the Earth and Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, he was asked to stop the increasing level of plastic pollution in Scotland (Scotsman, 4 August). It is quite ironic that just days before, permission was given for the world's largest wind farm consisting of 307 turbines at Berwick Bank. These turbines will have plastic components: plastic coating on the copper wires and the turbine blades are made of polymer composite materials – plastics within which fibres or particles are embedded as reinforcement. These blades cannot be recycled but end up in landfill. With 100,000 tons of turbine blades disposed of annually in the UK and 329,000 wind turbines globally there is a huge environmental problem that Friends of the Earth etc dare not mention. Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian Pope for peace Pope Leo XVI celebrated his three months in office with a youth mass on the theme of peace (Scotsman, 4 August). He's fast making a reputation of being a peacemaking Pope. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Quietly, he's negotiating an end to the war in Ukraine, having twice met with Vlodomir Zelensky and phoned Vladimir Putin. As a long-serving member of the Augustinian fraternity, his watch words are unity and peace. One of his first acts as Pope, was to visit the fraternity, which he had led prior to becoming Pope, assuring his former colleagues that 'they were still his brothers'. In contrast to his predecessor, the charismatic Pope Francis, Pope Leo has been described as an introvert, who is very much a team player. Much of his papacy is spent listening and, as he said to the young people, patiently and tirelessly, trying to resolve conflict by, not fearsome weapons, but long-term negotiation, a quality, much needed in our war-torn world. We are blessed to have such a Pope. Ian Petrie, Edinburgh Dual purpose Rachel Amery (Scotsman, 4 August) writes about the dualling of the A1. Yes, a need not just for those that use the A1 from Alnwick to Dunbar which is the only part not a dual carriageway at present, but for the whole transport industry which over uses the M74 and A66. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad What she fails to highlight is that it was Conservative Ian Lang. as Scottish Secretary, who stopped the programme to dual the A1 between Newcastle and Edinburgh in the early 1990s. Robert Anderson, Dunning, Perth & Kinross Don't be fooled The latest misguided ruse of Robert IG Scott (Letters, 2 August), with the aim of having Holyrood abolished in favour of direct rule from Westminster, is to promote a unionist cabal offering 'radical changes' in order to defeat the SNP. While recent polling has shown consistent support for independence at around 50 per cent or greater, one suspects that the polling levels of support would be significantly higher if the BBC and much of the media in Scotland were not seemingly preoccupied with seeking stories to denigrate the Scottish Government and the SNP. What is certain is that a clear majority, possibly approaching the 75 per cent of the devolution referendum, think that the people of Scotland should be able to determine their own future (even if individually some might not yet be ready to vote for independence in a referendum). Those who still think that Scotland should remain in a dysfunctional Union and believe that they represent the majority view of the people of Scotland should be prepared to back that belief in a democratic manner and support calls for a constitutional referendum should Scotland, in 2026, again elect a majority of MSPs supporting independence. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad With Brexit, Covid, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing slaughter in Gaza there have been significant changes in the UK and around the world. Those who would deny the people of Scotland from having a second constitutional referendum at the earliest realistic date of 2028 (14 years after 2014 and double the period available to the UK citizens of Northern Ireland) seek not only to deny democracy but to deny human evolution. Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian Write to The Scotsman
Spectator
04-06-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
This is a dangerous moment for free speech
Britain without blasphemy laws is a surprisingly recent development. Blasphemy was abolished as a common law offence in England and Wales only in 2008 and in Scotland in 2021. But that was the final burial of a law dead for much longer. The last execution for the crime was in 1697; the last imprisonment in 1921; and the last successful trial in 1977 – Mary Whitehouse's prosecution of Gay News for publishing a poem about a centurion's rape of Christ's corpse. Even if 11 local councils banned Monty Python's Life of Brian two years later, the trend since has been towards trusting that the Almighty is big enough to fend for himself. Yet this week the clock seemed to have been turned back to around ad 650. Hamit Coskun was convicted of a racially aggravated public order offence motivated 'by hostility towards… followers of Islam'. His crime? Setting fire to a Quran, shouting 'fuck Islam' and declaring the faith a 'religion of terrorism' outside the Turkish consulate. The Crown argued Coskun's demonstration could not have been peaceful, since it provoked a Muslim man to attack him. The alternative explanation – that Coskun had, in a rather regrettable way, proved his main point, eluded the professionals of Lord Hermer's Crown Prosecution Service. Coskun was originally charged with the exciting new crime of harassing the 'religious institution of Islam' – treating a faith with 1.9 billion followers like someone with hurt feelings. Although that charge was not pursued, the eventual ruling's impact is effectively the same. Henceforth, anyone criticising a religion is at the mercy of the tender sensibilities of any bystanders.
