Don’t forget about my brand new podcast. This week, we went exceptionally viral.
It’s called Whitehall Sources.
This article was first published in The Stornoway Gazette.
Last night I stood beside Gandalf the Great. Between us we did quite well at a pub quiz, but his team won and my team did not. Gandalf is, of course, Sir Ian McKellen. He owns a pub not far from where I stay and, it was claimed by my friend Angus, often turns up to the pub quiz on a Monday night. So along we went to see if we could win the £50 1st place prize and spot a living legend. We didn’t win. Nor did we win the second-to-last place bottle of wine. We came a very average joint fourth. Sir Ian, silently shouting to those crammed into the rickety, wood-panelled riverside hideaway, I am sure, “you shall not pass”, led his team to a wizard-like first place.
The pub quiz was a no-phone zone. Understandably because of the instant access to the entirety of human knowledge they provide. But I, not usually a pusher of boundaries, took my phone out during a round. It was swatted from my hands by my teammates like I’d picked up a hot coal. “I’m texting my mum and dad,” I protested, truthfully (to tell them I was standing beside Sir Gandalf). I’d rarely seen a group of millennials look so disconcerted by the emergence of a smartphone.
Angus was particularly pleased when a sarky comment he made provoked Gandalf McKellen to laughter. The high point of the quiz for me was my deciphering this as a famous line from a movie:
HM, O-WK; YMOH.
Answer at the end of this column.
Don’t cheat, or even give the impression that you’re looking for guidance, or someone will swat your newspaper out of your hand.
I was also particularly smug when it emerged I’d suggested a correct answer even though we submitted the wrong answer. Julia Roberts, for the record, as a guest star in an episode of Friends. My lack of team-spiritedness as others provided correct answers throughout and I lorded this one over them, did not go unnoticed.
I say all of this with an air of breezy, carefree, relaxation because in the last few weeks it was virtually unthinkable that evenings of fun existed, such was the intensity of the news agenda and the demands of reporting it - something which I love and is enjoyable, of course. It’s quite nice to be able to write to you about something relatively frivolous. It doesn’t detract, of course, from the seriousness of the cost of living crisis or the climate crisis or the accountability crisis in politics or Elon Musk’s slightly mad takeover of Twitter or the results and implications of the mid-term elections in the USA. But it’s nice to be able to have some fun now and again, isn’t it?
“It is not despair, for despair is only for those who see the end beyond all doubt. We do not,” says Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring. How often do we see the “end beyond all doubt”? Despair, we may, at the world around us. Of those who are in despair, and who do see the end beyond all doubt, and who, therefore, make an effort to get to the UK, Conservative Home Office minister Chris Philp said on Times Radio: “If people choose to enter a country illegally and unnecessarily, it is a bit of a cheek to then start complaining about the conditions when you’ve illegally entered the country without necessity. They didn’t have to come here.”
“A bit of a cheek” set the news agenda for the rest of the day as journalists sought clarity on what, precisely, was cheeky, about the conditions in which human beings are being kept.
Politics aside, migration policy aside, isn’t there room for some compassion - as Rishi Sunak said there would be - to understand that accommodating people, whatever their status, in habitable, human conditions is actually not a bad thing? The Manston facility in Kent has reported cases of diphtheria and scabies. It’s drastically overcrowded and people sleep on rubber mats on the floor. The UK’s immigration policy is flawed, and therefore, cruel. Many Times Radio listeners agreed with Chris Philp’s comments; many disagreed and, crucially, some found that neutral middle ground saying that language is important and the pursuit of a policy should be separated from humane treatment of humans.
That was the newsiest moment of my week, until bumping into a Wizard.
“All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us,” advised Sir Ian McGandalf in one of the Lord of the Rings movies. He is, of course, correct. For too long, our time has been dictated by a vicious merry-go-round of news - which I love - but is exhausting and all consuming.
It’s an intriguing concept: what to do with time. Often, it’s disconcerting to think about how we spend our time, and it deserves more attention so as no to simply boil it away into a steam of nothingness. This week, I decided to step away from the, rather more normal, news, and have a lovely time. And with that, I’m off for lunch with the Times Radio Breakfast team because I’ve discovered a new privilege: being able to decide what to do with the time that is given us.
The answer you’re looking for: “Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi; you’re my only hope” from Star Wars.
Great article Calum, reading it has put a spring in my step, it is important to try to enjoy as many moments as we can xx
Absolutely agree Blanche. What with these articles, Whitehall Sources and Friday-Sunday on Times Radio, we're all starting to smile, grin and laugh again. Let's face it, we need it at the moment. Another cracking article Calum, thank you! Being a big SW fan, got the PL quote straight away. MTFBWU.