Back from my travels. Jet-lag more or less out of my system. What a strange journey it has been. Let me tell you how it came about.

Book Fair and Opera House

It all began some months ago when my friend David Tang invited me to the Hong Kong Book Fair. He made the offer dazzlingly tempting. There is no one and nothing in Hong Kong David doesn’t know and he and his wife Lucy are legendary hosts. Nonetheless, so sunk in commitments and so guilt-laden in my work obsession am I that I strongly considered giving the event the go-by. The same week, however, I was asked by the Sydney Opera House if I might consider doing an “evening” there. I don’t really have “an evening” so I reckoned I would probably add this request too to my list of reluctant declinings-declinations-declinements. A sudden realisation, however, gave me pause and stayed my hand from sending the “Thanks, but no thanks” emails. I have been commissioned by the BBC to present a five part series on language: provisional title Planet Word. The series aims to look at where language came from, how it works in us, how we use it, how it varies around the world, how much it constrains/fosters thought – examining all kinds of issues from the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis to taboo and transgression by way of oratory, poetry, insult, pedantry, dysphasia and the myriad astonishing things language invokes and provokes in us.

It would be quite unthinkable to make a programme on language without looking towards Chinese, of course. The diversity and uniqueness of the aboriginal languages of Australia and the speed of their tragic fall to extinction is something we would need to investigate too, not to mention the journey our language, English, made as it took root in Australian soil. So perhaps I could massacre a whole flock of birds with just two stones? Go to Hong Kong along with the series producer/director John Paul Davidson (who made my documentaries around America and one of the Last Chance to See films too), hire a local crew and shoot footage, pieces-to-camera and interviews relating to the Chinese languages before dropping down to Australia where, after the Sydney Opera House show we could film in and around New South Wales. I would even be saving the BBC money as my flights would all be taken care of by the organisers of the HKBF and the Sydney Opera House event. Saving the BBC money is, of course, the dearest wish of my bosom. I think of little else.

Nothing quite turns out as you expect it to. On the Planet Word front, David Tang and John Paul between them somehow managed to track down Zhou Youguang, the deviser of pinyin, in his 105th year and the oldest and probably the most influential (perhaps second after Tim Berners-Lee) human I have ever met. What is extraordinary is that this was his first ever TV interview. As the individual most responsible for allowing Mandarin Chinese to be transcripted into the Roman alphabet (giving us “Beijing”, for example and “Mao Zedong” instrad of the old Wade-Giles formulations, “Peking” and “Mao Tse Tung”) he could reasonably be called one of the most important linguists who ever lived. He hardly knew it when he was working on his system, of course, but it would prove crucial as a bridge between China and the rest of the world, allowing texting, typing, computing and all the excitements of the modern age to work in Putonghua or Mandarin Chinese.

In the meantime, the Sydney Opera House night sold out very quickly, largely due to the enthusiasm of loyal Australian Twitter followers. It was very gratifying but meant that the opera house asked if I might do a second night. This then led, thanks to the age old rivalry between the two cities, to pressure in the form of a “Come to Melbourne, Stephen” Facebook page, urging me to do a show in that city too. Once again Twitter worked its magic and a second show had to be slotted in. All around these performances John Paul and I managed to film as much as we could of aboriginal languages, surf slang (thanks to Kathy Lette) , Kath and Kim suburban talk, Australian political discourse and much else besides.

How Many Twitter Followers Does It Take To Fill the … ?

Much to my surprise I so enjoyed the Sydney and Melbourne events that I agreed to perform a one man show next month at the Royal Albert Hall in London. I have MC-ed, hosted, guested and otherwise infested that noble venue many times over the last quarter century, but never have I done a whole evening on my own. I am excited. Very excited. Excited in much the way an aristocrat in a tumbril must have been excited as they rattled over the cobblestones towards the Place de la Concorde on their way to face the Paris mob and the fond final attentions of Madame la Guillotine. Heigh ho. You only live once. Tickets, should you be minded to come along, can be found here and here. Beware of touts and unofficial sites. Apologies for booking fees and prices and all the other issues that are out of my hands. That is just how these things are done. I believe if you turn up at the Albert Hall itself you can avoid any such charges, but that brings me to another point. Why London?

Metrocentricity

Followers from Wales, Scotland and especially parts of northern England have asked me, mostly with exemplary patience and politeness, why I am doing this show in London and not elsewhere around the country? Well, I’m afraid it’s simply time, a commodity in which I am horribly deficient. This is not a tour but a short-notice experiment. If it goes well and people seem to enjoy it then I can think of nothing I would enjoy more than travelling around for a month or so, taking in Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and all parts of England.

Part Two While I was away…

The most terrible thing that befell was news of Christopher Hitchen’s diagnosis of oesophageal cancer. The Hitch is one of the great figures of our age. I have had the pleasure and honour of debating with him on a number of occasions, most recently in Westminster for Intelligence Squared, where we opposed Anne Widdecombe’s motion that the Catholic Church is a force for good in the world. The way Christopher has responded, in interview and in writing, to this assault on his body, is typical of the man. My thoughts (but not prayers) are with him. The Pink List Also while I was away, The Independent on Sunday published their “Pink List”. Many tweeted to congratulate me on “achieving” No. 3 spot in this top 100 of British gay … er … icons… apparently. Well, far be it from me to be ungrateful. I’m sure it’s always nice to be mentioned admiringly, just as it is always dispiriting to be mentioned slightingly. All of you reading this (or those of you that aren’t bots or visitors from other worlds) are human and will understand why a part of me was tickled to be included.

I am sorry to say that I did not read the full list. First equal (“above” me) and pushing me into third place were rugby player Gareth Thomas and Mary “Queen of Shops” Portas which seemed splendid and fitting. Otherwise my eye flicked down to take in friends and others. I gave the whole production little time. My eye never reached the end of the article where resided a “Rogues Gallery”. It had to be pointed out to me by a friend, a dear friend and a brilliant man, Kim Harris (my first proper grown-up lover from student days as it happens) that there was something horrid lurking in the article’s basement. I have been trying to persuade Kim for ages to write a blog, for he puts things so well, far better than I do, as you will agree when you have read this extract from a letter he wrote just a few days ago and which I reproduce with his permission.

Very nice to see you ranking high on The Independent’s Pink List. Quite right too. They made one vast and vastly suggestive mistake, though. They instituted a Rogues Gallery and frogmarched Louie Spence into it. Do you know who I mean? He’s a big old lisping, nelly screamer at Pineapple Dance Studios (Sky something) whom Joe Sixpack has clasped to his bosom because he’s sweet and funny and fabulous. Brightens the day, cheers the hour. There’s another reason the public loves him, but we’ll get to that in a mo. The compilers of the List, however, hate him because – well, can’t you guess? What’s the least imaginative, least penetrating thing you could possibly say about an unreconstructed flamer? That’s right – he “perpetuates the stereotype.” Christ on a marmalade cross but that pisses me right off.

Occupying the top spot was the rugby player, Gareth Thomas, who came out (finally) last year. Well done for that, boyo, I suppose. Can’t have been easy. It usually isn’t for most people, even on the Liberal Riviera where we’re all supposed to be basking today. Now, you can see where I’m going with this, can’t you? Gareth is a “real man”. He was married to a real woman. Louie is not and was not. If only we could all disport ourselves like Gareth the straights won’t hate us whereas if we all carry on like Louie….ach, how quickly these cowardly, self-oppressed, social-climbing McCarthyites forget where they come from. If I remember rightly, the whole Gay Lib thing wasn’t engineered by “real” men at all. It wasn’t sponsored by marines or scaffolders or rugby players. It was ignited by…ah, yes: drag queens.

So, instead of getting a hate on at poor Louie, instead of frantically trying to patrol their butch and instead of gussying up their drool for Gareth into blather about bravery, these creeps should remember the Rainbow. They should remember Diversity. They should remember Tolerance. They should remember that in evincing a distaste for effeminacy they’re simply making an exhibition of their own misogyny. And they should remember that (and here’s that other reason the public likes him) Louie isn’t trying to pass. There’s nothing a straight boy hates more than an obvious fag trying to hide it. I know lists like these are mere churnalism but they’re telling nonetheless.

Thank you, Kim. Thank you for pointing that out and thank you for putting it so very, very well.

Here is that “Rogues Gallery” paragraph on Louie Spence, by the way:

Louie Spence Choreographer and TV star Had this been a list for the greatest reinforcers of gay stereotypes, the star of Sky 1’s car-crash reality show Pineapple Dance Studios would obviously mince it. Alas, as it stands, we can’t help but hear the clock ticking on those 15 minutes of his.

The IoS has its get-out clause prepared, of course… “And the aim [of the Pink List] ? To entertain and celebrate, infuriate and amuse. Above all, to kick-start a debate around the breakfast and lunch-table. Please let us know what you think at the bottom of the page.” But I’m sorry, that is simply not good enough. I say nothing of the sickening and now standard “oh please leave a comment, please, please, please – our advertisers would love it if you all starting flaming and trolling and filling our pages for us. Pleeeeaaase.”

