« This blog will NOT die..... | Main | The night Dale Winton saved my life.... »

September 10, 2006

How do you solve a problem like Ignorance?

Yeah I know, two posts in one day, it’s just like the good old days and everything.

But something’s been bothering me all day. It started last night when watching the National Lottery In It To Win It thing on TV.

OK so perhaps I had better take you a little further back, for I am sure you are wondering why I chose to watch such utter drivel above anything else I could have been doing at the time, like yanking my eyeballs out with a pair of blunt pliers for instance. The truth is my daughter has taken to watching How To Solve a Problem Like Maria, she likes singing along to all the songs from the musicals and happens to think that Andrew Lloyd Webber has found the formula for the perfect pop song, if only her mother could find it and adapt it to the novel or the short story then maybe we would all be rich and her mummy would not have to go through the humiliation of being turned down for hundreds and hundreds of jobs. Oh and now that Abi has gone, she really thinks that Connie should be Maria. That’s what she says anyway and I’m sticking to it.

Anyway this Lottery thing fell between the two (yes TWO) indulgences of ....Maria and well what the hell we thought that we might as well leave it on. That is until I the following exchange graced my screen;

DALE WINTON Boo Radley is a character in which novel, published in 1960?

CONTESTANT 1 Oooh I don’t know (Confers with CONTESTANT 2)

CONTESTANT 2 I think it’s Pride and Prejudice

CONTESTANT 1 Oh yes that’s right (To Dale) Pride and Prejudice

DALE WINTON (To give him his credit) Are you sure?

BOTH CONTESTANTS Oh yes we are sure.

DALE WINTON Am I taking Pride and Prejudice as your answer?

BOTH CONTESTANTS Oh yes!

I know what you’re thinking, you probably think that I sat there and smugly laughed at the fact that there are not one but TWO people in the world who think that Jane Austen was still alive in 1960. Nope dear reader I cried, because I didn’t need them to get it right as such, a vague answer from roughly the same era; Of Mice and Men perhaps or Catcher in the Rye. It would’ve done. It’s a bit like the guy who thought that Robert Graves wrote ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ Now that’s just fine by me. Robert Graves was a war poet and a bonus point all round for getting the right war but Jane Austen? 1960? My God I feel another tear coming on.

I couldn’t help it but I really wanted to banish these people from my country (oh yes it is mine now) and even today whilst wandering about our green and pleasant land (well feeding the ducks at Cherry Hinton Hall) I couldn’t stop having evil thoughts about these people. And then it came to me, perhaps the residency test is not such a bad idea. I don’t mean for immigrants but for everybody. Perhaps you should not be allowed to leave school until you can tell Dale Winton which century Jane Austen lived in (I’ll take 18th or I’ll take 19th because I’m warm and generous like that) and of course you should be able to belt out 'Any Dream Will Do' and 'Jerusalem' from beginning to end to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s satisfaction. I’ll even give you three shots. Yes that’s right but if you still get it wrong after three takes then you get banished to fester on some really dirty island where the world should then dump its nuclear waste. Wait I’m anti nuclear, maybe I’ll have to rethink that one… Maybe the BBC could dump its waste there, just imagine all those failed Davina McCall chat shows……

NOW I’m getting carried away….

Posted by purple elephant at September 10, 2006 09:37 PM