Questionable Time

Similarly with Golding, while it wasn’t a stellar performance she did manage to keep on an offensive footing thorough most of the show and pulled off a quite brilliant duck-and-weave when she managed to totally avoid the whole Barnsley ambush by whittering on about “candy floss” and other unrelated matters. Usually this sort of chicanery is easily spotted and dealt with, but for reasons unknown, she got clean away with it and thus avoided the now routine Tory dilemma of whether or not to gloat at bad news for the Libs. I’m inclined to mark her down a little for being the first to bring up al-Megrahi as it’s beginning to annoy me that all Scottish Question Time’s have essentially become ‘al-Megrahi Time’ for the last year or so but credit where credit’s due, she did accomplish the heroic feat of holding her own as a Scottish Tory. And that, dear Lemmings is not to be sniffed at. Moving on to the other side of the electoral divide we have Wee Danny Alexander who I had very high hopes for tonight. Not only does he have a long and distinguished track record for being ‘quietly effective’ (and they’re the ones to watch, especially the Scottish ones. Alistair Darling, anyone?) and has managed to ride out the Brown/Miliband transition without as much as breaking a sweat, he’s also had a very good week, what with his epic zinging of Hague in the Commons. However, I must say I was disappointed with his outing as he never quite seemed to get the bit between his teeth and appeared to be caught very off-balance by the fact that pretty much everyone was gunning for him in one way or another. The result was that he was the one who looked like he belonged to a government on the skids and the coalition candidates looked like the bringer of greater things which on a week where there were open goals positively littering the field of play, is pretty inexcusable. Sure, his style is much better deployed in situations where he’s got the space to develop his attacks from a quiet whisper and into a less than eye-catching but nevertheless relentless juggernaut, but he never really looked like he got hold of the initiative last night. So come on Wee Dougie, up your game next time or face the risk of ‘quietly effective’ being replaced in the public conscience with ‘quietly forgettable’. Next in line we have Nicola Sturgeon who continues to strike me as the slightly odd girl at school who would eshew her peers’ love of Just-17 and Mad Dog 20-20 for the far manlier callings of judo practice and orienteering. I also bet she wore walking boots to school. Don’t know why, but that’s what my gut’s telling me. Anyhoo, she didn’t have a bad night and did manage to pull off a very impressive bait-and-switch where she managed to sound a little contrite about al-Magrahi before totally dropping Labour in it, a nifty little ploy that she pretty much got away with. However, I do find that just underneath the surface there always seems to be this edge of panic with Sturgeon and I’ve seen it in Salmond as well. As I said earlier, I really haven’t the foggiest when it come to Scottish politics but every time I see the SNP on TV (which in practice means either Sturgeon or Salmond as there doesn’t appear to be anyone else from the party who’s allowed in front of a camera) I get this feeling that they’re only just holding it together and that privately, the sensation of being on a heavily listing ship scares the living crap out of them. I caught it out of the corner of my eye during the al-Magrahi bait-and-switch: Seemingly, Sturgeon was steaming ahead with the audience behind her but you could tell by the way her eyes darted about for threats and the slight cracking of her voice that she wasn’t entirely convinced of her chances of success. Still, not a bad outing for her and she would be well within her rights to go out and buy herself a nice yet utilitarian present (possibly made of GoreTex) as a little ‘well done’ present. Ok, we’re getting there. Wait a second, what’s this? Another political panelist? I think Scotland is now intentionally trying to wind me up. Having said that, the panelist in question, Patrick Harvie of the Scottish Greens turned out to be quite the performer and this despite the fact that the spectacles/waistcoat/baldy head combo make him look like he’s just wandered out of a Steampunk convention. The thing that impressed me about Harvie was the way in which he managed to stay on the right of the sincere/sanctimonious line that has long been the undoing of many a Green. He also managed to articulate what the audience seemed to be thinking on all the foreign policy questions (which is that we’re essentially hypocrites. And so we are) and he managed to remain above most of the political name calling that went on. Ok, so he does a far greater latitude than the other politicos but I was left thinking that he seemed a pretty decent and clever guy who knows exactly what he believes in. Maybe I won’t nuke Scotland when I am King. Right, that’s the inordinate amount of party political panelists done with so now for the ‘comedy’ one which this week takes the form of Nick Ferrari. Prior to the show, I was going through my routine google images search for pshop fodder when I stumbled across this highly disturbing shot of Ferrari and Vanessa Feltz engaging in what appears to be a kiss. Shocked and repelled by this glimpse of Hades I swiftly shut down my browser, showered for several hours and prayed that I may unsee the horror that had beset me. Initially, I thought I’d got away with it but that was until earlier this morning when I was startled to discover that if you look closely at Albrechts Durer’s The Horsemen of the Apocalypse you can clearly see the same diabolical scene re-enacted at the foot of picture. Don’t believe me? Then check this out (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Weird, huh? Anyway, back to the subject in hand and let’s face it, there isn’t that much to say about Ferrari other than he doesn’t exactly go in for subtlety. His MO’s pretty much as follows: Start every rant with “It’s utterly/absolutely scandalous/ridiculous/appalling”, proceed to look like you’re on the verge of some coronary infarction, disregard any nuance and deploy the final set piece which will hopefully involve a reference to the Nazi’s winning the war and all of us speaking German”. Seen through this narrow lens, he had a belting night and not only managed to invoke the Nazi/speaking German wheeze but also managed to finesse it with a mention of Dunkirk. However, when seen through any other, slightly less rabid lens it all just looks a bit wanky and one-dimensional. Still, I can take comfort in the fact that he probably doesn’t sleep, haunted as he is by the recurring visions of Feltz moving in for that final, torrid meeting of lips. Eww… I think I should stop going down this road before I do myself a mental mischief. So yes, bit of an odd show and one that didn’t exactly grip me as if the subject matter wasn’t something very Scottish it was all very foreign affairs and we’ve had quite a lot of that of late. The crowd themselves weren’t too bad but their affections seemed quite evenly split so it never got the point where someone on the panel achieved the critical mass needed to go on a really epic rampage and lets face it, that’s what we’re all really watching for. Actually, maybe I will nuke Scotland when I am King. Tl;dr Moore: Bruising 6/10 Golding: Cruising 6/10 Alexander: Snoozing 4/10 Sturgeon: Confusing 5/10 Harvie: Oozing 7/10 Ferrari: Losing 3/10 The Crowd: Boozing 5/10 And that’s that. I’m off to send my cats mental with the bottle of liquid catnip I bought yesterday whilst listening to Turbonegro at high volume. I know how to have a good time. Next week Lemming, next week…