Among the panelists choosing this list was Ben Summerskill, Chief Executive of Stonewall: Stonewall, that same excellent institution that named itself after the bar in Greenwich Village where the drag-queens Kim mentions locked themselves in, fought back against police violence, intimidation and victimisation and kick-started Gay Liberation. I like Ben and admire what he and Stonewall do, but surely they must see how right Kim is? By singling out Louie Spence for lofty disapproval, by sneering at his “mincing” they are turning their back on, dissociating themselves from, insulting and demeaning a fine man and whole way of being. An authentic, strong, charming and loveable person, every bit as “courageous” as the others on the list, certainly more courageous than me, Louie deserves respect and support, not insult and derision. Do they want people like him not to count, do they see him as being guilty of a choice in his manner and his demeanour, just as homophobes everywhere accuse all gay people of choosing their sexuality and preferences? How dare they of all people dismiss a gay man in a few contemptuous, bigoted phrases because he doesn’t fit the “type” that they think a gay man should exemplify?

This isn’t about pussy-footing, or political correctness or humourless righteousness and I wouldn’t bring it into this blog if it didn’t make me so damned angry. I do not know Louie Spence, by the way, have never had the pleasure of meeting him. Dance is not my life and our world outlooks and interests are, I dare say, widely divergent, but that does not mean I cannot respect and admire him. The IoS panel who chose to scorn Louie owe him an apology, and they owe an apology to all like him

There was a time when polari and Julian and Sandy and limp-wristed mincing and winking innuendo were all that came between a certain kind of gay man and his pride, his self-respect and his ability to hold his head high in a hostile world. Read Quentin Crisp’s The Naked Civil Servant or watch John Hurt’s glorious portrayal. It is not the only way for a gay man to be, no one is saying it should be, but it is a wholly proper and acceptable manner (not to mention an often loveable and witty one) and to see it traduced with superiority by the very people who should be supporting and endorsing it sickens me. I have stood up and spoken for Stonewall and its campaigns to stop playground bullying and taunting: it is of course the effeminate and overtly camp boys (or butch girls) at school who first come in for that sort of attention, the kind of attention that alcohol and a gang mentality can turn all too readily into gay-bashing and severe violence. Is it now official Stonewall policy that only “straight-acting” gays are acceptable, that today’s Quentin Crisps and Kenneth Williams’s can count themselves as outcast from “the community”?

Bah. They should read a bit of Judith Butler and think a bit harder about gender and identity. I give up my No 3 position in the Pink List and award it to Louie Spence. Until the next time…. pip pip.

Stephen

UPDATE NEWS FLASH

It is axiomatic that panels and judges of prizes or compilers of lists always sit in conditions of utmost secrecy, but I have had private word of an element of the deliberations that tells me that maybe the deliberators weren’t to blame, but some Sindie journalist who took it upon him or her self to write the Rogues Gallery section without the deliberators’ knowledge or consent. Well, if I have done Ben Summerskill and Clare Balding and the others who helped put the list together a disservice, I am really sorry. I hope it at least teaches them never, ever to trust a newspaper, especially – and this may surprise some – one like the Independent. Good old-fashioned red tops, vulgar, brash and blaring as they may seem, are usually more honourable and straightforward in their dealings than those with pretensions to be “newspapers of record”… Oh dear now I’ve gone and made myself a whole new parcel of enemies. Heigh ho.

S xxx

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Explaining the journey from pictograms to ideograms to the modern and simplified Chinese characters

That’s enough brushes, ed.

Where the brushes are made …

Goodness …

Brushes in a calligraphy shop …

Beijing Centre for the Performing Arts – again taken from a car.

Joy. 2 hours with 106 yr old Zhou Youguang deviser of pinyin. What a man. Never stopped laughing.

I think I’m in China -

I almost always go out with an iPhone in one pocket, a BlackBerry in another and an Android device in a third. But then I am peculiar. If I had to keep only one, yes, I confess I would choose the iPhone, but I could cope happily if I were left with just a BlackBerry Bold or an HTC Desire. At least so I would have said until last week when Apple gave me an iPhone 4 to play with. For just as the frenzy of iPad launch has subsided (3 million sold in 8 weeks) it is now time for Apple haters to have a new device waved in their angry faces and time for Apple lovers to get verbally bitch-slapped for falling once more for Steve Jobs’s huckstering blandishments. iPhone 4 is here. It is only a year since many will have taken advantage of incentives to upgrade from iPhone 3G to iPhone 3GS and their deals may still be active, denying them the chance to leap to the newest phone without eye-watering financial penalties. Much as 3GS was released simultaneously with OS 3.0, so iPhone 4 arrives with iOS (as all Apple mobile device operating systems will now be designated) 4.0, which will be able to bring some, but not all of its new functions and features to older phones (but not the iPhone 2G). The phone will be available unlocked here in the United Kingdom, so your existing SIM (so long as it is cut down to the new mini-SIM shape) will work without having to jailbreak and unlock.

iPhone 4

iPhone 4 is an object of rare beauty (even when badly photographed using an iPhone 3GS). Noticeably slimmer but a trifle heavier than predecessors, its new heft only adds to the profound feeling of quality and precision that the device exudes. Sharper edged, it is girt by a stainless steel band which cleverly houses all the antennas required by a modern smartphone. Jobs himself made a comparison between iPhone 4 and a classic Leica. With this device in my hand I feel that I am holding its designer Jonathan Ive’s personal prototype, hand-machined as a proof-of-concept model. Ive is surely one of the most influential and gifted designers Britain has ever produced and iPhone 4 may well be his masterpiece.

Apple have produced, and third parties will doubtless emulate and improve, rubberised wrap-around belts called Bumpers that easily slip round the edges of the handset affording what will probably be regarded as much needed protection. They come in all kinds of colours and give the device great resilience (I saw an Apple executive gleefully hurling his bumpered iPhone 4 across the room). Bumpers may diminish the perfect lines of the profile, but it’s a compromise many will make, as the sharp edges are bound to make one a little nervous about chipping and denting.

Bumpered

On the front of the phone can be discerned the lineaments of a forward-facing camera and inset in the glorious glass obverse (which leads one to speculate that future models might allow solar charging) an extra eye reveals that LED flash has finally arrived. All kinds of BlackBerry, HTC, Nokia and Sony will be snorting contempt as they recall that their own phones have had Xenon flashes for years, but this kind of flash at least is welcome to iPhone and works with typical intuitive simplicity with a simple Off/On/Auto setting available top left. The right hand icon swaps between front and back facing cameras.

The flash and camera-swap icons

That front facing phone suggests video calling of course. Apple have integrated a range of open standards for this, including H.264, AAC, SIP, STUN, TURN and ICE (don’t ask) into a package they call FaceTime (actually they bought a company of that name). It is not true video phoning as at the moment, 3G doesn’t support these data standards so you will only be using FaceTime where a WiFi connection is possible. Under those circumstances it is very impressive, offering excellent resolution, with both cameras on the iPhone being easily swappable so you can either show the party at the other end of the phone your face or others in the room: with a reasonable stand or easel for the phone Polycom style video conferencing at a fraction of the cost becomes a distinct possibility. The main back camera has been upgraded to 5 Megapixels, but Apple (and here they are quite right) have always claimed that their 3 MP original took better pictures than many 5 MP cameras on other phones, for the issue is not the sheer numbers of pixels, but more crucially pixel size (and lens quality of course). This new camera produces simply stunning images and might, for many, be reason enough to upgrade, especially when you factor in the iPhone 4’s remarkable new “Retina” display. Retina delivers the crispest images I have ever seen on a smartphone. The difference is most instantly detected with text – in emails, chats, texts and tweets for example. I still, after a week’s use, find myself staring at onscreen text with disbelief.

A bigger battery promises longer talk time, an inbuilt 3-axis gyroscope promises amazing new gaming features (check out Steve Jobs playing Jenga to get an idea), as well as fabulous refinements in the burgeoning field of augmented reality. The iPhone 4’s new 720p HD video footage can now be edited on the phone using the new mobile version of iMovie, which comes with transitions, themes and all the extras and refinements you would expect from Apple.

With the pep of the A4 chip, the Retina display, two cameras, a flash, HD video, a larger battery and that drool-worthy form factor, Apple has come up with its best ever handset. HTC Android handsets still impress and offer a viable alternative for many, but iPhone 4’s star quality is irresistible.

Those who can’t yet upgrade without financial penalty can still enjoy the advantages of iOS 4.0 – not all the features are available for iPhone 3G, but just about everything works perfectly on the 3GS. Multitasking is smooth and efficient (double press the home button for a line of open apps that can be accessed or closed). App Folders now allow you to bundle apps together according to whatever categorisation appeals to you. The Mail app gets an overhaul with better IMAP and Google Mail functionality. An element of spell checking is now available, though I still get “me” turning to “mr” all the damned time. Dozens of other little extras lurk in this major software overhaul and I can think of no reason why iPod Touch and iPhone 3G and 3GS users wouldn’t want to upgrade immediately.

