National Treasures
Saturday morning. The quilt on our bed is a patchwork of pink and white, strewn with sections of the Weekend FT and Daily Telegraph. I hate the sectionalising of newspapers but I suppose it means that there is less fighting over the reading matter.
I have a fishing column in the FT but struggle to find it, even when I know it’s there. It’s the same with my column on work, buried as it is among the Thursday job ads. It must be like this if you work in the pastry room at Buckingham Palace. They give you a key and a pass but you have to know your place.
I’m reading a Telegraph column by Michael Henderson, discussing Alan Bennett and why someone like Bennett is perceived as a “national treasure” when someone like David Beckham, a footballer, is not.
Hearing that phrase uttered by Libby Purves on Radio Four is enough to set off my Bruxism. Describing certain well known people as national treasures has become such an overused piece of journalese. But presenters and journalists can’t help themselves. They’re seeking a form of veneration that identifies with the zeitgeist. Blimey: Bruxism, zeitgeist? Has this blog suddenly developed pretensions?
Henderson probably did a better job of explaining the thing without resorting to fancy language. He gave some examples too and I would agree with most of them.
In this celebrity-obsessed age it’s comforting to single out people we admire, whose work and behaviour has entered the national consciousness in a way that has nothing to do with the shallow results of a photographic ambush.
Our national treasures are the sort of people who get shortlisted for Desert Island discs, but there is a fine and almost undefinable line to be drawn between those who make the grade and those who are not quite there. A lot of it, I think, is about the relationship with the ego. Of course our national treasures have egos, often quite big egos, but they're not giant egos that are out of control.
It helps, of course to be in middle age or beyond. In fact that’s probably essential.
Jamie Oliver is getting close to making the grade. I know he is detested by some but his recent food activism on chickens and school food have singled him out as someone who is his own man. Authenticity is a base ingredient.
David Attenborough is the real McCoy; so is Bill McClaren, Murray Walker and Harry Carpenter. How is that so many commentators make the grade? I think it has something to with rubbing shoulders with greatness in a way that enforces the preservation of modesty.
Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin? Never in a million years. Jeremy Clarkson. God no. It would ruin his laddish image. Dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench – absolutely. Helen Mirren? Debatable, but I'd like to think so. Like Clarkson, I imagine she might throw up at the very suggestion.
Mollie Sugden and Jean Alexander are both well qualified national treasures for the simple reason that they are northerners. It’s more difficult to reach treasuredom as a southerner.
From football I would choose Sir Bobby Robson and Nobby Stiles. From telly land, Michael Palin, having already mentioned Attenborough. There’s Chris Bonnington from mountaineering. From the radio it would have to be Humphrey Lyttelton, the quintessential national treasure – warm, friendly, intelligent but cheeky to the point of being subversive.
Ian Hislop? Almost, whether he likes it or not. Boris Johnson? No, no and thrice more no. Sadly in business we are not there yet; not Branson, not Sugar, not even Sir John Harvey-Jones. It’s difficult also to feel warm about politicians. Henderson suggested Sir Denis Healey. I suppose so.
Does the US, I wonder, have national treasures? Not many. I would single out Chuck Yeager, Clint Eastwood, Betty Ford, Hunter S Thompson and George Foreman. Mohammed Ali is on another plane of international treasures shared by a very few, such as Nelson Mandela and Sir Edmund Hillary.
The great thing about the national treasure game is that it is wholly subjective with no obvious rules and yet we all understand the concept. It’s part of the national psyche to appreciate a treasure when we see one.
I have a fishing column in the FT but struggle to find it, even when I know it’s there. It’s the same with my column on work, buried as it is among the Thursday job ads. It must be like this if you work in the pastry room at Buckingham Palace. They give you a key and a pass but you have to know your place.
I’m reading a Telegraph column by Michael Henderson, discussing Alan Bennett and why someone like Bennett is perceived as a “national treasure” when someone like David Beckham, a footballer, is not.
Hearing that phrase uttered by Libby Purves on Radio Four is enough to set off my Bruxism. Describing certain well known people as national treasures has become such an overused piece of journalese. But presenters and journalists can’t help themselves. They’re seeking a form of veneration that identifies with the zeitgeist. Blimey: Bruxism, zeitgeist? Has this blog suddenly developed pretensions?
Henderson probably did a better job of explaining the thing without resorting to fancy language. He gave some examples too and I would agree with most of them.
In this celebrity-obsessed age it’s comforting to single out people we admire, whose work and behaviour has entered the national consciousness in a way that has nothing to do with the shallow results of a photographic ambush.
Our national treasures are the sort of people who get shortlisted for Desert Island discs, but there is a fine and almost undefinable line to be drawn between those who make the grade and those who are not quite there. A lot of it, I think, is about the relationship with the ego. Of course our national treasures have egos, often quite big egos, but they're not giant egos that are out of control.
It helps, of course to be in middle age or beyond. In fact that’s probably essential.
Jamie Oliver is getting close to making the grade. I know he is detested by some but his recent food activism on chickens and school food have singled him out as someone who is his own man. Authenticity is a base ingredient.
David Attenborough is the real McCoy; so is Bill McClaren, Murray Walker and Harry Carpenter. How is that so many commentators make the grade? I think it has something to with rubbing shoulders with greatness in a way that enforces the preservation of modesty.
Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin? Never in a million years. Jeremy Clarkson. God no. It would ruin his laddish image. Dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench – absolutely. Helen Mirren? Debatable, but I'd like to think so. Like Clarkson, I imagine she might throw up at the very suggestion.
Mollie Sugden and Jean Alexander are both well qualified national treasures for the simple reason that they are northerners. It’s more difficult to reach treasuredom as a southerner.
From football I would choose Sir Bobby Robson and Nobby Stiles. From telly land, Michael Palin, having already mentioned Attenborough. There’s Chris Bonnington from mountaineering. From the radio it would have to be Humphrey Lyttelton, the quintessential national treasure – warm, friendly, intelligent but cheeky to the point of being subversive.
Ian Hislop? Almost, whether he likes it or not. Boris Johnson? No, no and thrice more no. Sadly in business we are not there yet; not Branson, not Sugar, not even Sir John Harvey-Jones. It’s difficult also to feel warm about politicians. Henderson suggested Sir Denis Healey. I suppose so.
Does the US, I wonder, have national treasures? Not many. I would single out Chuck Yeager, Clint Eastwood, Betty Ford, Hunter S Thompson and George Foreman. Mohammed Ali is on another plane of international treasures shared by a very few, such as Nelson Mandela and Sir Edmund Hillary.
The great thing about the national treasure game is that it is wholly subjective with no obvious rules and yet we all understand the concept. It’s part of the national psyche to appreciate a treasure when we see one.
Labels: Bill McClaren, Bobby Robson, Damien Hirst, helen Mirren, Humphrey Lyttelton, Hunter S Thompson, Judi Dench, Michael Palin, Nobby Stiles, Sir Chris Bonnington, Sir Edmund Hillary, Tracey Emin
posted by Richard Donkin at
12:47 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home