'Darwin's Rottweiler' Needs Putting To Sleep

As a lapsed Catholic there are really only two ways I could have attended the recent Richard Dawkins lecture at the Phil and not lost my saved seat in the afterlife. 1 – stand up halfway through and yell things at him, 2 – go on a comp and claim I was just there for the free bread sticks and a nice sit down.

I chose the latter.

Professor Richard Dawkins is now a major celebrity in the world of airport bookshop theologians. His book ‘The God Delusion’ has been printed in over 30 languages and has sold in excess of 1.5 million copies. Dawkins opens his lecture with these statistics, giving you a taster of how humble and unassuming he is. He follows with a slide showing the many titles which have been written purely in opposition to his work; “The Dawkins Delusion”; “Deluded By Dawkins”; “Intellectuals Don’t Need God and Other Myths”; and so on and so forth into infinity. Dawkins laps up this attention, to him it’s just further confirmation that the religious hate to be challenged. The first ten minutes of the hour long lecture are designed to impress upon any doubters in the audience the importance of Dawkins and his theories in today’s mondo-secular society.

Not that there are many doubters here. Most of them are outside with placards, one was chanting ‘Don’t let Dawkins make a monkey out of you’, alluding to the Professors stance on creationism. Inside the largest of the Phil’s lecture rooms those who don’t fully subscribe to Dawkins’ theories are notable by their absence. Every conclusion he reaches is accompanied by a silent chorus of nods, as if he is intoning some indefatigable truth rather than shooting religious fish in a barrel. I began to wonder why these people were here, paying £20 plus to hear what they already agree with, re-packaged with slides from the book they paid a tenner for.

The myth of Dawkins is more compelling than the fact. I was brought up as a Roman Catholic and though religion still plays some part in my life, usually through family ritual, I was ready for Dawkins to present me with something in the atheist position that I could agree with, or at least relate to. I was expecting this Oxford don to outsmart me in some way, to pose questions that I had no answer to. I was Dorothy, wandering down the yellow brick road to see the Wizard, and to match the analogy, I just saw an old man behind a curtain.

What Dawkins says is easy to say, make no mistake about it. Easier than telling people to ‘love thy neighbour’ certainly. He comes across not as an intellectual, or even a great speaker, but as a self-satisfied bore preaching to the converted. At one point he challenges God to strike him down with a thunderbolt – seeking attention from the deity he’s decrying as if the Almighty has nothing better to do than cut a jumped-up travelling salesman down to size.

Part of Dawkins’ problem is the dichotomy of belief vs. fact which he brings on himself and then can’t escape from. No matter how hard he tries, Dawkins can’t separate God and religion from physics and the universe. Even school aged children soon get over the idea of God as a man who lives in the sky, but Dawkins continues to rattle his bones over the lack of ‘proof’ of God’s existence. Much of his ‘lecture’ is concerned with making cheap digs at the religious, even reducing himself to mocking those who pray for their loved ones to recover from illness, literally sniggering at their belief that God has intervened when the much longed-for upturn in health arrives.

I was bored of Dawkins long before he got to the most distasteful part if the lecture, where he begins to pick away at single Biblical references. He obsesses over the Christian God and tellingly shies away from Allah, Buddha, Ganesh etc. After all, no-one likes the God he describes in ‘The God Delusion’, the Old Testament God who went Old School on the humanity after they started copulating with goats and murdering each others’ children because they were fed up. No, we like Jesus better, he even looks a bit like Brad Pitt in all those pictures and he everyone agrees her was a stand up bloke. Dawkins barely mentions Jesus, or that the basic tenets of Christianity are all concerned with being nice to each other and not breaking the law. He’d rather dwell on Genesis and the startling revelation that it MIGHT NOT ALL BE TRUE!

Throughout this lecture, Richard Dawkins never attempts to broach the simplest question of religion. Why do people believe? What exactly is in it for them? He rails against indoctrinisation but wants to indoctrinate us into atheism. He accepts no other belief system than his own, and delights in picking on the easiest of targets, like Ted Haggard, the American Evangelical preacher who was revealed to have a penchant for rent boys. It’s a good job that God hasn’t called an early judgement day because with this reasoning He might have seen Dawkins and junked us all. You can play this game with atheists too by the way, if he can ignore Mother Theresa and Father Damien of Molokai then I can ignore Baba Amte and Margaret Sanger and choose none other than Napalm Death to represent all Atheists. Don’t look so cool now do they?

During the dubious question and answer session (sample question : “Why are you so right, and where can I buy your books?”) a brave woman asked whether the survival of religion into the modern age when so much of it has been debunked by science could mean that religion has an evolutionary advantage. As you might expect, the answer was ‘I don’t know’, but it was preceded by a ridiculously complex and wordy answer which possibly only Dawkins himself will ever understand. I was bamboozled by the reply and so was the woman asking the question, as all other queries had been answered with plain English and very concisely. Dawkins had been rumbled and he pulled his secret weapon of academic waffle out the bag to send the woman back to her seat wondering why she bothered.

