I’m always surprised at the amount of personal feedback that appearing on BBC Radio 4 generates. Programmes like Today clearly have a greater influence than, for example, Resonance FM, another radio station I’ve recorded material for recently (and over the past few years). That said, while Resonance has a smaller audience than Radio 4, I personally spend more time listening to the lesser known station. A few days ago, 29 December 2008, I appeared on a pre-recorded Today feature about “what the avant-garde stands for in the 21st Century”. Tom McCarthy and Hari Kunzru were interviewed alongside me, and we’d all been invited along by guest editor Zadie Smith.
I find the way the BBC treats me in comparison to other guests interesting. I’ve been told in the past that I’ll never be taken seriously by the BBC because I have an unacceptable south London accent; some regional accents such as Cockney are considered okay, and others such as south London or Brummie aren’t. So little surprise that there was a lot less of me speaking once the Today piece had been edited than there was of Tom McCarthy and Hari Kunzru who don’t have regional accents.
Likewise, the questions I was asked showed that unlike the other two guests, I wasn’t to be taken seriously. So one question included the assertion that few people had heard of me. True, but few people have heard of Tom McCarthy or Hari Kunzru either; in fact few people have heard of much better known cultural figures such as Iain Sinclair or Andy Warhol. However, the assertion that I am an obscure figure was misleadingly framed to make it look like it didn’t apply to Kunzru and McCarthy. And while the BBC ran McCarthy’s and Kunzru’s answers pretty much as they gave them, mine were more heavily edited, with the start of my answers missing. For example, Today had me saying people can get narrative from kung fu and zombie movies. This was an observation that followed on from me pointing out that just as photography made realist painting redundant and led to abstraction, so we now got our fictional story narratives from cinema, and therefore novels need to do something that film can’t. The main point was lost, the subsidiary one retained.
No one was trying to set set me up; this is just how Radio 4 processes people. And it should surprise no one that I am treated shabbily compared to those who have public school and Oxbridge backgrounds. This is no reason not to appear on Radio 4 but it is worth pointing out. My view is that the producers, interviewers and editors are unaware of their own prejudice.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: accents, avant-garde, editing, Hari Kunzru, Oxbridge, public school, Radio 4, Resonance FM, Stewart Home, Today show, Tom McCarthy, Zadie Smith
Perhaps this will work, let’s give a go…
“You are posting comments too quickly. Slow down.
Wordpress”
WOO HOO!!!!
I can’t honestly say I haven’t done any stats on representation of Oxbridge ideopaths on Today. But in many establishments that tendency does tend to prevail, lecturers – particularly at Oxbridge
, judiciary, secret service, civil service. But all homosocial networks are self propagating/perpetuating. Look at the incidence of doctors who are doctor’s sons? I have an eroded accent (Welsh) and I don’t feel particularly vistimised for it. Victimised by being Welsh, yes. But as a nation we have always been subjugated and sxploited by the mongrel English. Actually ask any Celt… Of course i don’t have a ‘born within the sound of Bow Bells’ accent so am not particulalry sensitive to it. I would like to think I can extract the content from the delivery and that is why writing in many repects is a purer medium IF you get published. I am currently interested n aggregation of syereotypes in social networks like FB, MySpace and ‘professional’ netwoks like LinkedIn and ki-work. My graph theory isn’t good enough to extend the formal mathematical representaion (academic) but conceptusally its not difficult. Oh, and for the record i am not a product of Oxbridge but did do collabrative research with a lab at CAmbridge (Scottish Prof and an Australian and American post doc) so i don’t really buy the regional/national arguments. Often it is percieved rather than actual but you would have to get the opinion of a social scientist on preception as it all rods cones and neurons to me 
TP
Home is totally right — of course, it isn’t a conspiracy, as such — Sure, a few regional grammar school lads get through the net, and a few lads with regional accents do too — but you can be certain the majority of decision makers at the BBC , The Guardian, Independent,British Council, Penguin and other publishers etc, are from an LSE/Oxbridge/St Andrews and Public School background etc. I know that is so, because I have worked in these places and been around these people for years, decades in some cases of close friendships/family links etc. I have also been through the entire “Journalism/Publishing” education system ,right up to PHD level — I KNOW how it works.
Trust me , it’s a rigged game. England has been run like it for generations, and it isn’t going to change overnight. You are either in the “group” or you are outside the circle. Of course, now and again, some of those chinless wonders “on the inside circle” may sense instintively that someone “outside the circle” is willing to be subservient to their world view, or willing to do anything it takes to “be one of them” and they are occasionaly allowed in.
