And, what’s more, he’s a talentless, pretentious wanker. For those who have never heard of him (consider yourselves fortunate), he is a former stand-up ‘comic’ now-turned novelist who rose to fame in the 1980’s with his fiery brand of allegedly funny invective. In reality, his routine was a barely-concealed vehicle for his bone-headed left-wing polemic which he played out in front of adoring and similarly-minded audiences at a time when comedy cabaret was the spearhead of the left-wing resistance movement in Thatcher’s Britain. All young Ben had to do was to call Mrs.T a ‘mad old cow’ to have his monolithic audience shrieking with delight and appreciation. Hardly the mark of comic genius. What made it even more galling was his cynical adoption of a painfully fake working-class cockney accent just to ensure that his ‘cred’ with the comrades wasn’t sullied by any admission of his rather comfortable middle-class origins and first-rate education.
He coupled his ‘comedy’ career with a full-blown activist agenda, shouldering his way to prominence in every trendy lefty/green campaign imaginable from benefit gigs for striking miners to marches against cruise missiles, you name the cause, Elton was there and sounding off. He is every inch a bedsit-Che Gueverra who got lucky.
Still, it worked for him and he ended up with his own series on the BBC (natch!) but when the current Labour government was elected, Elton mysteriously left our TV screens. Job accomplished I suppose and, with that, he more or less retired from life as Doyen of Anti-Establishment Radicalism to marry, sire and settle down as a sort of ‘grand old man’ of the British left whose opinion is still canvassed by a new generation of ‘meeja dahlings’ who seem to regard the wretch as some sort of Oracle.
An example is this interview in the Al-Independent where readers are treated to an opportunity to submit their fawning questions and, in response, get drivel like this:
“Incidentally, if you’re talking about who I think you’re talking about, last I heard, he was doing voiceovers for bank ads. I’m not criticising. I use banks. We all do. I just wouldn’t do an ad for one. It’s a question of where you draw your own personal line.”
Well, it’s reassuring to know that Elton’s ‘personal line’ stops short of doing adverts for banks but is far enough advanced to enable him to utilise those same banks as repositories for the considerable personal fortune he has amassed from his showbiz career.
I wish I had known about this question-and-answer session a little sooner, then I could have logged on and posed my own burning question: ‘Ben Elton, why are you such a wanker?’
[Update. How very rude of me to fail to acknowledge that the above-mentioned link comes courtesy of excellent fellow British blogger Peter Briffa]