Comedian Matt Morgan recently compared Dawkins to Professor Yaffle from Bagpuss, commenting that his dismissal of all religiosity was similar to the woodpecker knocking the organ mice down to size with “It’s not a boat, it’s just a silly old shoe”. This sums Richard Dawkins up beautifully, he doesn’t allow for joy or hope in anything that can’t be quantified and proven. Take him to Westminster Abbey at vespers and he’ll probably prefer his own audio book on the iPod. Show him the Ali Mosque in Cairo and no doubt he’ll be tapping at the brickwork complaining it isn’t properly pointed. He may be the ‘Darwin’s Rottweiler’ to some, but he won’t shake of the Great and Powerful Oz analogy until he takes on some real opposition.

Cherry Ghost - Liverpool Carling Academy 2 05.04.07

What with the traditional music press being made increasingly redundant by the speed and relative freedoms of the internet, many music fans rely on a thin portfolio of advisors for their news. Zane Lowe perhaps. MySpace perchance. Toilet doors inscribed with the words ‘Holocaust Breakfast R the Future of rock’ possibly.

Herein lies a problem, as with the explosion of new music content comes a reduction in reliability, and accountability. Previously, any print journalist extolling the virtues of a band could be humiliated by the non-performance of their Next Big Thing. Bets were not hedged, colours to the mast were not pinned unless an act was so startling good and so cruelly forgotten that to not shout their praises from the rooftops would make the infant Jesus cry with horror. Now, print journalists are few, and web journalists are many. Web journalists are largely unaccountable. As Kirsty Walker I can proclaim that a band I quite like are the most amazing musical happening since Og the caveman banged on a stretched animal skin. Tomorrow, as Lulu DeBournville-Smythley I can proclaim that they are, in fact, shit and everyone has jumped the gun. Whoah, whoah, everyone back in their own beds, they are not the Messiahs, they are The Ordinary Boys.

I may have jumped the gun with Cherry Ghost. But so did Zane Lowe. So ner.
Close to six months ago I was telling everyone I knew that Cherry Ghost, AKA Simon Aldred of Salford, was the Next Big Thing. I had found him through MySpace, where the four songs on their meagre profile were enough to send me reeling into ecstasies. The multi-layered, wonderfully over-produced ballads swelled with fat xylophone notes and swirling prickling strings. Aldred’s voice was raw and brilliant, like a tramp in a doorway singing Handel’s Messiah with full accompaniment. It’s a whiskey voice, a smoke filled battle cry of a voice, which lends every lyric a kind of drunken truth. It’s gorgeous, and it’s a pleasure to listen to.

What was on offer at Liverpool Academy was so diluted, so understated that it smacked of embarrassment. The Big Sound of the produced tracks offered up on the Cherry Ghost MySpace profile was gone. It was replaced by a bloodless strumming and dreary bass lines performed by a band who looked like they were kicked out of Towers Of London for being too scruffy. Aldred himself looked grateful for the attention, and his voice was as moving as ever, but the songs which made people sit up and pay attention to Cherry Ghost in the first place were abandoned for a setlist which was prosaic and well, average. In an hour’s set, only the new single ‘Mathematics’ and a strutting mid-tempo number called ‘Here Come The Romans’ stood out. The problem was they stuck out too much, like two Monets in a gallery full of wallpaper samples.

A quick glance at the front row of the audience spoke volumes. Polo shirts and Timberland as far as the eye could see, all checking their watches to see if they could still make last orders in the Dog and Duck. It was your typical Supporters Club. The story was a little different a few rows back where interested parties had assembled to hear more of what they had been treated to from free downloads and the first single from the album, played to death on Zane Lowe. It didn’t happen, and some wandered off before time.

Cherry Ghost’s music has been compared to Mercury Rev and The Flaming Lips. I pray that Simon Aldred sees the distinction between their live performances, and his. He may feel more comfortable returning to the working men’s clubs after his performance at the Academy, but if it takes glitter, a light show and forty piece orchestra to translate his recorded material to the stage, he should do it, and Heavenly should pay for it. Buy the album, it will be wonderful, but give Simon Aldred a few more coins and a few more months before his live performances live up to the hype.

That Joke Isn't Funny Anymore

Amid the recent Wayne Rooney debacle (this is the one where he sarcastically applauded a referee rather than the other 17 which will no doubt immediately follow), Sir Alex Ferguson was heard to remark that ‘He has a chip on his shoulder, like everyone from that City’. Cue an onslaught of po-faced indignation from Liverpool’s chief whingers at the very suggestion that any Scouser could be criticised openly in the press. In a passing comment. At a private function.
Liverpool ‘Business Representative’ (read stall holder) Frank McKenna immediately chimed in with that well-worn chorus, ‘People in Liverpool have a sense of humour and can take a few jokes made at our expense’. Could have fooled me Frank! Let’s look at the evidence…
October 2004 – Boris Johnson accuses Liverpool of ‘wallowing in misery’ following a three hour silence and commemorative dinner plate to mourn the loss of Ken Bigley, who once got on the X5 bus. Liverpool’s outrage is incandescent, and copies of Johnson’s Spectator article are burned in the street. April 1989 – The Sun publishes a characteristically incorrect story about Liverpool fans urinating on corpses and picking their pockets during the Hillsborough Disaster. The resulting bile on Merseyside lasted for over 15 years. Now I’m all for Sun-bashing, even when there isn’t a good reason, but 15 years? Not exactly characteristic of the easy-going live and let live Scouser we’ve been assured is the norm, is it now?