App Folders

Multitasking

Warning

On a less enthusiastic note Apple made an almighty arse of itself lately with some contemptible censorship in relation to iPhone versions of Joyce’s Ulysses and Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, two of the greatest literary masterpieces in the English language. The decision was reversed with Apple representative Trudy Miller having the grace to admit:

“We made a mistake. When the art panel edits of the Ulysses Seen app and the graphic novel adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest app were brought to our attention, we offered the developers the opportunity to resubmit their original drawings and update their apps.”

The apology seems unreserved and I hope it marks a move away from an inhouse ethos at Apple that was beginning to make me feel distinctly queasy. Since he sold them Pixar Steve Jobs has been Disney’s major stockholder. I should hate to see the horror of a besuited and sanctimonious “family values” corporation take over at Cupertino. Shaved underarm overshowered American hygiene is sexless and unappealing at the best of times, when it is injected like so much processed cheese into the veins of a company that once prided itself on its alternative and open attitudes then it is time to weep. I do not want to feel, after all this time, like those horses in Animal Farm who look through the windows of the farmhouse only to see that the pigs are now wearing trousers.

© Stephen Fry 2010

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To have been appointed a Trustee of this glorious institution I count as one of the great honours of my life, a life spent looking at pictures and art works with the deepest pleasure but also often with the deepest embarrassment. I will return to the question of embarrassment in a moment. First I want to summon to the feast a figure who is never far away when we talk of art, but is especially close on this exact occasion. I expect you are all familiar with the 1881 painting “A Private View at the Royal Academy” by William Frith. It depicts this very evening, the opening of the Summer Exhibition, 130 years ago. If you don’t know it, you can see it here in the John Madejski Fine Rooms, where it hangs. Frith depicts the fashionable, the artistic, the grand, the curious and the august all gathered in this very place in that High Victorian summer: they are looking at pictures, but mostly of course they are looking at each other, and many of them only have eyes for the one figure who dominates the canvas. He is a tall, elegant and charismatic young man, with a lily in his buttonhole, a catalogue in his hand and a look of unembarrassed and unselfconscious assurance in his eyes. He is of course Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde.

Who was Oscar Wilde at that moment? His collected poems might have been moderately well received that year, but he was only two and half years down from Oxford, had written no plays, no books and no essays worth noting. Despite this and by virtue of personality and influence alone he was already famous enough to have inspired Gilbert and Sullivan to write Patience, an operetta that poked fun at him and his circle. And he was well known enough to dominate Frith’s enormous canvas. He occupies so important a position in the painting because he was one of the first figures and certainly the most articulate, to raise art from a hobby, a taste, an enthusiasm or an extra in life, to the status of a moral philosophy: he privileged art as the primary and central mode of human expression, the shortest path to the truth and to happiness, the highest and most important pursuit, calling or achievement to which humanity could aspire. But of course the more important art is to us, the more self-conscious we are when confronting it.

I mentioned embarrassment earlier. I think it is surprising how rarely the issue of the embarrassment inherent in engaging with art is addressed, especially in Britain where embarrassment might be said to be our national emotion. And it is peculiarly an issue with the visual arts. When we go to a concert all we have to do is close our eyes, or watch the conductor or orchestra, keep quiet and try not to make asses of ourselves by clapping at the end of a movement. We can let the music come to us, enter our ears and brains and allow it either to send us to sleep or to make a shape, a narrative, an emotional structure in our minds that delights, solaces, charms, frightens, seduces, enlivens or in any of a thousand other ways acts upon us and our thoughts and feelings. Although it seems today that if there is one thing going to a concert or play truly provokes in people it is a coughing fit. But that is a whole other kettle of wax. The point is that things are different when we look at works of art. When we go to a gallery there are other people moving and talking all around us and our time is, all things being equal, our own and not under the control of a conductor or director, we can choose to linger or pass by any individual work – choose: there is a frightening word.

There are so many unspoken dilemmas facing a gallery visitor. We arrive at an exhibition space that is displaying pieces by artists of whom we may or may not have heard. Often we are attending a show which exhibits works by names so illustrious and so, we are told, important, that they have already for hundreds of years been called Old Masters. Or they are Modern Masters, geniuses, icons, cultural heroes… they are great, or scandalous, or notorious or revered.They are intimidating.

Are we supposed to know facts about the artists and their works? Are we supposed to talk? Shall we be entirely silent and slowly stand and stare at works without comment and without revealing what we feel or shall we occasionally dare to say that we like this expression, or that shape, or those colours? Do we whisper to our companions, or do we imitate that awful show-off over there who is talking so knowledgeably and loudly about morbidezza, sfumato and golden sections? And isn’t it actually snobbish of us to disapprove of him, he is obviously enjoying himself and what is wrong with him imparting his enthusiasm and knowledge to his companion? Why should we assume he is showing off, doesn’t that assumption reveal nothing but our own self-conscious insecurity? Oh dear. It’s all so complicated. Aren’t we just striking a pose too, the pose of one who refuses to listen to any nonsense about art history, or pay any attention to the tradition or biographical background of the works before us. In fact we are going to ignore the so-called masterpiece in front of us and stylishly prefer the lesser known work next to it, just to show how original we are and how unswayed by reputations.

Even if we avoid all those contortions we still have to stand before art works that might have us entranced, or confused or perplexed, or shocked or bored or thrilled or hungry for more while at the same time knowing that there are others clamouring to see them as well, so we mustn’t hog the space directly in front, yet we are conscious too that we don’t know how far away to stand – should we step right back and risk other people getting in the way? On the other hand if we go too close are we pretentiously implying a connoisseur’s expertise in brushwork and technique? Oh dear, all I want to do is engage with the piece sincerely, with no pre-conceptions or prejudices but my own manners, fears and anxieties and my awareness of myself and of others, all obtrude. There’s always someone blocking my clear view of an artwork and that someone turns out to be myself.

All this self-consciousness. It sometimes seems that the only safe way to go round an exhibition is entirely on one’s own, otherwise we’re in terrible fear of looking like a show-off, or an ignoramus, or affected or blasé or pretentious or philistine or something equally shaming and dreadful. We yearn to be open, to learn, to be provoked, to engage honestly, simply and truthfully with a work, but to do so we must leave our self-aware, social, verbal and public selves behind. But how hard that is when we are in such a public sphere. The very fact of our being in a populous gathering automatically activates all those tribal status, power and perception regions of our brain that are death to plain, honest, naked encounters with art.

Or maybe it’s just me. Maybe no else here has even a ghost of such a problem. Perhaps you are thinking that I’m deluded and ill; perhaps you are all far too grown up and mature for such silly issues ever to come between you and the ability to meet a painting or work of art squarely. The artists here certainly won’t share this problem because the power to rise above self-consciousness is almost a defining quality of artists. Artists are superb at switching off awareness of self. As you can tell if you watch one eat.

Others of you however, fellow non-artists, might understand what I am talking about. And talking is the problem. While I could not be more delighted that we live in a verbal world, I do understand the pleasure in occasionally laying language aside and letting some other non-verbal part of our brains take over. For you cannot explain a work of art in words. A painter makes a painting out of paint – paint is its language. If you can define it, nail it, comprehend it in words then something is rather wrong. A work of art is precisely that which remains when you have run out of words to describe it. The works that move us most are those that have the most life and power in them when the talking stops. If an artist could have said it in words, well then they would have done. Instead they have said it in paint, or stone, or bronze, or glass or whatever medium they may have chosen. “All art is at once surface and symbol,” Oscar Wilde wrote. “Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.”

I think it is a relief to know that paintings and sculptures are not crossword puzzles to be solved or allegories to be read or tests to be passed, but it still does not make it easier to walk around a public gallery without being aware of the others there and without being aware of oneself and the figure one cuts. I think that is why so many people look cross in art galleries. They are either scowling at those loud, disrespectful parties of continental schoolchildren, or they are pursing their lips at a fellow Briton they deem to be showing off or they are frowning at someone who, like a bad golfer, is ahead of them and playing through too slowly. Or perhaps they are looking cross because it is art and art is supposed, isn’t it, to be serious and important and therefore demands a serious and important face?

Maybe the technology will save us. With earphones on and lost in an audio commentary we are perhaps more likely to close out the outside world and be left alone with the art work, which is what we want. And you don’t even need the audio commentary, with only the earphones you can zone out of the embarrassing present and into the artwork.

I mustn’t go too far. I raise the matter in the hope of clearing the air and letting those who also feel it enjoy the relief of fellowship. I am not completely crippled by this embarrassment problem, nor I think does it stop me from enjoying art more and more as each year passes. Nor clearly does it stop most of us. More people are going to galleries than ever before in our history. They go with excited anticipation and they go prepared to shed any preconceptions, prejudices or problems with Art with a capital A. The queues that form every single day in the courtyard here, and outside the Tate, the National and other galleries, museums and exhibition spaces show that the public enthusiasm and curiosity for art is enormous and growing.

In an increasingly infantilised world where so much seems to be split into good or bad, correct or incorrect, acceptable or unacceptable, where complex ideas are chopped up for public consumption like food chopped up for a child, where so much is hygienic, attainable, safe, sugared, assimilable, digestible, pasteurised, homogenised and sanitised, in such a world our appetite has never been greater for the complex, the ambiguous, the challenging, the untamed, the sharp, the peculiar, the surprising, the dangerous, the dirty, the difficult, the untameable, the elusive, the unsafe and the unknowable. In other words, for art. And to confront it, all we need do is to forget ourselves and our embarrassments and find a way to engage face to face. When we are in the galleries, we can all be Oscar, we can all raise our eyes to a canvas and encounter it fearlessly, with humour and grace and zest and not a trace of embarrassment. It is the adventure of a lifetime and there are few better places in the world in which to embark on such an adventure than here, where art and artists rule.

And so it is a great pleasure for me to invite my fellow guests to rise and join me in a toast to the Royal Academy of Arts….

x Stephen Fry

© Tony Husband 2010 for Stephenfry.com

Let us suppose for a minute that you have an iPad on your lap, perched oddly on your splayed out knee, laid flat on the table, fashioned into a lectern by the Apple suedette case, cradled in your arms above your head in bed or in any of the other peculiar contortions that you will find your body adopting in order best to read and interact with your new friend. You may, rightly, think that this FryPaper app is rather simple and unexciting. Indeed it is. There are the device, the content and you and we are not very interested in clouding the interaction between the three. We might add this bell or that whistle from time to time and as occasion and opportunity might suggest, but for the moment we are happy to offer this as no more than a little something. If the mood strikes me to blog, microblog or blessay the app can suck that content from the site and let you know that it has done so and you can read it in an iPaddy sort of way. That is all there is to it.

But there is a much stronger chance that you do not own an iPad and that you are waiting to see what the fuss is about or waiting for iPad 2.0 or even 3.0. There is a chance too that you are an Apple sceptic or even Apple hater who thinks those of us who have one are dumb lemmings, mindless style slaves, pretentious boobies, suckers, poseurs and losers. Over the last few years and with a growing intensity more or less mappable onto a graph of Apple’s seemingly relentless march into greater profitability and share value, a new kind of depth of feeling has entered the tech world and I thought that on the day the iPad comes out I might as well look at this whole problem of Apple, trolling, flaming and the nastier side of Web 2.0.

The tribalism, fanaticism, fury, joy and intensity of hatred, veneration, anger, love and contempt with which Apple and its products are regarded by some must, for those who are on neither side of the sectarian divide themselves, pass all understanding. I have rarely wavered in my excitement and delight but naturally I believe my responses to be reasoned, reasonable and this side of sane. Well, I would wouldn’t I? Nobody in any realm introduces themselves as an extremist. It is only their opponents who are extremists. Some Apple devices are better than others, but I confess I am nearly always childlike in my thrilled and squeaking pleasure when the latest object of desire chugs off the Cupertino conveyor belt. What Willie Wonka was to Charlie, Steve Jobs is to me. I am pretty excited to see the latest HTC and Blackberry devices too. You would have to be very peculiar if you claimed that there was an absolutely equality in design and finish to all the gismos that come from all the manufacturers, it is of course perfectly okay not to be nuts about Apple and to choose another path to digital felicity. I would be the first to say that biodiversity is better than monoculture in the unnatural smartphone and computer world just as it is in the natural animal and plant world.

I ought at this juncture explain what my professional relationship with Apple is. I have often been told that I am a “spokesman” for the company and it is assumed by a few that I am on a retainer of some kind. I own no Apple shares and have never accepted (or indeed been offered) a penny by the company or their representatives. I have attended the odd launch at their invitation, but they have never paid my travel expenses, nor would I want them to. On the other hand they have given me gear. My friend Jony Ive, Apple’s chief designer, likes me to have the newest products to play with and through him I am lucky enough to get early versions of all kinds of devices. On the other other hand, the nice people at HTC have also given me prototypes and hot-off-the-press versions of almost all their WindowsMobile and Android smartphones too. I have sat and chatted to their Chief Marketing Director John Wang, a man I greatly like and admire and he has made sure that I have a full range of his superbly put together devices to use and evaluate. The wonderfully kind BlackBerry chaps from RIM have also done the same for me — giving me a new Bold, a new Storm and much else besides. I am a very lucky fellow indeed to get all these devices but I don’t tell you all this in order to elicit envy, admiration or wrath. I tell you simply so that you get a picture. Being a tech blogger, a figure who is known to be excited by smartphones and digital devices of all kinds I am sent lots of toys to play with for review and personal use. A small minority of it is in fact Apple, but nonetheless those who like to believe in agendas, conspiracies, graft and corruption will continue to imagine that I have a vested interest in Apple. The anti-Apple lobby sees that kind of thing everywhere. The BBC, god bless them in their paranoia, fear and writhing self-conscious insecurity, are hard put sometimes ever even to mention the company, knowing all too well that there will be those accusing them of being unpaid PR operatives for Cupertino, disgraceful lackeys and running dogs spending MY LICENCE FEE on the furtherance of Steve Jobs’s evil plans. And on and on it goes.

The causes that lead some to hate everything Apple are complicated and various, but they are certainly not rational. Hate never is. Nor indeed is love. We are dealing with emotions here, not thoughts. Apple divides people in tribal, primal and almost frightening ways. Not all people, of course, indeed only a tiny, tiny minority of people, but they (we) are the ones who take up most of the bandwidth in the tech blogosphere and make the most noise and fill up Twitter and Facebook and other forums with our polemical deliberations and bellicose disquisitions. Although it is a minority who are so riven, it is a significant and loud one. I do not think you find such divisions and disputation in many other areas of human life, except religion, politics and sport of course. Some people prefer Ford cars to Honda say, or Parker to Waterman pens, or Sony TVs to Samsungs or Colonel Sanders to Ronald McDonald or Beethoven to Mozart but you don’t find online ideological wars or virulent tradings of insults on the subject. Apple haters cannot wait to tell you how underwhelmed, how (exaggerated yawning gesture) bored they are by the hype, what suckers, what sheep what idiots we are for even discussing the iPad. They know perfectly well how much better the HP Slate is, or the JooJoo or the Notion Ink Adam or any number of Android or Windows 7 netbooks, smartbooks and tablets. Only a susceptible ignoramus would rave about a ‘slick’ (what an insult) over-designed (d’uh?) iCon (hoho) like the Apple iPad.

I exaggerate. Of course I do. A little. Only a little. Most people, as I have already said, are on neither side of a Swiftian civil war between LittleEndian Applistas and BigEndian Anti-Applistas. There are plenty of people who are more measured and reasonable in their scepticism about Apple, it is not my mission to characterise everyone on each side as a fundamentalist. But you know there really is fury out there. Absolute fury. Otherwise funny and sane people like Charlie Brooker have taken up anti-Apple stances as a matter of style. ‘People who like Apple are pretentious and style conscious, so I will never ever have one,’ the argument goes, if I can call it an argument, and obviously I can’t, because it isn’t an argument it’s just a dumb and slightly mad assertion. After all, how style conscious do you have to be to refuse to be seen dead in anything so fashionable. Huh? I mean huh?

The fact that I will have turned off my website’s comments facility or moderated it into effective silence is even now driving some of my readers (a tiny minority I’m happy to think) insane. They are dreaming up insults about me and the iPad and dripping with cunning clever remarks to show what a fool, what a pretentious idiot, what a preening, posturing pseud of a lame waste of skin I am to champion Apple and their controlling commercial ways, their over-proprietary software, firmware and hardware and their whole corporate style. How dare I not let them flame me off the planet with their bile and spleen and choler and other medieval bodily fluids? It is their right and their need not just to disagree with me but to grab me by the scruff of the neck and push me face down in their prose until I squeal for mercy and admit that the iPad is a failure and a disgrace, that I am a fool and a nothing for falling for it and they are supreme and knowing and right, dammit, and why won’t anyone listen??? The desire to wag a finger, to take me down a peg and above all to show a superior understanding of Steve Jobs’s motives, Apple’s deficiencies and my shortcomings, hypocrisy and smug stupidity must be overwhelming, but you will have to forgive me for suggesting that you do all that on your own site, not on mine.

I don’t know about you, but my eyes are already trained only to read the top half of a web page these days. Rather as a Victorian would not look below the waist, I do not let my eyes have even a second’s contact with the revolting Have Your Say or Comments section of a BBC site, a YouTube page or any blog or tech forum. The lower half of web pages is very like the lower half of the body — full of all kinds of noxious evil smelling poison. I suppose it has to be expelled somewhere, but you will forgive me for not wanting to be close by when it happens. It is a pity, a real pity, that the furious few pollute the atmosphere and obstruct the pipelines that might otherwise allow the reciprocal possibilities of the world of User Generated Content that Web 2.0 promised all those years ago. Lord knows I don’t want the comment sections on my site to be filled with nothing but sycophantic agreement and loving worship. The truth is I would like them to be open, honest and free. There are thousands of people with valid and interesting points of disagreement with me on any number of subjects, with objections to Apple, their corporate style, their approach to hardware, firmware and software and their whole philosophy, but they are drowned out by the fundies and the freaks. One hurtful, mean-spirited, vicious or intemperate comment ruins everything. Absolutely everything. One turd spoils the whole bath. You cannot say to someone about to lower themselves in, ‘Don’t be a wimp, it’s only a small turd, the rest of the water is crystal clear.’ So I would rather have no comment at all. Call me weak, call me pusillanimous, call me craven, call me anything, only don’t do it here.

