Shredded!
Silly Carol Thatcher for blabbing in the green room. She should have known that it would be full of smarmy sensitive stoolpigeons of heightened political correctness who'd never *heard* of the sprightly woolly gog on Robertson's marmalade.
"She made a light aside about this tennis player and his similarity to the golliwog on the jampot when she was growing up."
Exactly the comparison I would have drawn - and do - if I come across anyone with that tight curly coiffure.
Come to think of it, I've never actually heard the whole word used as an insult. When I arrived at my posh prep school, it was always 'wog' that was directed at me.
Anyway, the usual brouhaha that the press will pounce on in a fit of righteous indignation and of course the Beeb has to huff and puff after the Ross affaire - not that it has done him any harm, the blighter.
But I'm like Carol: every time I hear the word, I think of that super little chappie on my marmalade of whom one could collect badges and the like. It never occurred to us that he might have been born under sunnier skies.
If *only* I'd kept a few, how proudly I'd wear one on my lapel today, not to mention attached to my guitar strings and dangling from the cell phone. Damn! It's like my old Dinky coronation coach that my gran gave me and which I used in all my war games with those tin soldiers:
Good days.
WolliGate: Back to the subject in hand, I'm immensely cheered to hear that some of the great unwashed are actually complaining about the ban. Quite right, too: I was under the impression that Jo-Wilfried Tsonga's curly mop reminded Carol of the dusky Robertson fellah, not that she actually called him a woolly gog outright.
Rather a handsome cove; touch of the Cassius Clay.
Blimey! First Prince Harry's KhakiGate, now this.
Hunt the Gollie: This really does seem to be sprouting legs.
His "Victoria's Travels" from the fine house of Frederick Muller was for many years the perfect gift to take to maiden aunts, country house weekends and the like.
To boot, she's only trying to give our side a good name by pretending we meant they were "Worthy " Oriental Gemmun.
(Chortle. As if! 'Pon my soul, what a preposterous proposition.)
I left a discreet correction on her blog which I'm sure she'll take in the right spirit and ignore me as just another Wilful Old Grump.
Anorak mag (laff!) now tells me that it was Andy 'Too Good to Hurry' Murray to whom Carol was referring.
Give us a break: He's not even a tinted shade of pale.
What the fuck is the BBC playing at?
At least let the Thatcherism have been about someone with a decent tan.
And she's wrong: Murray's unruly locks are nothing like a golli-cut. We wuz robbed.
Still with the Guardian, little Sammy Leith en forme with his reminder of Uncle Ben etc.
You know, I'd often wondered about that as I cruised the supermarket aisles ... Unca Ben, Aunt Jemima, all those cute Asiennes beckoning us to chop their sticks. Then there's wily ol' Rowan Faginson treading the boards, oy veh.
Yes, as I say, images like Mr Golly are/were our mental landscape, just there as reference points. That's not to say I don't find Carol's comparison a bit far-fetched. I have many pals with fuzzy hair - good heavens, the stalwart Paul Gude has a fine head of tight curls - and I'm sure I've complimented or envied them in every way I can think, but the image has never come to mind of the Golly that's at the heart of this furore. Even my blackest friends don't stir images of marmalade. Very odd that Carol should come up with that one and if it *wasn't* someone with a touch of colour in his cheeks, odder still. Nowt as quare as folks, aye?
Darkie Toothpaste: I knew there was something this whole Golligate rumpus reminded me of - Black Man Toothpaste. Of course!
Back in my Hong Kong days, all of us grew up keeping our gnashers gleaming thanks to 'Darkie'.
I even took crates back after each summer hol as bribes for the prefects and anyone else who bashed me up.
Then one day in the early '80s, old timers like me in the colony were shocked - shocked - at the news that Darkie would be no more and that it was being re-branded under the spineless 'Darlie' moniker.
There was immediate panic buying and the shelves were stripped bare by frantic souvenir hunters (I still have my paste 'n'brush memorial pack.