Where did this idea of the Funny Scouser come from? Was it simply an exercise in spin? An attempt to overhaul the old image of the thieving druggie Scouser with a bubble perm and someone else’s benefit book? The evidence for this Funny Scouser myth seems to be scant at best. Any lexicon of Scouse comedians tends to turn up the same half dozen names- Les Dennis, Ken Dodd, Ted Ray, Tommy Handley, Robb Wilton, Arthur Askey. So that’s one who has started his career within the last 30 years, and four who are dead. Hardly a Who’s Who of side splitting.

In 2002 there was a Liverpool City Council motion to open a Comedy Hall Of Fame in the Empire theatre. The plan only stalled when the list of probable inductees was read out and included, er, Les Dennis, Ken Dodd, Ted Ray, Tommy Handley, Robb Wilton and Arthur Askey.
Seeing as these are the Comedy Greats to whom Liverpool owes it’s genetic funny bone, let’s examine them a little more closely. Dodd made his name by making up words such as ‘tattyfilarious’ and brandishing a duster. I can almost hear you pissing yourselves at the memory. Les Dennis, the cuckolded Mavis impersonator whose shelf life ran out about the same time as Dustin Gee’s left ventricle. Thank God that woman said ‘my cardigan’ when asked to name something blue on Family Fortunes, otherwise we might never have heard from him again. Ted Ray was actually from Wigan and died nearly thirty years ago, and the last time Tommy Handley was cracking gags we were still mourning Queen Victoria. Robb Wilton was dead by the advent of television, which leaves Arthur Askey as the man chosen to shoulder the Comedy Greatness of Liverpool. I don’t know why all Scousers don’t visit his grave more often to pay their respects to the Godfather of that irrepressible Scouse wit. Maybe because he was buried in London where he escaped to almost immediately after leaving the womb.

Far from being the UK’s chuckle machines, there are few more humourless peoples than Scousers who have been slighted, or disagreed with, or looked at. Heaven forfend you don’t find their unique brand of loudmouthed ‘comedic’ water torture amusing – they’ll continue regardless. I had the deep misfortune of sitting behind a table full of Scouse holidaymakers on their way to bargain flights out of Gatwick a few months back. They had descended on a student who was getting off the train at Crewe (actually, I have my suspicions she had a ticket to London Euston but feared she might kill), and mocked her incessantly for the twenty minutes she was on the train. In any other town in the world, this would have been considered rude and worthy of a sharp slap about the ears, but the Famous Scouse Sense Of Humour dictated that the poor girl sat there and endured the constant howling of “What do you study den? Psychology!??!! Psychology??! You reckon we’re all fuckin nuts den do ye? Where you from? Crewe?!?! Crew?!!? I wouldn’t admit dat love! Crewe!?!’. And so on ad nauseum, which may as well be Liverpool’s new Latin motto.

The minute the put upon woman left the train, the lead ape began to assess their performance. “Aw, she enjoyed that bit of banter didn’t she eh? I bet we made her day.’ He seemed blissfully unaware that she would tell everyone she met that day of the morning she spent on the train with the Scousers. And that everyone would nod and groan in sympathy as they remembered their own Morning With The Scousers, from which they are still recovering. If you ever want someone to roll their eyes and groan for any reason, ‘Some Scousers were talking to me on the train’ will illicit that response immediately. The international code for ‘I was bored shitless by some wannabe Ken Dodds’.

This year, a poll was conducted which seemed to bear out the Scouse humour myth, as Liverpudlians were reported to be the funniest people in Britain. What escaped the headline writers was that the respondents were asked to name the people who made them laugh the most, which is not really the same thing. I’d wager that, rather than giggling away at their Best Of Les Dennis DVD, the people in question were actually swapping Scouse Train anecdotes in the pub, and laughing at how one city can breed a people who substitute timing and clever word play for ‘Hitler bombed our chippy’.

Face it Scousers, you’re no funnier than anyone else in Britain, and have no right to the role of Britain’s court jesters. Strange how any other Liverpudlian stereotype brings about much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but that some Scousers are happy to wear a permanent daft grin when outside the City limits, as if they are wandering 17th century clowns looking for a tavern to entertain in return for lodgings and meat. Scousers who are trying to be funny are as exhausting as any attention seeking toddler, without half the comedic skill. Just look at Stan Boardman. Could you spend more than eight minutes in a room with him without trying to claw your own ears off?
It will take a national effort akin to that of the Industrial Revolution to change people’s perceptions now, but wouldn’t it be nice to hear people say ‘You know what, Scousers just don’t make me laugh’. More than that, wouldn’t it be fucking funny?