One of the most puzzling features of the current unstoppable wave of political punditry that is flooding all channels and outlets at the moment (including this one of course) is the peculiar propensity of commentators to feel qualified to extrapolate from the election results the Manifest Will of Britain.  “The people have voted for change”, “The people have told Gordon Brown that he has got to go” , “The people are saying that they don’t really trust any one party”, “The people have said that they want Parliament reformed, the tea room in the House of Commons redecorated, new carpeting in the women’s lavatory of the House of Lords and a vegetarian option in the canteen.”  What fevered branch of electoral hermeneutics allows any such interpretations on the basis of the summing of millions of individual’s single votes I cannot imagine. It is possible that people do want real change, but a single cross next to a single name is no way to deduce it.

PR

We only get one vote, one cross to put next to one name. If you put your cross next to Victoria Tory’s name you declare that want her to be your MP, representing you constituency, although it is perhaps also permissible to assume that you are up for her party and her party’s leader winning an overall majority in the Commons in Westminster as well. If the cross is next to Fabian Labour’s name or Libby Dem’s one might be justified in assuming the same there too. There really is almost nothing more nuanced or sophisticated that one can infer from our recent general election except to say that that of the 68% who voted there weren’t enough who wanted Conservatives to win to allow Cameron to claim first prize, and even fewer who wanted to vote for candidates from the other parties. One could deduce a huge amount more if voters were allowed to express their preferences in an intelligent way that reflected how they really feel and think. The Electoral Reform Society is a good place to go for information as to how precisely such a form of voting could be implemented, as it is all round much of the civilised world. My friends at Vote For A Change have also been campaigning for the same thing. Proportional Representation is the prize that many of us hope this “confusing” election will deliver. But there is an obstacle. An obstacle so huge that I cannot see it being overcome.

The Sitch

Here is the situation as I read it.

1. David Cameron’s Conservative Party elders and backbenchers will never allow him to seal a pact with Clegg that guarantees electoral reform in the shape of proportional representation.
2. Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrat Party elders and backbenchers will never allow him to seal a pact with Cameron that that does not guarantee electoral reform in the shape of proportional representation.
3. Cameron will spring an obvious trap by saying, “We’ll see. We’ll look into it. You can have concessions on schools and hospitals.” Children who want an ice cream know that when their parents say “We’ll see, but you can have a banana” it means no ice cream. The Lib Dem and PR pressure groups are perfectly aware of that too. Any talk of “an independent enquiry … a Royal Commission … a committee to look into it” will be treated for what it is. Fudge.
4. Stalemate

It comes down to this: the Conservatives believe that under a PR system they will never achieve full supremacy in the country again. This would mark a sharp reverse in their ambitions. Their manifesto commitment to a 10% reduction in MPs and a consequent redraft of constituency borders would necessarily gerrymander massively in their interest, all but guaranteeing Tory power for the foreseeable future. The idea that they will for one moment countenance PR reform that will see them reduced, as they would interpret it, to the role of Euro-style hedgers, compromisers and pragmatic consensus inclusionists is more than a bitter pill, it is a suicide pill and Cameron knows that he could never induce the party to swallow it.

There can therefore be only two outcomes. Either Clegg blinks and accepts a “We’ll see, dear” fudge which would cause outrage in his party and his own political death or Cameron refuses the deal, demands a new general election and watches grandly, nobly and in a “statesmanlike manner” from the sidelines as Labour attempts to cobble together something with both the Lib Dems and the requisite number of independents and nationalists required to form a majority who could push through an Emergency Budget. Cameron would calculate that the press and public might well see him as the iron man of principal, with the most votes and the most ‘authority’. Clegg would be painted as an opportunistic spoiler: after all his party actually lost ground in the election. Brown, if he stayed, would continue to be portrayed as forlorn, desperate, blundering, out of touch, cynical, greedy, lame and fatally wounded. The media would, I think, successfully raise Cameron and the Conservatives in public estimation: “What principle! What courage! They were not squalid smoke-filled room negotiators, they didn’t strike ugly deals behind closed doors… they deserve the chance to run a stable administration without all this sordid horse-trading. They made handsome and significant concessions on issues that really matter, hospitals and schools, yet instead of seizing this historic opportunity to do something for the country the Lib-Dems insisted, at this time of economic crisis, to fuss about cosmetic changes to the constitution that no decent Englishman understands anyway… nasty European nonsense. Now we see Clegg for what he really is…”  You can write the Telegraph and Mail leaders for yourselves. They will argue furthermore that if the Lib Dems and reformers get their way, then the kind of deal-making, compromise and gridlock that we are seeing now will become the norm after every general election and that, they will declare, is no way to run a whelk stall.

A Prophecy

Within three months I imagine that any Lib Dem/Labour/Others coalition will fall, a General Election will be called, the Lib Dem vote will be decimated, the Conservatives brought to full power and Electoral /Constitutional Reform will be nothing but a wistful memory as those of us with distaste for conservatism hunker down for the duration. Demos, riots, overturned cars in the streets, many more homeless, infrastructure decay, a rise in crimes against the person and property, a happy time perhaps for the City and the secure middle classes, a dreadful time for the vulnerable, the disabled, the physically and mentally ill, the homeless and the poor. I remember the main feeling induced by living under Thatcher was shame. It was shaming to live in a country that could be so proudly, gloatingly unkind, so vulgar, shabby and ungracious in its attitudes to the outsider, the weak and the destitute. Goodness knows the Labour administration has been very, very far from perfect, but I think we will only appreciate the unheralded and uncelebrated good it did when the props it built up for the poor, the disabled and the disadvantaged have been kicked away.

Reform

This is the first occasion in my lifetime when true electoral and constitutional reform has seemed a possibility. We could, if Clegg keeps his nerve, guarantee a political system in which yoyo-ing between right and left ends and with it all the vindictive, ideological revenges and pendulum overcompensations wrought by the major parties each time they return to office. We could have a proper second chamber that is more than a clique of rubber-stamping apparatchiks. An Upper House should be composed of those who think long term. The Commons might vote to put up some smart wallpaper and do some attractive repainting, but the Upper House must be there to look at the damp coursing and the structure, to eliminate the ravages of short-termism. We could also conceive a constitution into whose genetic code a profound and thoughtful understanding of the competing demands of privacy and openness is written – for that surely is the issue in citizenship and government which will most demand attention over the next fifty years? Nobody intelligent or competent appears to be looking at these questions. The Digital Economy Bill shows how pitiful is the politicians’ understanding of the changes that are coming our way.

I want to write soon about Digital Inclusion, which I hope will become a great cause to which some of you might ally yourselves. These and many other issues are structural, deep and important yet consistently ignored by mainstream media: it is to a properly constituted Upper House that one looks for that kind of vital strategic planning. Of course such root and branch reform in governmental structures and electoral methods would require proper debate which would take up parliamentary time and a great deal of (no doubt necessary) public consultation. Working parties, fact-finding missions, amendments, variations, filibusters and vacillations will make it intensely difficult even to make the issue one for referendum.

The Conservatives would throw all impediments that could be found in the path of reform at the best of times, the current economic crisis can so easily be used as an excuse to do nothing constitutional. It is hard to be optimistic, even thought there are clear arguments for a simple implementation of the Australian system of preferential voting, also known as Instant Run-Off, that would hardly need a referendum or two years of committee. Australia has had their system since 1918 and it has worked well — infinitely better than ours has. But if there is one thing the British are good at it is shaking their heads and saying that a thing can’t be done. They forget that political will and commitment can make any problem disappear. Depression and War have proved that there is nothing we can’t do properly, amicably and promptly if we set out minds to it. But history has also shown us that our civil servants and politicians can outdo builders when it comes to sucking in breath, shaking their heads and saying that they can’t get the parts and that frankly it just can’t be done.

There are many golden prizes that might be extracted from the strange situation we are witnessing in and around Westminster at the moment. I am pessimistic only because I can see how from the Tory point of view there is a case for the legitimacy of a conservative administration and why they will never concede on PR and because I can see how easy it is for them to scupper any chances of it while yet looking reasonable and magnanimous and authentic and responsible. The gamble of staying aloof and making sure another election comes along soon must seem a small one to them.

