Saturday, July 17, 2004

Rod Liddle - La Lotta Continua

Usually a Saturday just means the new Weekly Worker. But there's a super new slew of Rod Liddle links around, from his foul-mouthed wife bemoaning her "pathetically paid" HTV job to his Telegraph apologia. The more I read the sorrier I am about the breakup - people who can call their kids Tyler and Wilder were made for each other. Will any children by Alicia Monckton be called Harder, Faster and Deeper ?
 
And as for the horse, Strummer - that is perfect. Naming your horse - your horse ! - after the public school webel who sang the urban warrior but lived and died in rural Somerset. Show me a Clash fan and I'll show you some idiot politics.
 
But he's unfairly treated in the London News Review, in a story obviously written by a woman. A real misreading of the male psyche.
 
"It’s one thing for Liddle to say that he fancies Keira Knightley. That would be an understandable, if predictable, statement. But what his ex-secretary and girlfriend doesn’t want to read is that her lovely Rod is likening her to a 19-year-old film star. She wants to hear that he thinks she’s beautiful, not that she looks like Keira Knightley. And she certainly doesn’t want to hear him endorse the sad ladsmag sentiment: “Men always want other women.”
It’s all so horribly uncool, and – for such a lady’s man – a real misreading of the female psyche. At the core of Liddle likening Monckton to Knightley is plain old lust. Lust for Keira Knightley."
 
 
Missing the point. Of course he shouldn't let her know that. But that it's lust for the (doubtless) lovely Alicia, with the added bonus that she has some filmstar resemblances, I have little doubt.
 
 
 
UPDATE - despite my remarks about the Clash, I do have fond memories of the 12-inch Magnificent Seven dance mix (aka Magnificent Dance), as heard in 1981 in the Lampione - a pub with (in those days) a tiny dance floor and only two records to play. Fortunately one was the Clash and the other was a James Brown live album. People danced every night to the same nine songs - but what songs !
 

No comments: