Auschwitz, Cocaine, Humphrys.

John Humphrys interviewed a holocaust survivor this morning, an eighty-five year old Jewish woman living in South Africa. He was polite and mild but the framing of his questions indicated a perverse negative bent to his own human condition. Yes he’s always been a nob-head but his personal perversion was particularly evident in contrast to this gentle, wise survivor of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Where he tried to elicit anger, hatred, bitter memories and tears she continued serenely on like a swan being pelted by stones from a stupid young lad on the canal bank. Where she had decided to put the experience to one side and build a new, happy and successful life for herself he wanted to perpetuate the dreadful drama into new existence for the ‘entertainment’ of his audience. Where maturity is the loss of our own personal dramas he was using Radio 4 to perpetuate them in a multitude of listeners. It’s often said that ‘all drama is conflict’, and that’s true where a never-ending soap, to be never ending, requires its protagonists to be constantly kept in a maze of destructive karmic stasis. Drama pre the 1950’s was based on the resolution of conflict, on the opportunities, taken or not, for maturity. The current definition considers this exit strategy an impossibility. Currently in Big Brother an impossibly immature couple jointly called Speidi, though universally hated, have made it to the final because they’re ‘entertaining.’ Might the British public be beginning to value loathsome ignorance more than enlightened maturity for its better entertainment value? If so the next series should be a house full of cocaine addicts freshly plucked from both the gutter and financial institutions with Big Brother turning the supply tap on and off from ‘all you can eat’ to none at all. I take it all back, that should be made. And whether he’s a user or not put John Humphrys in there too. I’d watch that.