A fair voting system is not in Tory interests, and it is a fundamental of conservative politics that everyone should act in their own interests. Only the twittering classes and high-moral-ground hugging smug media liberal wankers like me would vote or act otherwise. Therefore the Tories will never budge, a consensus will not be built and Clegg’s brief moment in the limelight will be over and he and his party will be a forgotten blip as we return to the same old dance of death while the world changes ineradicably around us. Britain will be shown to be incapable of evolving in its own interests as a nation, as a smart, adaptable, imaginative and diverse community of people who can respond to a changing world. Where once we were in the vanguard (rarely first, but usually early and sound) in areas like universal suffrage, the abolition of slavery and child labour, the institution of votes for women and many other important freedoms and civilised reforms, the unsuitability of our political machinery for the modern world will mean that we will soon be seen as a haggard oldie in a broken down jalopy coughing and shaking our fist at the fast electric cars that zoom past us on the highway. What a pity, what a terrible pity.

So…

If what I prognosticate comes to pass and a second general election is called (and it most certainly won’t because I’m crap at this kind of prophecy) – then I think those of us that really care about the kind of change I’ve alluded to will have to mass together and demand it with every democratically viable tool at our disposal. We will have to stop the media from shifting the rhetorical ground and erecting Cameron as some kind of hero of the people. Because believe me that is what they and their PR people will do. It is hard to see how Clegg and whoever leads the Labour Party (Alan Johnson or David Milliband, one assumes) in three months time will be able to counter such tactics. It’s fun now to see the manoeuvrings and courtship dances but it will soon enough become boring, then irritating and finally enraging. The victims of our displeasure are more likely to be the Lib Dems than any other party, which is why I fear they may swallow their pride, lose their moment, accept the ‘We’ll see’ and end up with lots of fudge and bananas and no ice cream.

Wednesday 12th May 2010. Comments are now closed for this blog. Thank you for your contributions.
Producer.

© Tony Husband 2010 for Stephenfry.com

What Right Have I to Blog?

Should I even be writing this blog? In a free country under the new dispensation of social networking is my ‘influence’ so disproportionate that for me to be revealing my voting intentions (which I am not quite going to do, by the way) in some sense inimical to the democratic spirit? I have about a million and a half Twitter followers, most of them I should think of voting age. If I changed the mind of even 1% of them would I somehow be cheating?

There are arguments for and against my involvement at such a level. One argument is that columnists in newspapers who have absolutely no more legitimacy in terms of influence, education, knowledge, understanding or right to persuade and interfere than I have are attempting to do so every day and with far more vitriol, conviction and absolutism than I would ever dare to exhibit. Which will not stop them from having a go at me were I to presume to pop my head above the parapet and suggest a voting preference. The screams of “Labour Lovie!” or “Lib Dem Lovie!” would be heard from here to hell. ‘It’s all very well for a pampered celebrity to parade his so-called caring credentials …’ blah-di-blah-di-bleugh. In ideological wars of this nature the first casualties are consideration, mutual respect, sense, proportion and dignity. Fair enough, one must be tough I suppose, although I’d much rather not be.

Another argument to propel me to write may be that the very weight of Twitter followers and website traffic behind me ought to bring with it some sense of civic duty. Maybe, there is a chance at least, this election matters. I don’t question whether or not it matters to the candidates, of course it does, but whether it matters more than most historically, socially and individually to us, as Britons. If this election does matter then surely my ignoring it would put me in the position of one of those rather silly people who is content to jeer from the sidelines, ‘they’re all the same anyway’ and ‘it makes no difference’ – which believe me I understand, for we are all tempted to be one of those. ‘Lord, what fools these voters be,’ we say to ourselves, if we are the kind of pompous Shakespeare quoting arse that I am at any rate, ‘you won’t catch me committing myself or risking a vote, much better for me to rely on the acuity of my vision which sees through the lot of them.’ Believe me, I do understand how tempting that position is. But I think we all know, in the innermost chambers of our heart, that such a position is unworthy of us.

The nailing of my colours to the mast might just encourage some of you to vote. I really do not mind how you vote, but I think you should. The ‘I can’t make a difference’ assertion is neither true, nor impressive, nor amusing, nor worthy, nor dignified. It is lazy, cowardly and inane. In Australia and some other countries voting is compulsory. Maybe it should be here too. At the very least the poverty and inadequacy of my arguments or assertions may at least propel you to the voting booth to vote against everything I believe. That at least would be something.

To sum up. What business do I have to ventilate my psephological dispositions for the Great Choosing that will take place on Thursday?  Do I think that my electoral intentions are relevant, important, worth more than anyone else’s, of national interest? None of the above. On the other hand, I have been approached by all three major parties who have sensed that I might be more of a floater (in every sense of that unfortunate epithet, I suspect) than I ever was in previous general elections. And on the other other hand some of my Twitter followers seem to think that my coyness in refusing to reveal my intentions amounts to a kind of cowardice or failure of citizenship. So I have decided to write this piece of bloggage in the hope that it will at least acquit me of apathy or irresponsibility. But I will preface it now with this insistent motto: do not let anything I say influence you. Vote with your heart, vote with your head, vote with your gut: your heart, your head, your gut – no one’s else. I just hope you have courage, style and charm enough not to hate me for what I am about to say, for I assure you I will not hate you if you say the exact opposite. Trollers, resentful maniacs, weirdos and abusive beasts can stop reading now, I have no interest in horrible and offensive meanness of spirit. You must believe me when I say that I have never hated any fellow countryman or woman because of how they vote or how they express their voting intention.

Let’s agree to disagree

For a Labour voter to hate a Tory voter or vice versa is for us all to stumble into the revolting and nonsensical little-endian big-endian madness that Swift pilloried in Gulliver’s Travels. Let me say here and now and beg you to believe that some of the people in the world I most love, reverence, adore, admire and respect will be voting Conservative on Thursday. I grew up a Tory, I spent my childhood summers at Conservative fêtes and whist drives and dinner dances. I thought anyone who voted Liberal, let alone Labour, was creepy weird and horrifying. At some point the wind changed. The wind’s name was Margaret Thatcher, but we won’t go into ancient history. All the vices I once attributed to Labour — vulgarity, meanness of spirit, lack of warmth, sympathy or lightness of touch — I now attributed to the Conservatives. I went so far as to join the Labour Party, to write speeches, or parts of speeches, for Neil Kinnock, John Smith, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, all of whom I met and liked. Mind you, I met and liked John Major and plenty of Tories too. I’m a whore when it comes to meeting and liking people. It is most annoying to have one’s prejudices overturned by real life. However one thing has remained constant in my political affiliations, and that is a deep contempt and fear of tribalism.

© Tony Husband 2010 for Stephenfry.com

When I meet a Labour voter who can only hiss, stamp and fume at any Tory, or a Conservative voter who can only jeer and condemn a Labour voter then I bridle, bristle and simply writhe with indignation. Let this be known and celebrated: we all have the right to vote the way we want. We all have our reasons and motivations and they do not justify anyone insulting or reviling us. Actually, the fact is that ‘reasons’ is probably the wrong word, for we are all (or almost all) energised in politics above all by feelings, by loyalties and deep turbulent emotions that bubble down in our depths. These have far more influence upon our political ‘views’ than rational and logical considerations. There may be those who are capable of carefully and objectively weighing the qualities of each party’s policies and coming to a voting decision on that basis, but I have yet to meet such people. We all know we should be like that, but we all know that we should only put into our mouths what reason tells us is nutritious, calorifically justified and environmentally sustainable. We eat by appetite, emotion and desire and we vote according to criteria of loyalty and connection that are much closer to the support of football teams than to rational assessment and analysis. And, of course, we respond to the personalities that are put up in front of us. I have yet to find anyone who is not influenced by personality. Only, being humans, we are all hypocrites, and we accuse those who dislike our hero or admire our villain of being the ones who succumb to the cheap allure of personality politics, we of course, are immune. Of course, so deep run our alliances that we impute good qualities to personalities we would otherwise not warm to and see ghastly characteristics in those whom we would probably like in real life, if only they were not from the Other Side. What we cannot bear is when someone from across the political divide from us is obviously believable, likeable and reasonable. That is when we accuse their supporters of being victims of personality politics and the individual in question of being ‘a media creature’.

If such innate tribal fixity was wholly the case then Gilbert and Sullivan would be right and that Nature really does contrive that ‘every boy and every gal that’s born into the world alive is either a little Liberal or else a little Conservative.’ We all know that, aside from those so ingrained in loyalty that they simply could never vote outside their born or acquired adherences, there are such creatures as floating voters and that they are the ones who determine electoral outcomes. I find, for the first time in thirty years, that I am one such.

The choices

Forgetting the forgettable, there are three parties we can choose from. They represent, so far as I can see, the Same, Another Same and something New and Untried. There are powerful, in my opinion, reasons for believing either that the last thing we need now is discontinuity or for believing that we need fundamental change. In other words, I can see why we might want to plough on through the debt crisis that faces us with a reliable, if unexciting administration and I can also see why we might want absolutely to alter direction and experiment with new ways of hammering out consensus, compromise and pragmatic reform. What is harder to envisage is a new driver in the same car, a change that satisfies tribal loyalties but actually achieves nothing.