Also, sometimes the “inner circle” allow a handful of token people in who may look “hip” to be around. EG a tiny handful of “real working class people” may very occasionaly be allowed in, ( though middle class people with mockney accents are usually the preferred option a la Jupitus, Keith Allen and countless other frauds ), or a guy or two with dreads around the BBC offices is usually seen as “nicely hip”.
I know — I have worked in these offices.
It’s a very very controlled, coerced game, and as Stewart says, a lot of it is carried out at a subconscious level. Those who run the game aren’t even aware of the prejudice/fakery — it’s mostly subconscious/naively carried out — but it’s still there like a fucking wall, and has been in place since BBC newsreaders wore dinner jackets and bow tie to read the radio news in the 1930′s.
What was that Harry Enfield skit? Oh yeah, jolly nice, but dim.
Oh but most of us don’t have a private education… taking the two other writers talking and the guest editor, I understand I’m the only one to go to a state school (secondary modern). I’m also under the impression the other three went to Oxford, whereas I didn’t attend a university and don’t have a degree… But my educational background would match the majority of those born in the UK if you took the average age of the writers (with me as the oldest), so why do those selected not match the educational experiences of most people??? Most of us didn’t have a private education, so how come those that did are so over represented both in this instance and in general in the media and publishing??
I agree with you Stewart, as I wrote above. The power rests with those who are upper middle class, and has done for generations and generations, and those people at the top only really and truly take seriously their own kind — those who live in similar houses,similar areas ( Kew, Richmond, Guidlford, Sloane Sq) , went to similar colleges and schools, have parents in similar ( rich) jobs such as company bosses, bankers, lawyers,media owners, advertising agency owners,army officers etc.
That’s the truth.
That IS the truth.
Now and again, some “rough untutored sorts” are allowed through the net, if they are subservient enough, or look to fit a role, but not often.
I really and truly believe that the old class roles we all used to be given in the past still hold sway, very powerfully so — upper class people join the army, banks, law,medicine etc, middle class are lowly clerks and office drones, perhaps at best, school or office managers etc, and the working class are , well they might as well fuck off somewhere for all anyone cares where they live or work…..
That’s why the “mockney figure” is so popular with the middle/upper classes — its a chim chimi-neee chim chim cheroo knees up muvva brahn stereotype the upper middle classes can live with and manipulate — but real working class men and women, white people, or black British people, are an all round too scary and unpredictable a propostion. I mean, who knows what those oiks and rough untutored sorts might actually do, our say on our airwaves and in our newspapers?
I warned you about entering BBC property without a silver-lined crombie and a collander on your head. Clearly the effect has been to make you feel as you’ve stepped up even further into ‘serious author’ territory and will soon be guesting on ‘The Panel Show With A Thousand Names but the same licence-fee-paying empowered-bourge cast and listeners’. Smash The Archers NOW!!!
Oh but it was a hot day for the time of year and I wore my Harrington…. and now Sharon is sleep typing….
fuck those fake cocks man u are the real thing baby those prix wouldnt know wot avantegarde porn woz if it bit them on the arse holes . reminds me of when asher-d was on radio4 – and this wanker whiteman presenter was quoting his lyrics – and while he couldn’t say the word ‘fuck’ he had no problem saying ‘nigger’ – yes they are racist bourgeois idiot prix and they don’t even know it – well done for managing to go in to the belly of the shitty beast bruv. i’m not suprised that man who gets £1million advance for his books reckons that he has stepped outside history too. fuck em all man they gonna burn.
Well I am clearly paddling in the shallows. Now where’s my towel…
Hari Kunzru is a Situationist wizard — I saw him danicng about in a shamanic trance in Tescos, pretending to be Hugo Ball,who was, as we know a true Dada Wizard.
Hey Tone, you probably did the right thing going into science, less class prejudice about those there that cut the mustard but didn’t go to public school. Keep on keepin’ on!
Lucky it wasn’t Waitrose or you’d have all blown your credibility!
Yes, the sad thing is I saw him later in Marks and Spencer’s with a wig, pretending to be Madame Blavatsky — I mean, that’s just cretinous — he could at least have pretended to be, I dunno, Colonel Henry Steel Olcott.
