It’s the little things

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Yesterday didn’t start brilliantly as days go, and so it was the kind of day when you really need something to cheer you up. You know how it is – a bar of chocolate or warm cup of tea isn’t going to cut it – you need something to warm the cockles of your heart.

Two things happened last night which really cheered me up.

We went to the recording of “Clive Anderson’s Chat Room” for Radio 2. All was light and jovial until the subject was mentioned of Elton John’s idea of adopting a Ukrainian orphan. Some of the panel raised concerns over whether a rock star travelling the world on tour, particular one in his sixties, is the best person to adopt a young child.

One of the panellists was strangely quiet on the subject – despite having written a column about exactly that subject only days before. That person was Amanda Platell, the homophobic, bigoted and borderline-racist excuse for a journalist who has sold her soul to write for the daily assault on human dignity which calls itself the “Daily Mail” (I feel dirty even typing those words – imagine how dirty one must feel actually taking money from them to write a column)

Anyway, sitting next to her was the rather less bigoted Mark Thomas, who proceeded to pull out off his bag an annotated set of print-outs of Platell’s column from the previous few months and ask her to justify some of the comments she had made. She was laid bare as the homophobic bigot she actually is.

Normally, I think that every human being has a right to avoid humiliation – but given some of the insidiously evil things she has written I think she deserved every minute of it and more. It’s just a shame that the best bits will probably be cut from the show before broadcast.

Well that was the first thing which cheered me up. The other thing was that a complete stranger offered me a rather nice caramel choccy thing on the bus on the way home. Wasn’t half as sweet as watching Mark Thomas a few hours earlier, though.

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