Britain is in dire straits financially. We are, not to put too fine a point on it, shafted six ways from Sunday. As always, those who will suffer most will be the already disadvantaged. No matter who wins or commands a majority on Thursday there will be appalling cuts in public services, terrible depredations made that will hit first and hardest those who can least afford it. Twas ever thus, you might think. But the ripples in crime, discontent, infrastructure decay and quality of life degradation will affect all, even those who least care about the destiny of the destitute.

Vote One

If there is a way out of it, it will require dullness, concentration, probity, focus, geeky financial fanaticism and an almost horrible obsession with economic detail and technique. Sound like anyone we know?  The last thing that is wanted, this vote might suggest, is an untried chancer who makes promises that we know, with the best will in the world, he cannot keep.

Hands up anyone, anyone who believes that the Osborne/Cameron nexus will honestly punish or regulate the City as they need to be punished and regulated? Whatever noises they make about it, you know, you know as surely as you know that turkeys would never vote for Christmas, that somehow, by perfectly reasonable and unforeseeable routes, any manifesto promises to be tough on financial impropriety will somehow get lost and the smarting chastisement that the short-selling creeps who got us into this mess deserve will never be forthcoming. (In fact you can pretty much guarantee that even a Labour vote will not guarantee the regulation that wise financial insiders know is necessary ) ‘Oh it will just cause a mass exodus from the City.’ ‘Oh, alienating the wealth creators is the surest route to bankruptcy.’ ‘Germany hasn’t done it, nor has the SEC in New York.’ ‘We have to compete. Cut our banking houses off at the knees and you hobble the British economy, perhaps fatally.’ Gosh, how convincing that all sounds. As a result insane bonuses and horrific financial instruments will rise again, a debt dependent economy will boil once more into life and dozens of journalists and commentators will rise to their feet to applaud.

I don’t mean to be sneery or negative about this, it is what the Tories stand for and there are arguments one can subscribe to which convincingly defend their nature and their instincts and their outlook. Goodness knows there’s a huge part of me that is libertarian and contra-dirigiste enough in outlook to look with longing at the certainties of the Reasonable Right. But you would have to be naive or dishonest to deny the certainty of the outcome of a Conservative government in terms of its friendship with bankers, financiers, fund managers and those who manipulate and massage capital for a living. I do not for a minute concur with some visceral Labour views of Tories as being automatically and genetically uncaring or socially illiberal. True, there are dozens and dozens of Conservative candidates whose repellent stupidity and vulgarity would make even a Daily Mail reader blush and stammer, just as there are dozens and dozens of Labour candidates whose bigoted, dull-witted asininity would embarrass a Guardian reader into dribbling delirium. And there are plenty of Tories whose hopes for the poor and the dispossessed and the outcast are as sincere as that of any socialist or liberal.  Vote One, if I were to cast it, is all about a belief that – despite the rather obvious and predictable PR choruses to the contrary –  continuity, solidity, sound management, a lack of interest in anything but the economy and a bone-headed refusal to pay much attention to image makers and spin doctors is what is required now. Far from All Change, let’s go for No Change and weather the storm that is coming with a dull, intelligent, responsible, proven and determined pilot at the helm. One who won’t ask for relief when the waves batter  but will plough on, head down, until we find calmer waters and sunnier skies. That is Vote One. In case you’re very very dim, that would be a vote for Gordon Brown and Labour. It isn’t very exciting, you might think, but it might just see us through.

An argument against Labour might be that Iraq and the revolting Digital Economy Bill and a catalogue of fudge, fumbling and failure that three successive periods of power has (necessarily) witnessed may well be reason enough to turn away. Those who feel most betrayed by Labour’s shortcomings and reversals of policy are those least likely to be drawn to the Tories however, so one imagines that the disenchanted left will either stay home or vote Lib Dem. The worst of the Labour calamities, the war in Iraq, would have taken place under a Conservative administration too and it is one which Brown is less personally involved in than was Blair. For all those betrayals and deceptions it is hard not to believe that the most pressing question must be the economy.

You may of course argue that there has been nothing sound about Labour’s management of the economy either, but actually I cannot believe that the financial tsunami that struck Britain and the rest of the world in 2008 would have been any better dealt with by anyone else. I do feel that the very determination and uncool dourness and resolution of Brown might well be a good bet. When the house is a ruin, go for solid and unglamorous damp-coursing and roof relining – you can worry about the wallpaper, furniture and carpeting later. You might also think that dour and unglamorous as Brown may be presented, when he is allowed to let go and reveal his true self he is surprisingly more impressive than either of the other two candidates. Take ten minutes out of your life to watch this. You really do have to twist reality to claim that this is a spin-doctored act and not the real passion of a conviction politician. That is the man and what he stands for. It may not move you however. You may not find it interesting or appealing. Conviction politics may not be what you think the country requires or you may regard such idealism as false or irrelevant.

Sidebar One

It’s not about quality of parliamentary intake. God knows most of you reading this should be aware that the kind of people standing for election are simply the same kinds of idiot that we were at school with, that we are ourselves. Human, frail, unreliable, greedy and stupid – only with the rather dubious (you might think) difference that they actually want to be in Parliament, which you or I do not. But my heart always sinks when I get a tediously clichaic tweet saying ‘Bloody hell Stephen, don’t you know they’re all the same?’ or  ’Hung parliament? Yes, they should be! Hahahahahahahah!!!!!’ Well now steady on, how can we inhabit a democracy and simultaneously dismiss and loftily choose never to vote for, those who actually get off their arses and allow that democracy to come into being? No matter how crap, sterile of imagination, predictable, verbally trite, sententious or weird every single one of the candidates presenting themselves for election may be, at least they have actually offered themselves up for the cruel, impertinent and unspeakably humiliating inspection that candidacy entails. And for what? For power? Come now, do you really think that? Maybe there is a touch of vanity in their ambitions, but is it any more than the vanity that anyone after a good job should have? And if you say, ‘well it isn’t a good job, snigger snigger,’ then please offer up for all of us an alternative to democracy, one in which your higher standards and your superior understanding will prevail. In the meantime, as Neil Kinnock used to say, ‘don’t moan about it, change it. Stand yourself! Be a candidate!’ And if you simply relay that you’re a nobody, and that it’s not what you know but who you know, then you still haven’t got the point. You could be a candidate, yes, you could be a candidate, but you would have to go to meetings, walk pavements, shake hands, consult, seek views, consider options, do all the things that those who involve themselves in democracy do. Honestly now. I mean really honestly, haven’t you, as I have – I’d be the first to admit it – sounded off about the crapness of politicians without ever really considering the full nature of democracy and what it implies, or should imply? One of the very reasons I would run a thousand miles from public office is the sanctimonious, sententious, unforgiving, inquisitive and merciless scrutiny to which my every move and every word would be subjected. I couldn’t take the responsibility of not being able to make a light joke and I couldn’t bear the insufferable indignity of having to speak so blandly for fear of giving offence that I would sound like every other politician ever sounded. It is really no good us moaning about the quality of our politicians when the intensity of our inspection of everything they are and do is so great they are not allowed those very qualities of eccentricity, originality, colour, life and surprise that we claim to want in them.

Vote Two

Conservative. Dave seems alright. He’s got a ‘team’, he’s young (ish) and energetic. He wants power, he’s motivated enough to feel that he deserves it and that when he gets it he will operate its levers with efficiency, drive and purpose. He will have to do almost everything that Brown would have to do in terms of cuts, cuts, more cuts, taxation and more cuts, because our economy is so burdened with debt that there is no other way out. Those who are predisposed to conservatism might hope that he will roll back the frontiers of the state and destroy the culture of Health and Safety, Political Correctness and liberal relativism that has, they think, mired our society in nanny-state dependency, but it has to be said there are no such claims made in his manifesto. He claims to believe in multiculturalism, gay rights, the national health service and the welfare state even though many of his supporters in the press and in the real world manifestly do not. I do not actually believe that he will dismantle any of the major elements of that welfare state any more than Labour did, but I expect those who fear he will make huge cuts in the arts and other ’sacred cows’ of the ‘liberal elite’ are right and that the climate under Cameron will be less friendly to much that they hold dear. He may bring back hunting with dogs, he may (especially if he has a small majority) be forced to give full rein to some of the Christian oddities and other shudder-worthy nuts in his party, but then Blair and Brown have had to placate the weirdos in the Labour back benches too. Under a Cameron administration will crime go down, will the ‘war on drugs’ be won, will the troops come home from Afghanistan, will pensions be safe and standards of education rise? I don’t know. I more than faintly doubt it, but I doubt whoever gets in power will solve those problems. Cameron is not as ideologically motivated as Thatcher was which might allay the fears of some floating voters as much as it irritates some red-meat Conservatives. It is a vote for the same car, as I have suggested, but in the hands of a different driver. Up to you to decide how well you think he will steer it.

