My dear friend and mentor Tyrone Temple has promised more memoirs following the brief glimpse into his childhood he gave us in The Life and Times of Mrs Joan Clarke.
Currently Mr Temple is enjoying his retirement soaking up the sun in Barbados. He intends to remain there until late December, returning to England shortly before Christmas.
The Bajun sun, he informs me, is so hot that he is barely able to pick up a pen to sign for the tonic water he is force to sip to keep hydrated as he lounges beside the pool of his luxury villa.
His laptop, he explained, when we spoke on the phone recently, has not taken well to the Caribbean heat and unfortunately is on the blink. He promises to delight us with more of his memoirs in the New Year.
In the meantime, Mr Temple’s secretary has rummaged through the archives and delivered to us a vintage article from the pen of Tyrone Temple, first published in 1993, which cast a penetrating eye over the state of British press during the last decade of the twentieth century.
Tits - And How to Get On Them!
And what's the point in glorifying names?
That's no sure escape from life's sordid shames;
'Spite being either cabbages or kings,
We're merely puppets on Dame Kismet's strings!
TEMPLE
Ruth Fortune is 16 and wants popular stardom. Personally, I can't understand it what with the media and unpopular stardom. You only have to look up the Annus Horribilis of our own dear royals, and at the occasional governments to see my point. Or more to the point, you only have to look at a newspaper, not necessarily read it. It's scandal after scandal after scandal - and much of that condoned.
Recently, Mr Tony Parsons, snapped, crackled and popped on in his regular weekly column in the Telegraph, bemoaning the fact that nowadays pop stars are not what they used to be; that when drugged-up they're too chilled out to hang loose with the hype pack, or make a name and nuisance of and for themselves cluttering up the bedchambers at Claridges.
His attitude seemed so sloppy it was as if he were trying to appeal to the average Star or Sport reader, or those who are "into" the new musical press which we have nowadays. He began his journalistic career, I believe, as a hair-stylist on the New Musical Express, pontificating whether the trend of the charts ought to be the Mr Rotten look, or Mr Numan, or Ms Oakey, or Ms Boy George, or what-have-you.
Now I like the Telegraph, and I like the Spectator even more, but recently, both organs have an appeal which seems positively tabloid, as if their writers have a fixation with speed freaks, just as the more popular "family" newspapers did with the craze for acid and ecstasy a few silly seasons of love ago, making it seem that nowadays the gospel according to journalists is the opiate of the masses - but I digress.
'I'm thinking', said Ruth, shocking me into alertness as she gobbled down a flake and tossed her head of shoulder length hair, 'Of having my tits done!'
Of course, I blame these newspapers she reads around her mates pads - they're all silicone tits and sex-lines! Is that what your average British family are into nowadays? I say "average" as I'm talking tabloid, therefore mass circulation, and I think that means "the masses".
In that case, why do journalists pick on social workers merely for doing their jobs? And our own dear royals?! They hack on about them complaining about the size of the Civil List until it shrinks to the size of a teenager’s giro, then when the royal family behaves exactly like your average British family, they get told to pull their jock straps up! What price royalty, eh? I don't envy them the job. What was it Shakespeare wrote - "Easily balds the pate that wears a crown!?". I take my hat off to them. And Fergie.
'You don't want to do that just yet, Ruth!', I told her, 'You ought to marry that Prince Edward, or at least get off with him. See what fame's all about first, my love, then get your tits done if you think you can handle it! Besides, you don't want to go to bed a showgirl only to wake up the next morning and find yourself on page three with a caption something like: "Cor!!! Look at Teddy's titties. Ruth, we think they're fantastic, but that's only because they were fashioned from plastic!" Do you now girl?' And she said that I must remember that she wanted to be a pop star and not a "modoll".
'Pop star or model', I explained, 'It's all the same thing to the media and public alike. Besides, you'll get paid to wear nice clothes and see the world, earning more money in a year than a student nurse could ever dream of earning in a life time!'
And anyway, wasn't she forgetting something such as her gender? Pop pundits would only be interested in her if she can behave like Sinitta and sound like a synthesiser! To which Ruth called me a "cube" and said that I was "living somewhere in the Eighties", and to remember that she wanted to be an underground pop star, leaving me wondering if she was trying to be either ironic, oxymoronic or both.
'Ruth dear', I pointed out to the dream child, 'if the "underground" was truly underground, it wouldn't be so popular; and the money to be made would be far more dangerous and a lot less lucrative!'
'Square! Square! Square! Square! Square!', she screamed like a Gatling gone wild.
'O go on then, get your tits done!' I said, 'but mark my words, you'll have two false tits, one wondrous hit, and end up being sampled by all and sundry from KWS to raregroovedom!'
And then I put it to her straight: 'Popular stardom or "fame" as it's more colloquially known, lasts fifteen minutes. The average attention span is but three. For the unfortunate audience, this leaves twelve full minutes of absolute ennui while you attention seek, either in the movies or pantomime, only to be told by the critics that as a singer you were merely "crap", but as a starlet you're about "as entertaining as a colostomy bag". And the only thing that they considered either "talent" or "personality" in the first place, were the tits you had implanted with silicone as a stargazing, gutter-press reading teenager!'
