Rewriting books is a blight on our history and an erosion of our childhoods
FIRST they come for The BFG and a bunch of Oompa-Loompas.
Now it’s game over for Timmy the dog.
Libraries have started hiding copies of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five, effectively treating classic texts as “contraband”.
Much like Roald Dahl, away from her typewriter Blyton probably wasn’t the nicest of women.
Indeed, my mum and uncle, who grew up a couple of villages away from the author’s home in Beaconsfield, Bucks, were under strict instruction not to knock on her door.
Apparently, “she hated kids” and would merrily shout and scream at any munchkins who darkened her door. (Profited greatly from them, mind.)
A casual racist and xenophobe, we didn’t, then, love her for her personality.
In today’s world she’d be cancelled before you could say “lashings of ginger beer”.
‘Eroding happy, innocent memories’
But Noddy, Big Ears (God, he’d be an HR nightmare in 2023), The Secret Seven, Uncle Quentin and lezza George . . . these wonderful, unforgettable characters are the written soundtrack of our collective childhoods.
In times of austerity, arts funding is invariably the first to be slashed.
Our libraries are dying.
In years to come, kids won’t remember the thrill of picking a library book, taking home a slightly yellowed, thumb-stained, laminated novel and having a couple of weeks to read and return.
Even Rishi Sunak, who has defended The BFG, is keen for pupils to study maths until the age of 18.
The implication, of course, being that those with jobs in the arts — people with brilliant, creative minds — should stick to macro-economics and marketisation.
By eroding the works of Enid and Co, our very childhoods are being eroded — the happy, innocent memories, the bedtime reading, the laughter.
It’s not “queer” Julian or brown-faced fishermen who are the problem here, it’s those rewriting our cultural history.
Tough not to squirm
AS a teen, I couldn’t even watch Neighbours in front of my parents, lest there be some kind of on-screen hand-holding/kissing action.
Twenty-five years later I’m still being tested by the TV gods.
So, on Sunday evening, Mother’s Day, my folks and I sweetly sat in front of the telly watching Sir David Attenborough’s Wild Isles.
Which really was wild.
Pre-watershed, up popped what can only be described as explicit animal porn. Two slugs shagging.
For three excruciating minutes, the three of us sat there mutely as Sir Dave gleefully narrated to a backdrop of hermaphrodite slugs intertwining their giant, expanding penises (penii?).
Horrifying.
ALISON HAMMOND is taking over from Matt Lucas as co-host of The Great British Bake-Off.
The immensely likeable, supremely talented Brummie is finally reaping the reward of years of dogged hard work and years of being overlooked for the big gigs.
She also asked where the oven door was during an appearance on Celebrity Bake Off. (It was a snazzy, folding door oven).
She’ll be brilliant.
Maul ’swell, ladies
WELL played to the Irish rugby union.
Last week they announced the women’s team will switch from white to navy shorts, ahead of this year’s ladies’ Six Nations championship.
Not for aesthetic reasons – rather, over concerns around periods.
As any woman will testify, day two of a period is no one’s friend.
It’s about time sports’ governing bodies looked after all athletes, not just the money- spinning male ones.
Time to read the diet act to obese
A KFC Zinger burger tastes better than seven carrots and a turnip.
No inmate in the history of Death Row ordered a nice plate of steamed cod and broccoli as their final meal.
And no one is disputing BOGOF packets of steak-flavoured McCoy’s make more economic sense than Wagyu beef from Nobu.
But we also all know that as a nation we have never, ever been fatter, rapidly (or not) waddling to an early grave.
Now, Henry Dimbleby, the Government’s food tsar, has quit, slamming “nonsensical” anti-obesity plans and failure to clamp down on unscrupulous junk food manufacturers. He’s right.
Sure, we want a non-interventionist, non-nannying state.
Choice should never be taken away.
We should be able to shovel deep-fried Mars bars down our lard-lined gullets until the organic cows come home.
But ultra-processed foods correlate with an increase in cancers, depressive symptoms and the risk of cardiovascular disease.
Today, 28 per cent of adults in England are obese. In 1950, one per cent were.
In 1950, deep-fried chicken shops didn’t prop up every high street corner.
Sandwiches didn’t contain “diacetyl tartaric acid” or E104.
And 3.3million people in the UK DIDN’T “live in an area with no shops selling fresh ingredients within 15 minutes by public transport”.
Greed has always been abound — just ask Henry VIII.
Which is why, in 2023, information and education are key.
Schools need to teach kids about the fundamentals of nutrition, help them make informed choices as cognisant adults.
Fresh local produce, from British farmers, must be prioritised.
Dimbleby believes the Government are terrified of intervening in case they lose the Red Wall vote.
This is patronising and hugely reductionist.
No one wants to be fat. But some people do need to be armed with the tools to prevent it — not just treat it once a BMI of 43 hits.
Until supermarkets and fast-food conglomerates are more closely regulated, we shall for ever be lurching after a horse that has long-since bolted.
The Government needs to put pride to one side, and help us help ourselves.
WHAT the BBC started, on Sunday afternoon, nature finished.
Gary Lineker was forced off air after falling foul of a nasty cold.
The irony, of course, being that his paymasters have been trying, and failing, for months to silence the Twitter-happy star.
IN completely unsurprising news, bike sales are down.
With them falling to their lowest levels in 20 years, fewer of us are risking life and limb to clamber on to a rickety ol’ deathtrap, get sworn at by pedestrians and have a Routemaster impale us at traffic lights.
And then walk home at night after having the bike nicked.
Baffling.
Goofy Gwyn
A MASTERCLASS from Gwyneth Paltrow in how not to read the room.
While half the population struggles to put food on their plate, the Hollywood actress gaily says she chooses not to eat.
In a new podcast, Gwyneth raves about her “nice, intermittent fast”, adding: “I usually eat something about 12.
“In the morning I’ll have things that won’t spike my blood sugar, right. So, I have coffee.”
Right. That sustaining six-calorie coffee.
As someone who has never knowingly skipped a meal in her life, and who is never not excitedly planning what her next snack will be, the concept of “intermittent fasting” is insanity anyway.
But in a cost-of-living crisis, it somehow seems doubly insulting.