Hot on the heels of this drastic move came full-page adverts in the Chinese press - included by clever Wiki - reassuring readers that:
" ... the Chinese name of the brand, "黑人牙膏" (in English, "Black Man Toothpaste"), had not changed.In fact, a Chinese-language advertising campaign reassured customers that "Black Man Toothpaste is still Black Man Toothpaste".
This is because the term "黑人" does not have any negative meaning in Chinese. The phrase 黑人 (hēi rén) in Chinese is a general term for persons of African descent."
Full page advertisements, no less, which I found astonishing enough to buy a dozen copies and send the relevant paqe to pals back home, most of whom framed them for decor in the loo.
Sinosplice : Thanks to researching G-gate, I've got to know the excellent Sinosplice where not only appears a good pic of the before and after branding but also a quote from Toothpaste World:
"Hong Kong’s Hazel & Hawley Chemical Co. would probably still be hawking Darkie toothpaste had the company not been acquired by Colgate. The Darkie brand’s Al Jolson-inspired logo, a grinning caricature in blackface and a top hat, was as offensive as its name. Colgate bought the company in 1985, and then ditched the logo and changed the product’s name to Darlie after US civil rights groups protested. However, the Cantonese name - Haak Yahn Nga Gou [黑人牙膏] (Black Man Toothpaste) - remains."
Was Thatcher being racist? - TimesOnline's shrewd Dan Finkelstein cuts thru the crap and applies the Malcolm Gladwell Test.
A Better Britain - At last the ball is rolling for real and we have passed Gladwell's tipping point. Out of the woodwork comes every Dave, Dick and Jamal to use Golligate as a springboard for memories of racially epitheted childhoods.
Remember the famous Monty Python Four Yorkshiremen sketch with self-satisfied northerners outdoing each other over who'd had the roughest upbringing? Hilarious. Well, we're fast reaching the point of Golly Fatigue from the outpourings of scribblers vying to tell a sadder story.
If this was a whiter shade of problem, the media bosses would have stemmed the drivel long ago; as it is, they're too scared of their woollier staff to nay-say them their bleat and a weary nation is goaded towards rivers of even gollier epithets than the original.
A muddle-headed Dave Matthews talks of inviting a 'chastened' Thatcher to "hang out ... meet some real people, clear the air and learn a little about modern Britain. We won't bite."
What? As in gathering round the cauldron for a tasty chomp? Dude! What a cannibalistic remark - lucky Davy has his photo up there to confirm his credentials for such a snipe. I'd like to see whitey get away with a crack like that.
I don't think the problem is mixing with real people or meeting Modern Britain so much as keeping her (and moi) away from reminders of confectionery of our youth. If I'm reading Mr Matthews right, the 'real' people he has in mind will trigger exactly the images and indiscretions as popped up in the first place and we'll be back to square one, no tom-toms, no passing Go, certainly no popping into the Green Room for a loose-lipped reviving tincture.
5 comments :
Thank you for the mention, 'Busker', but alas, you touch a nerve because whilst I am an avid reader of history I have never got around to my namesake. Another entry on the 'must do' list.
Cool, David. At least *I* have found a cool blog to monitor.
Thanks for yr prompt reply.
An enjoyable rant. I have a problem withbottled water. Simon
yes, i needed something else when i found paki-gate was going nowhere. wo-gate has super pics and silly remarks and has turned out quite nicely altho i've had to force myself to carry on after it turned silly. i imagine it irking someone or one of the key players tunes.
sorry about the bottled water. we see people with heaped trolleys and forget that people *buy* water here. yikes, what an expense and what happens when it runs out? back to diellas or wherever, i guess.
So what do you make amid our feeble grumbles of Ed Balls - once called the cleverest man in the UK - saying unguardedly that the current crisis will last decades, bids to be worse than the 30s and equals at least the banking crisis of a century ago? And the Broon saying it was a slip of the tongue when he said 'depression' the other day. Cold wind's gonna blow but it could mean the end of bottled water and frivilous consumerism. Now ye ken! S
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