Kunzru had a scrap with the check out lad because he hadn’t attended Oxford apparently. The bloke struck him about the head with an out of date banana.
hey, good to see you’ve started a blog, Stewart.
Colin Wilson, the occult writer, completely agrees with you. He believes he wasn’t taken seriously for exactly the same reasons.
The snobbery in this country is appalling.
Fuck ‘em.
Phil Jupitus was also there — he has now developed a great Knees up Muvva Braaahhhn routine with Lily Allen’s dad and Skinner in Baddiel, who are also wuuuurrrrrkkking clllaassss.
Oh I read with Colin Wilson once, but I’m afraid I don’t take him seriously either but not because of his background. However, he suffers from an unacceptable form of elitism when he uses phrases like “the average plumber or stockbroker” in “The Outsider” to differentiate himself from what in his sub-Nietzschean fantasies he presumably sees as “the many too many”, “the rabble” and “the butchered and botched”…..
Nietzsche,besides some undeniable insights, I find to be really overrated.Preposterous — I find his concept of the Übermensch irritating/annoying. A lot of what Nietzsche exalts as a higher being/overman/ Übermensch — I’d just call intolerant thuggery, elitism, or as representing the kind of morons who thought smashing Jewish shops in the Krystalnacht, and going in for book burning was “a great thing”. Also,in the intro to TWILIGHT OF THE IDOLS Nietzsche makes it clear that he intentionally, frequently, enjoyed sending readers off on the wrong scent/trail in his works,contradicting himself, or setting up flawed arguments– WTF??? Sorry, I don’t have time to wade through his books to find out when “he meant it” and was saying something worth me devoting my time to — or when he was f**** with his readers.
Schopenhaur was a miserable misanthrope but far , far superior.
shrieking toad howling wizard
Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!
He is the shrieking toad howling wizard,loose on the world, free from his cave.
shrieking toad howling wizard,quivering with his chagrin at the world,let loose in woolworths,hooting and guffawing with a mystic gleeeeee……
toot toot!
Who is the blimmin Howling Wizard Shrieking Toad?
You tell me!
Hi Stewart, I seem to remember you took the piss out of me once on a public chat show/discussion panel — I think,I in return called you a nasty Situationist skinhead. Oh well –
Oh, and yes, I did attend Oxford too.
See you at the next psychogeographic event old chap.
Duplicate comment detected; it looks as though you’ve already said that!
Well that was very Selfless Will. I am interested in the notion that science is any less elitist, though I suppose it is more of a meritocracy, but peer review of scientific publishing is just as fraught. That after all was the reason for the concept of the thesis in that it is a form of protection to allow publication of what may be heretical expression. I was advised by an externalexaminer to remove a defamatory comment about a word processor manufacurer du jour (this was in the days of the daisy wheel printer) when it took a bloody lifetime to print even a realtively simple equation. I was allowed to keep it in because I felt I could defend the fact it WAS the most idiosyncratic word processor in the world. I was also allowed to keep the acknowledgement thanking my then girlfriend for allowing me to be a kept man, her lovely big smile and lentil bolognese on the grounds that scientists were allowed to express emotions
They let me off the cartoons as they didn’t really understand my statistical methods either. It seemed obvious to me to use models of diffuse light scattering in clouds in the field of astronomy and reflectance in photographic papers to the biophysics of the propagation of light in highly diffusing plant tissues (http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/119530375/PDFSTART) , which also had implications in laser surgery so lateral thinking is a plus in science and why Richard Feynman is my hero!
That said, the ordering of authors on paper in learned journals (all my best stuff was collaborative) is a politically charged matter! i am now much more interested in the public understanding of science but Wiley didn’t like the various incarnation of my proto-book title of “Science: What if it’s all been a Big Fat Lie?” or “Sciconoclasm” which is still unique on Google. The latest idea is even more obtuse but I’m still working on it… TP
Tony, are you sure that wasn’t you coming on here as Will Self? I knew Will Self’s wife Deborah for years before he even met her… but I’d still be surprised to find him commenting on here… Besides look at the wags coming on here and leaving comments with my name on them…. Web 2.0 just multiplies the opportunities for anti-capitalist schizophrenia, it’s a groove sensation!
Oh look, Radio 2 does cut-ups as well:
BBC sorry for ‘misquoting’ expert’s views – Edited broadcast was ‘opposite’ of original view
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jan/11/bbc-radio-religion
looks like one of the editors must have been reading up on detournement!