Jade Goody, Telephone Boxes, Cocks and Art

Have wanted to add something to the blog for days but have been stuck with a serious lack of inspiration. Snippets of half interesting ideas kept popping their heads up, but then shrinking back again as I could only ever have strung them out into one paragraph. Then I struck upon the idea of cobbling all these thoughts together into a mixed bag of an article – using the timeframe in which I thought about them as the glue that holds these disparate thoughts together. So, this is some insight into what I thought of this weekend – despite not one the subjects seeming worthy of its own article. I settled on this inglorious introduction in an attempt to cushion your expectations of anything particularly meaningful to come.

There’s been a lot of coverage of the sad death of Jade Goody in the news, with an emphasis on the positive influence she has had on people’s lives. Strangely, the influence she had on my life yesterday was completely unexpected – I was compelled to agree with the Daily Mail. And no, before you ask, not the headline about asylum seekers turning innocent children’s goldfish into lesbians. Instead, during a channel 4 news debate, I found myself totally in sync with Mail columnist Amanda Platell. The debate's other guest, Bishop Jonathan Blake described Jade as ‘a saint, a princess, an exemplar of biblical proportions’. Platell disagreed, pointing out that Jade Goody is an example of the current generation of young British girls who state their life’s aims to be rich and famous. Her tragic death will have a legacy in increased cervical cancer testing, but that is a lot different to being a lifelong campaigner helping others.



The next random thing that entered my head concerned telephone boxes. (What a thrilling young gentleman I am....). Reflecting on Great Britain, there is surely an element of that greatness that has been chipped away by the replacement of old fashioned red cast-iron telephone boxes. Although this is hardly news, they’ve been gone for years and years, I still think an enquiry into who made the decision and / or a public flogging of those people is both a considered and appropriate next step.

During the weekend I had a fine example from Andy, my business partner, on the real need to think very carefully before you insult someone. Not whether you insult them or not, but the manner in which the insult is worded. Failure to get this right can seriously backfire, render your insult irrelevant and leave you with egg on your face. In this instance, Andy was asked a comment on an acquaintance, and said ‘I can think of one word to describe him, and it begins and ends in the letter C’. While his audience puzzled on whether there were any such words, its dawned on me what he was trying to say. He meant to say the man was a cock. But, in attempting to convey that message, it was clearly Andy that came off worse, not being able to spell that simple four letter word.

My next point will at least, I hope, demonstrate that I am capable of thinking beyond the best way to call someone a ‘cock’. I recently visited the Northeast’s flagship centre for contemporary art, Gatehead’s Baltic Arts Centre. One of the exhibits there struck me as typical of the content I have witnessed in a number of visits over the years. Three piles of soil. The fact that these piles were conical in shape didn’t warm me to them. And neither did the fact the three piles had different aggregation – fine soil, slightly lumpy and big clods. I think giving people cultural aspirations and education is a good thing, but particularly in an area that has experienced a lot of (much needed) regeneration, a different approach is needed. If only the exhibits weren’t pitched at such a pretentious level – people’s cultural knowledge could be lifted in stages by gradually increasing the challenging nature of the work on show . This would start with exhibitions that ordinary Newcastle and Gateshead residents can look at and think about, rather than instantly dismiss the gallery as ‘somewhere not for them’.