Sidebar Two

There is one thing that cultural commentators in our press cannot convincingly mimic, much as they may try, and that is the rhetoric of the Right across the Atlantic. The Sarah Palin world of ‘hockey moms’ and ‘Christian virtues’ and ‘family values’ simply does not play in Britain. We writhe in discomfort at any hint of religion, hence the embarrassment of Tory supporters at that peculiar Philippa Stroud woman, a candidate for Cheam who may or may not have officiated or assisted at ‘gay demon exorcisms’ at some time in the past as part of some ludicrous evangelical sect of which she is or was a member. The British resent strongly the idea that a politician has any business telling us how to love or behave in private or which ‘values’ to cleave to. The thought of Christians or any other religious group having influence over policy is something party leaders know they have to hide rather than parade. In America, the Right routinely calls Obama a member of the ‘liberal elite’ – it is hard to know quite how this rhetorical distortion first got into the political vocabulary. America has a self-made myth of plain-speaking wiseacre folk which deprecates complexity, ambiguity, difficulty and nuance. There is a long-held distrust in the United States of verbal fluency, wide reading, historical knowledge, interest in the arts or intellectual curiosity. All those things seem more often than is comfortable to dispose people towards agnosticism and liberalism, therefore they are characterised as urban, un-American, European and ‘elitist’. It is hard not to wonder if the ideal American citizen is no more than a god-fearing, family consumer who never questions that while bankers and financiers may be sophisticated and clever and educated and wise, anyone else with those qualities should be religiously tarred and righteously feathered.

When I was growing up ‘elitism’ was a word sneered from the lips of the Left, now it is sneered from the lips of the Right. The sneering was ugly then and it is ugly now. Knowledge, science, understanding, literacy and curiosity are absolute goods and to hell with anyone who tries to follow that American habit here and attempts to construct a discourse in which only a despised liberal elite are interested in science, the arts, history and ideas. Such wickedness reminds one of those who opposed Education For All at the end of the nineteenth century. All knowledge should be free and available and all people should be encouraged to acquire it. It will not necessarily lead to liberalism, but it will lead to understanding and a desire for openness and decent, non-tribalist exchanges of the kind that can only enrich our democracy.

Vote Three

This is, of course, the possibility of voting Liberal Democrat in the almost certain knowledge that the vote will in reality be cast for a hung parliament and the creation of some sort of coalition, almost certainly with the Conservatives taking the lion’s share of the Great Offices of State. Many people in Britain might think that Nick Clegg and Vince Cable are more impressive than most of the candidates and senior members of any party and that our country can only be enriched, in its moment of economic crisis, by their presence in government at some level. The arguments, if arguments they be, that hung parliaments mean hobbled, lame parliaments are surely nonsense. The Scandinavian and German examples show that where there is political will and determination anything is possible, including stability, continuity and relatively swift economic recovery. For every example of a bad coalition system there is an example of a good one. We cannot assume the worst, however British a trait that may be. Our society is open enough, with its media and social networking, to force the politicians to come to a workable arrangement. If the terms of a Lib Dem win are Proportional Representation for all future General Elections and a determined effort to move to a genuinely open and well constructed parliamentary democracy then I for one am excited. It might all go wrong, but then it is so wrong already that this is a risk I would not be too unhappy to run. I do not think it means that Peter Firth, Rupert Penry-Jones and the cast of Spooks would be forced to take over in a bloodless coup d’état, nor do I think it would cause rioting in the streets and mutiny in the ranks. It may turn out to be a rather British damp squib, or it may be (which I think more likely) result in a jerky, jolting, juddering evolutionary move towards something a little better. I do know that my Labour friends would all be rather horrified by my entertaining such a vote, for they are convinced that a vote for the Lib Dems is tantamount to a vote for Cameron. That is something you will have to decide.

On one front alone I would absolutely urge you to vote LibDem and that is if you live in the Oxford West and Abingdon constituency. Your incumbent member, now under threat because of boundary changes, is Evan Harris MP, far and away the most persuasive and impressive parliamentarian in the cause of good and open science and enquiry that we have had in the past decade. He has been central to mould-breaking and inspirational multiparty cooperation in issues of scientific concern since 1997. It seems to me (almost!) that he should be elected unopposed like the Speaker. If you have any interest in the promotion of science and evidence based policy-making and a voice to oppose superstition, religious vested interest and new age nonsense, then do check him out and get those Oxonian Abingdonians working for his re-election.

My intentions and yours

Well, I’m sorry that I have ignored the other parties, but this blog is long enough and I am trying to be realistic about the tri-partisan options most of us will consider. I will be honest inasmuch as I can confess, and it will probably not come as much of a surprise, that Vote Two is not one I envisage making. I find it unappealing for a number of reasons and I will confess that sheer gut instinct is one of them – a dislike of the party and its loudest advocates, not of any individual members and certainly not of Tory voters and supporters as individuals: as I have already said and cannot repeat enough, some of the people I love most dearly in the world are natural and proud Conservatives and I love them none the less for it, just as they (I hope!) love me none the less for my politics. I also find (and I know how much some of you will groan at this) that I worry how much crucial strides in my lifetime towards gay rights would be threatened under the Tories. This article interested and alarmed me greatly.  Plenty of you will think that is just bloody typical of faggoty Fry and that I should put my sexual nature behind me when voting. I would happily do so if I didn’t believe that too many Tories are not prepared to offer me the same courtesy but will toil sedulously to make life more difficult for gay people. Work I’ve done for Stonewall and others has shown me that the bullying, suicide and homophobia that still exists in the world today is not something to be taken lightly. Picture your son or daughter, brother or sister being victimised, taunted and threatened in the playground and street and tell me that it’s all just ‘political correctness’.

More important than my own political views or my own voting intentions are my hopes that nothing I say will stop you from choosing Conservative if you consider it the right way to cast your vote. It may be you will be voting Tory through dyed-in-the-wool instinct and loyalty or it may be that you are someone who once voted Labour or Lib Dem but who has decided that Cameron and the Conservatives will be best for Britain. It’s none of my business, but do vote just as you want and be proud to do so.

© Tony Husband 2010 for Stephenfry.com

As for me, I am still hovering between One and Three and I suspect I will not be sure until I am actually facing the voting form, Sharpie in hand. (Will it be Sharpies? I do hope so. I virtually addicted to their fumes)

I know that the above may please no one. Some will despise me for failing to condemn Conservatives more outrightly and fervently, others will think that I’m a stupid lovie pinko who should shut the hell up. We can all agree I hope that my views are worth no more (and no less) than yours in any sense, but especially in the sense that counts — in the polling booth.

In case you forget where you are

In that writing period I have, as I explained to my followers, more or less abandoned Twitter. There were one or two exceptions, my journey to San Francisco for the iPad launch and a trip to Barcelona for the World Mobile Congress. I hope now that I’m back that I can resume a tweeting life, but I hope too that I will be forgiven if I do not instantly accede to every request to tweet or retweet on behalf of charitable instiutions, birthdays, political affiliations, injustices and other causes. I would rapidly lose my followers if my twitter feed became nothing more than a charity bulletin board.

I start life back in Britian with recordings for sixteen more QI programmes, so I shall be hitting the ground running. I also have various speaking engagements for causes I support and shall be busy writing speeches and preparing addresses as well as revising the book and catching up on the mountain of obligations and correspondence that my absence has necessarily occasioned. So, once again, I hope those who are looking to buttonhole me and beg for some of my time will be aware of the fact that while I may be back in Britain very, very few of my hours are my own.

So far as this site is concerned, stephenfry.com – we have plans to develop and enhance. In a few weeks we launch an iPad app on which you can read blogs, blessays, microblogs and other pieces of writing that I publish to this site. We’re testing it at this moment and I’m very pleased with the smooth flow and finish of it. Of course not many in Britain are likely to have an iPad and many would rather eat poo than be seen dead with one, so astonishing has the tribal polarity and antagonism for and against Apple become in the last few months. I shall reflect on that in an upcoming blog. I have the good fortune to have got my hands on some juicy and exciting HTC Android phones, the Desire, the Legend and the Incredible (somebody in the naming department should be spanked) and I will unburden myself on my thoughts on those two as soon as I find the time.

Well, I must go and pack. The plane leaves in a few hours and I should hate to miss it.

Article “Apple’s iPad: The Mothership Prepares for Launch” published on Thursday 1st April 2010 in TIME Magazine” – Time Magazine headline.

It is a gorgeous spring day when I arrive at the coolest address in the universe: 1 infinite Loop, Cupertino, Calif., where apple has been headquartered since 1993. The campus, for such they call it, is enormous yet not big enough to contain apple’s current rate of expansion. An additional site is being designed and built. after stocking up on “I visited the mother- ship” t-shirts at the company store (we fanboys are pathetic, I readily confess), i am shown around the canteen, lawns and public spaces. It is right to call this a campus, for everyone looks and dresses like a student. I should imagine the only people ever caught wearing suits here have been visiting politicians.

I am here at apple’s invitation to try out the iPad, and later in my visit I will spend an hour with the company’s boss, Steve Jobs—the first time I’ve ever spent any real time with him.