Wednesday 8 April 2015

My Problems With Being Richard Madeley (Revisited)

I'm not a man much given to hero worship. I have people I admire and whose work has inspired me. I could rattle off a long list of people who I hold up so they catch the light and sit bathed in a slightly angelic glow. Does that make them my heroes? Perhaps it does, though I've never really seen myself as a person who has 'heroes'. When I see celebrity in the flesh, I've always been a person who tends to give a shrug my shoulders and walk on, even if they're people I like. I see them as just human beings and I'd never want to impose myself on them nor demean myself by being 'fan like' in my admiration. It was good to meet Steadman on that day when I'd travelled to London to see his exhibition not knowing he was going to be there. Yet I was so conflicted. I didn't want to stand in line to meet him because I don't do that kind of thing. Yet fate had placed him in the same room as me on the one day in about ten years that I was actually in London. How could I not meet him and make a bit of a fool of myself? So, it was good to meet him but I really didn't meet him. I was presented to him and, in that sense, I think I lost something that day.

The reason I'm talking about this is that I realised today that many of the people I most admire in life are journalists and, if you count cartoonists as journalists (and I think you should), then they're probably entirely journalists. It means that I have a raised awareness of journalists and I have a respect for their kind. To be a journalist is to be one of the good people in the world. It's to be among the ranks of people who give my life meaning. It means being among that gifted literati that includes P.J. O'Rourke, Andrew Neil, Ann Treneman, John Simpson, Jon Ronson, Mathew Parris, Tim Marshall, Bryan Appleyard, Henry Porter...

It means that it's always a bit of a shock when I realise that many journalists are not P.J. O'Rourke or Jon Ronson. Many journalists are complete clowns.

I'm taking about this because I got an email this morning from the BBC.

That, in itself, is not unusual. I occasionally get emails from the BBC but never from the BBC departments from whom I'd actually welcome emails. I never get emails that begin 'We read your article on X and wondered if you'd like to write something about Y'. The emails I always get begin the same way and always involve the words 'Richard Madeley'.

This morning's email came from one of the BBC's regional radio stations. I won't name them because I don't want to shame them. The email was bright and familiar. It asked me if I wanted to appear on one of a regional breakfast show talking about niche societies.

The 'journalist' had discovered 'The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society' and assumed that it was a society dedicated to the UK's Richard Madeley fans. They wanted me to talk about my devotion to Richard Madeley.

Now, if you're new to my blog and don't know who I am, I should explain. I once wrote a website called 'The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society'. I began it in a pique of self-hatred. I'd sold my first novel to a company which was bought by Harper Collins and part of the purchase involved the cancellation all their forthcoming books including my own. At this time, Richard and Judy were the nation's arbitrators of what constitutes literature. I, on the other hand, was a prolific writer, cancelled author who had countless degrees in English Lit and felt that the world was slowly going insane. So I spoofed Richard Madeley, thinking I'd be spoofing celebrity and publishing.

The only joke I had initially was that the real 'Richard Madeley' had launched a blog and given it the humble title of 'Appreciation Society'. This was in the days before Twitter and before celebrity spoofs were as rampant as they are now. I was one of the first people, I guess, to create a fake Twitter account and I tweeted as @richardmadeley for a long time. I gave up once the real Richard Madeley took to Twitter and the game lost its spark. I  stopped updating the blog for a variety of reasons, primarily because it was my most popular blog and also because I'd moved on to other projects.

Primarily, I felt a great sense of failure that everything I did as 'Richard Madeley' was hailed as funny and hilarious. Everything I did as myself was passed over. It taught me a hard lesson about celebrity and how the context of celebrity fools us all into attributing quality to work.

The great literary critic I.A. Richards famously used to make his students read poetry from which the author's name had been removed. It was a simple trick yet groundbreaking and became a new form of literary criticism (so called Practical Criticism), which attempted to judge the words on the page instead of the preconceived notions of quality that are passed on via the name of a famously lauded author.

The argument is simple. You see the name Coleridge or Shelley at the top of a sonnet and you read it with a certain detached admiration. If you don't like it, you think it's a problem with your thought processes. You don't ever consider that it might simply be a bad poem. Strip away the name of the author and, hopefully, you judge it as a poem.

'The Richard Madeley Appreciation Society' is probably a bad poem with a 'great' name attached. If my writing or cartooning or humour meant anything, it wouldn't be here on a barely read blog. It would be between the covers of books in bookshops, the pages of newspapers and magazines. All I know is that this morning's email makes me revisit all these long forgotten thought processes. I get annoyed and so depressed that of all the things that I've done in my life, my only success comes because of a man who really did nothing on TV other than talk to other celebrities.

