Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Anyone Got A Horsewhip ?

Adrian Chiles has split from the very wonderful Jane Garvey.


"Like the base Indian, threw a pearl away
Richer than all his tribe."

19 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good old 'Mail'. Another innuendo-laced hatchet job:

"Earlier this year, Mr Chiles was at the centre of a multi-million pound tug-of-war between the BBC and ITV, which is believed to have offered him a £6million deal to become the face of its football coverage.

Instead Mr Chiles, whose mother is Croatian, opted to stay at the BBC with a £2million, two-year deal."


What possible reason could they have for including the nationality of his mother in that report...?

Laban said...

I don't care if his mother's a Mayan high priestess. The horsewhip and the duckpond are the only answer.

Anonymous said...

You have a...fondness...for Ms Garvey, I take it? :)

Anonymous said...

Well I found it informative, I had no idea he had a Croatian mother so my knowledge of the world has been increased by a tiny degree. Though I doubt her origins do have any relevence to the story.

However juliam do I take your straight faced disinterest in his origins as proof of your race-blind liberalism?

If you were American you would be arguing that Mexican immigrants are natural conservatives who are going to vote Republican any day now (though not actually doing so).

We have plenty of natural conservatives in the UK too. Muslims, Indians, Chinese they are all just queuing up to vote Tory are they not. I wonder what it is that stops them? Still as long as we keep pretending its all about politics and race has got nowt to do with it, everything will be A-OK!

Anonymous said...

"...juliam do I take your straight faced disinterest in his origins as proof of your race-blind liberalism?"

No, but you can take it as proof of my dislike of the 'Mail's biased 'not one of us' insinuations about the man in the article.

Not so surprising, either, given the extreme anti-man attitude of a lot of that paper's gossip journalists...

"If you were American you would be arguing.."

What a bizarre non sequitur! And if I were a tree sloth, I'd be eating leaves...

What's your point?

Anonymous said...

You know perfectly well what my point is but are, I presume, unable to frame a response which appears to be 'conservative' while maintaining an affirmation of your liberal view that race is an irrelevance.

In other words the world view of Jon Gaunt, Richard Littlejohn and the like.

Anonymous said...

"You know perfectly well what my point is but are, I presume, unable to frame a response which appears to be 'conservative' while maintaining an affirmation of your liberal view that race is an irrelevance."

No, I actually don't know what your point it. You don't seem to be able to communicate very well - perhaps you should stop looking for hidden meanings and coded messages, and just read the words? Just a thought...

'Race' didn't actually enter into this subject at all - I wasn't aware that Croatians were a different 'race', so much as a different nationality.

Anonymous said...

Julia M - what are you on about?
'An innuendo-laced hatchet job'?
Chiles' Croatian-ness is not secret, and the Mail's use of it is not sinister; it's just (to those who don't already know - he can hardly shut up about it himself) a mildly interesting and descriptive fact about him... like the word 'Brummie'. Unless that's also a 'not one of us insinuation'? Help! Nurse! How about you lie down somewhere quiet, or get some help, or just fuck off. I don't care which you do, but do one of them.

Anonymous said...

"Chiles' Croatian-ness is not secret, and the Mail's use of it is not sinister; it's just (to those who don't already know - he can hardly shut up about it himself) a mildly interesting and descriptive fact about him... like the word 'Brummie'. Unless that's also a 'not one of us insinuation'?"

Well, 'anon'at 9:04 didn't seem to know. And I can't say I'd ever seen it in any other publication. In fact, a quick google of news sources shows that even the BBC has only mentioned it in sports-related stories.

But perhaps the fragrant Ms Garvey is about to sign up for the football team to spite her workaholic husband, so maybe it is relevant after all... ;)

"Help! Nurse! How about you lie down somewhere quiet, or get some help, or just fuck off. I don't care which you do, but do one of them."

If the proprietor of this blog wishes me to do that, I presume he'll tell me, or ban me.

Your opinion on any subject connected with my coments here doesn't carry any weight with me...

Anonymous said...

Laban, I'm surprised at your attitude to women. That's no way to treat Jane Garvey. It wasn't her fault her West Bromwich supporting (different accent to Brummie) husband left her. So why a horsewhip?

Anonymous said...

juliam,

If the Mail believes Chiles isn't really one of them, why do they give so much work to the spectacularly pointless Petronella Wyatt.

Perhaps you should question your own prejudices.

Anonymous said...

I think the "mother is Croatian" bit is likely to be in there because of the journalistic habit of chucking in every known fact out of the cuttings file in order to bulk out the piece and get it finished as soon as possible.

Anonymous said...

The oddest regular insertion of guff is 'blonde'.

If the policeman's mistress or the embezzling secretary is brunette we don't need to know, but if she's blonde that crucial part of the story is ALWAYS relayed.

Anonymous said...

On a similar (related?) note - whenever the dangers of designer babies are being discussed it's always blonde haired, blue eyed babies that people are posited to want.

Thud said...

juliam...plenty of us here share the same opinion of you.

Anonymous said...

"..plenty of us here share the same opinion of you."

Then I'll reiterate my complete lack of concern over it for you.

But congrats on being able to complete the 'choose an identity' box correctly, at least that's more than 'anon's at 9:04 and 10:01 managed...

Squander Two said...

> The oddest regular insertion of guff is 'blonde'.

I think journalists are probably just desperate to use the only gender-varying adjective in English.


> whenever the dangers of designer babies are being discussed it's always blonde haired, blue eyed babies that people are posited to want.

Yeah, that always makes me laugh, because the people doing the positing always claim that they'd make a different choice themselves. It's always someone else who wants these babies.

Anonymous said...

"I think journalists are probably just desperate to use the only gender-varying adjective in English."

Those that know it varies. I wonder how many coming out of college in the last few years are aware of it...?

Anonymous said...

you can blame it on the Mail, but liberal media is just as bad when refering to groups they don't like.
They are never slow to point out when an 'American' company has done some misdeed.

I personally don't mind it, I find the modern media seriously lacking in their descriptions of people and groups, if I am reading a story on computer I almost always do a search for more info.