“The meaning of the dance?
Don’t ask the dancer.
The meaning of life?
God never gives an answer...”
From Pensees de Bachchoo

My late father, a military man, would read the newspapers of a morning and, in response especially to reports of the hoarding of food, would inevitably opine that the hoarders “ought to be lined up against a wall and shot”.

In all other respects he was for Gandhian non-violence, which was strange because he had been in the Second World War and fought the Japanese. But he was sure that hoarders understood only the language of a bullet in the head.
Last week Jeremy Clarkson, a British TV presenter with a very successful BBC programme on cars and driving, was asked on live TV what he thought of the national strike that day by public sector workers such as teachers, nurses, fireman and others. He said, “I think they ought to be lined up and shot in full view of their families.” The broadcast was picked up by the rest of the media, by the strikers’ leaders and by Opposition politicians who reacted with venom bordering on hysteria. They called for the BBC to sack him.
Mr Clarkson happens to be a personal friend of Prime Minister David Cameron. Mr Cameron himself had said in Parliament that afternoon that the strike against measures taken by his government seemed to have been “a damp squib”, by which he presumably meant that strikers’ objective of a UK-bandh hadn’t worked. A large percentage of schools were closed and ambulance services were severely disrupted, but the prediction, for instance that the airports would be paralysed by striking immigration officers, hadn’t come about. Asked about Mr Clarkson, Mr Cameron said he was just being silly. It was a frivolous remark, a joke.
I saw the broadcast as it first went out and thought exactly that. Mr Clarkson was being self-consciously silly and outrageous. The joke wasn’t funny and though my sympathies were and are with most actions taken against the present coalition government’s policies, I didn’t feel the temperature rise under my collar. Mr Clarkson publicly apologised, saying he meant no offence.
He is a public buffoon and in the tradition of British public buffoons he was playing his role and must have thought he was earning the £1.7 million the BBC reportedly pays him. The fact that he was making a joke about people who were striking against a cut in their pensions, which wouldn’t in a lifetime amount to a quarter of what he earned in a year, was crass but didn’t quite deserve the reaction it got.
Ed Miliband, the leader of the Labour Party, was very forward and harsh in his condemnation. It was the second time I thought Mr Miliband had misjudged the temper of the country. He should have called a buffoon a buffoon instead of berating his stupid remark as some sort of Hitlerite strategy of execution.
The last time he misjudged (in my humble opinion) the “humour” of the country was when he objected to a remark the Prime Minister made in the House of Commons. The Prime Minister was responding to a somewhat ranting question from an angry woman Labour MP.
Mr Cameron, standing at the despatch box from which Prime Ministers answer parliamentary questions, using a superciliously patronising tone, urged the interrupting MP to “calm down, dear!”
Now this phrase is a direct and famous lift from a TV advertisement for insurance in which a famous, or notorious, film director-turned-commercial-actor called Michael Winner urges the female character playing opposite him to do exactly that. “Calm down, dear,” in Winner’s mock-exasperated high-pitched voice has become a catch phrase and the Prime Minister was attempting something of a sarcastic joke.
But oh no! The feminists and their supporters in Parliament exploded. The liberal media followed expressing outage. The Leader of the Opposition, the same Mr Miliband, either demanded an apology, the dissolution of the government or that Mr Cameron do the honourable thing by committing hara-kiri (I can’t quite remember which).
Watching the performance on TV it was very plain to see that the Prime Minister was, as he said about Mr Clarkson, being silly and getting a laugh from his backbenchers and drawn breaths from the Opposition. The incident and others like them in contemporary public life of Britain indicate that the legendary British sense of humour isn’t what it was. Perhaps it has just been eroded by an unduly solemn duty of political correctness.
Contrast this Indian story: Some years ago I was asked when in Delhi to interview a psychiatrist lady who had written a book called The Kama Sutra for Women.
The “studio”, a famous restaurant in real life, was packed with all ages of women as the author and I faced them and the cameras. I began by asking why “for women” as it took two to tango. The discussion progressed decently till I was, pre-prompted by the director of the programme, asked to give my own opinions.
I said something like, “In my short and happy life and as an elder of the Asian community, I have found that men give love to get sex and women give sex to get love.” I half meant it, I suppose, though I hadn’t worked out that formula till that moment.
There was a furious reaction from the female audience. Though there were some unmentionable rude shouts I took the general mood to be one of disagreement. I raised my hand for calm and said I was very gratified to receive such a response to my observation, because if any lady in the audience wanted sex in exchange for sex she should please leave her name and phone number with the attendants at the door.
Sad. There was not one volunteer.
I am sure, or so I told myself, that that was owing to the advanced sense of humour of Indian women who discerned it was not a serious invitation.