Peter Rhodes: A banned hymn and outrage overload
OUR changing language. "Journey" used to mean travelling from one place to another. Today, it is a useful term to explain dodgy behaviour in your past. Thus, if you are an MP caught using homophobic insults, or pinching your secretary's bottom, you simply look a bit sad and explain: "I have been on a journey."In other words, I was a bad boy long ago but I'm much better now, so please don't sack me.
IT is an interesting fact that nobody ever admits to having been on this sort of journey until they are caught.
WORD of warning. "I have been on a journey" may be a handy defence for groping and inappropriate language, but it's no use if you're caught on a train without a ticket.
THIS is the time of year when strange priests start popping up. In the lead-up to Christmas, you can bet your life some spoilsport vicar will tell a group of toddlers there's no Father Christmas. But before that we have the annual ceremony of vicars trying to spoil Remembrance Sunday. This year a church in Leicestershire has banned Onward Christian Soldiers on the grounds that it may offend other faiths. As is often the case in such parish-pump rows, the other faiths seem quite bemused by it all. And if you read the words of Onward Christian Soldiers ("At the name of Jesus / Satan's host doth flee"), you'll find that the only person who could possibly take offence is Satan. Mind you, in these Snowflake times, even offending Satan may be regarded as unhelpful.
I'M reminded of the French philosopher Voltaire on his deathbed in 1778. A priest urged the great man to renounce the Devil and all his works. Voltaire replied that this was no time to start making enemies.
IN yesterday's column I may not have been sufficiently offended by Michael Gove's joke about Harvey Weinstein's bedroom. You want offence? Okay, here's a load of offence I have taken from recent TV programmes. Once you deliberately set out to be offended it's amazing what you can find. Darcy Bussell appeared as a sexy Little Red Riding Hood in Strictly Come Dancing (BBC1) - tasteless, or what? Why was a naked woman publicly executed in Gunpowder (BBC1) when the only historical case of such an execution was in private with the accused dressed? Who approved the gratuitous orgy scene in Electric Dreams (C4)? How on earth did a comedy routine of Irish jokes, implying the Irish are thick, come to be broadcast on prime-time BBC?
THE Irish jokes? They were performed by the late Pat Mooney in last week's repeat showing of The Good Old Days from 1979 (BBC4). It was the most politically incorrect thing I've seen for ages.
TO be honest, I thought Mooney's routine was excellent. I laughed like a drain. You see, I've been on this journey . . .