It's why I've been so perverse in my approach to my work, believing that the quality of the work should be judged and not the name of the author. It's why I stupidly wrote 'Second Class Male' under a pseudonym, thinking I was following in the footsteps of the great Henry Root. I never put my name first when perhaps I should. Perhaps names are more important than I've ever realised. Perhaps I should have mine at the top of the blog. At least it gives people an identity on which to hang all judgments good or bad.

6 comments:

  1. ahhh ha - that takes me back - how any could / did / do think that blog has anything to do with the real madeley - or appreciation thereof I have no idea... You're being too harsh on yourself though .. the name might have got us through the door (I suspect most of us were looking for examples of his dreadful quotes when we found it) but you forget what kept us there - achingly funny well executed stories - the characterisations were spot on. imaginable in a grotesque parallel universe kind of way if that makes sense - so I see what you are saying but the Richard madeley monicker wasn't the only reason people enjoyed it - that was just the tip of the iceburg..

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  2. Oh, well... [Blushes slightly.] That's nice of you to say so but I think for every one person like you, there are thousand who visited it and didn't see what you saw. And it still doesn't me feel much better when I still see people attributing my work to him. Yet I suppose it's just raging ego on my behalf. I want fingers pointed at me and people saying 'Ah, I wonder what he thinks about the state of Britain's roads' or 'I wonder what he might recommend that I read next'. Instead, I've just become another nameless generator of internet crap and the world is already full of them.

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  3. nope i dont agree unless there are truely gullible people out there - no it was spot on funny stuff..i think i found it through googling richard madeley is a tw*t..anyhows if you dont mind a minor critique - you know i mean bloody well..if you are doing the spine - i'd relaunch it as something else - the spleen perhaps - or whatever - make it zippy start a new, and keep your personal and the satire to one side - by all means bung the personal stuff on here if you want somewhere - i see much of me in you mate - but keep the proper site tight - serious comment , wit with words and the drawings - which are brilliant - keep it tight - maybe issue it in full weekly with teasers in between.. i dunno seperate you from it and bung that somewhere else - i find it interesting all of it - but i can see some stranger logging on and seeing a bad day post and buggering off without looking at it - you have great bloody skills - start a knew one or two , a clean broom and all that - you have the talent, learn from the past and crack it..i have every faith in you.change the brand mate ..do serious,funny and pics - give yourself time to do them, and post them in the morning - you only bloody post at night - make it a regular dose - and dont pressure yourself - we'll follow you wherever - dont forget that..bless you david take care - i hope i havent pissed you off.

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  4. that didnt read well - keep the satire but distance the private.

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  5. That read perfectly and I utterly agree. In fact, you've put into words a thing I've been mulling over for a while. I feel like I'd like a new start on a new blog and doing what you suggest might be a way to do that. The problem is that I have different parts to myself and they're not always that easy to seperate. I have my silly side, my satirical side, my serious side, and then there's 'me' who holds it all together and feels like a need to vent my spleen when times are hard (and they're usually hard).

    However, I think you're right and I'll do that today. New blog. I've been planning on changing it for a while but worried about page rank and all that. Well, perhaps I'll forget about page rank and simply see what happens.

    You know you never piss me off. It's good to know there's somebody out there actually following my work. Thanks for the advice. It was really helpful. Watch this space. ;)

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  6. ohh thats a relief - i thought i might have sounded like i was being critical and i wasnt really - theres plenty of room for all your sides on the one site - we have to laugh at nonsense and be serious too - and your drawings are bloody excellent...what a way you have come young jedi....right i need to play around with tippex - yes you heard me - for a pointing finger i cant get perspective on - i bloody traced the thing how can it be wrong??? - ohh did i say i liked the podcasts ?? i was in thursday tired shouting ay question time mode...re all the sides - thats fine - stick a private thoughts side blog or something and you can still get that across anyway - your voice talks through everything you do mate...i'll admit i was baffled by your programming posts - it was like mars to me.. bung them somewhere sideways -we'll still read them - i'm sad i dont get the chance to comment more - its all good stuff - dont forget that ..you are more talented than you want to know or think sometimes..hold on ..didnt you do a kraftwork thing or sparks? it was sparks - but you like kraftwork? . thats it sparks - i may have an in for something ..interestings......email me with zee bits if you can ..do you like kraftwork?? i have no clue now....it was sparks wasnt it....orrrrrr ammmmm i going bonkers?

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