Daily Mail
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
JONATHAN BROCKLEBANK: It's not societal hatred that troubles Kneecap's supporters. No, they just want to be happy with the targets of it
There was a time in the 1950s when a young singer's gyrating hips were deemed too suggestive for television audiences. Elvis Presley was filmed only from the waist up on the Ed Sullivan Show. Ten years later the same US TV host demanded the Rolling Stones change the lyrics of their song Let's Spend the Night Together. If they were to perform it on his show they would have to sing instead about spending 'some time' together. In the 1970s the Sex Pistols swore on UK national television. People went nuts. I doubt if Mary Whitehouse ever recovered. Bill Grundy's Today show was axed weeks later and he never worked in prime time TV again. Looking back from the vantage point of 2025, my lather of moral indignation over the 'corrupting' influence of any of these acts is more of a millpond. It was the 1980s – the Thatcher years – which brought real toxicity to teenage listening. It pained me that artists I admired failed to appreciate there are lines that even they – cutting-edge youth culture figureheads – must never cross. The most egregious example is may be Margaret on the Guillotine, a 1988 offering by former Smiths frontman Morrissey. 'When will you die?' went the chorus. Verse one posited that 'kind people' dreamed of the Prime Minister getting her head chopped off. Verse two implored these kind people to 'make the dream real'. I was a big Smiths fan back in the day and no fan of Thatcher. I was sickened by this song. We imagine we live in more enlightened times. In the last decade, two MPs have been murdered in public as they went about their duties. The violent deaths of Labour's Jo Cox and the Conservatives' Sir David Amess were horrible crimes which demanded searching questions be asked about hatred in society. They demanded that we examine the triggers for it, who or what was inciting it and root them out. None of that happened. In Scotland, we got a Hate Crime Bill which fretted about people making prejudicial remarks about others on the basis of age, disability, religion, sexual orientation or transgender orientation. An off-colour observation about a trans person, made at the dinner table in your own home, could potentially bring prosecution. Across the UK we got the rise of no-platforming – a device used by one section of society, typically students, to deny the right of expression of another section of society, typically small c conservative. We got cancel culture. We got bar workers at entertainment venues bleating about being forced to hear opinions from comedians that they did not share – and we got performers getting their marching orders. We watched comedy shrivel into itself through terror of causing offence. We got post-woke conversion therapy mea culpas from TV stars such as Ant and Dec who now realised they were quite wrong to wear blackface for a jape in a sketch 20 years ago. We got trigger warnings for cotton wool-cocooned undergraduates who didn't have to read the scary Beowolf poem with the monsters if they didn't want to. We got ableism, classism, white savourism … And, in the midst of all this, we get a hip hop trio from West Belfast who take to the stage in London and declare: 'The only good Tory is a dead Tory, kill your local MP.' At another gig, they appeared to voice support for banned international terrorist organisations Hamas and Hezbollah – a crime in the UK. All a bit fruity, wouldn't you say, in the present era of panicked self-censorship? And the name of this outfit? Kneecap – a chilling reference to the punishment meted out to those who displease the IRA. Quite rightly, the Eden Project in Cornwall took one look at this horror show and de-platformed the band, who were due to play there in July. The plug was pulled on a string of gigs in Germany too. But they are also due to play TRSNMT in Glasgow in July. That will never happen, surely. We have already discussed how sensitive we are to offence. Zero tolerance zone here, chaps. We'll have none of your hatred in our Dear Green Place. Curious, isn't it, that these are not the words we're hearing. From former Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, now the leader of Alba, we learn that the reaction to clip of the band inciting hatred is 'ludicrous'. It was a 'throwaway remark' and 'taken entirely out of context'. If there is a context where it is appropriate to tell your audience to murder MPs then I must lack the imagination to conceive of it. Perhaps Mr MacAskill can elucidate. We have Niall Christie, a Scottish Greens supporting charity worker, responding to calls for Kneecap to be dropped from TRNSMT with this insight: 'Things welcome in Glasgow: Artists standing in solidarity with Palestinians', followed by a tick emoji, and then 'Tories' followed by a cross emoji. We have Stuart Murdoch, lead singer of Glasgow band Belle and Sebastian, equivocating for all he was worth on BBC Scotland's Debate Night, reminding viewers this is a 'free speech' issue. Free Speech? Not incitement to murder, then? Where was free speech when the thought police were ushered in to patrol our dinner table conversations in the Hate Crime Bill? Where was free speech when student bodies banned guest speakers such as Germaine Greer for the crime of having an opinion which challenged theirs? First Minister John Swinney, to his credit, has described the band's remarks as 'beyond the pale' and called for them to be axed from TRNSMT. I didn't hear SNP MSP Fulton MacGregor echoing his stance on Debate Night. What I heard was equivocation. Why do you suppose this is? Why, on Wednesday evening, did we have a statement signed by some 40 musical acts leaping to the defence of the Belfast trio, citing 'democracy' and 'political repression' and 'artistic freedom'? Paul Weller, Pulp, Shirley Manson and Massive Attack are among the artists seemingly appalled by the 'clear, concerted attempt to censor and ultimately de-platform ' Kneecap. There is that word again. And, for Mr MacAskill's sake, let's include the context. This band don't face the ignominy of de-platforming because someone thinks they are transphobic or they have strong views on immigration or Brexit. It's because of the 'kill your local MP' stuff. It's because terror group sympathies are a bad look. As for the band, they argue they would never seek to incite violence against any MP –or support Hamas or Hezbollah – and that an extract of footage, deliberately taken out of context, has been 'weaponised against them.' As before, we await the context which will make it all fine to say what they said. In the meantime, I have been searching my soul here because I enjoy some Paul Weller music just as I used to enjoy The Smiths and Morrissey. What is it they or I are not seeing? Why were people who wanted a guillotined prime minister 'kind'? What makes a band who say the terrible things Kneecap said 'victims'? I can conclude only that it's not societal hatred which troubles these musicians. They just want to be happy with the targets of it.
Times
24-04-2025
- Times
York's ancient residents suffered at the jaws of lions
Mary Whitehouse, the campaigner for public decency, was so outraged by the depiction of a sexual assault by a Roman centurion in a 1980 National Theatre production that she launched a private prosecution against its director. This week we learn that such brutality by Britain's ancient occupiers was not merely the figment of artistic imagination. Residents of York should spare a thought for an ancient forebear who likely met his untimely end at the hands of a lion. Two decades ago, archaeologists digging in York — known as Eboracum to the Romans — uncovered a male skeleton with nasty damage to its pelvic bone. Only now, however, have advanced 3D scans revealed the man's cause of death. Not only was he bitten just before death,
