Question 15:
Well, um...
The British, and I am British, are not an idolatrous lot.
I well remember when a woman previously known as Lady Dianna Spencer,
who later became the Princess of Wales,
but then... I'm not entirely sure who she was when she died.
Somehow she was still able to call herself a princess
even though she wasn't a princess because she divorced
and was no longer a member of the royal family.
I don't quite understand, but we all know who I'm talking about.
She died in a car crash in Paris, and there was this bizarre outpouring
of public grief in Britain
that certainly surprised the British, and I think the rest of the world, as well.
And I can speak at least for middle-class Britain
I can't speak for all British, but
amongst the middle classes, we were pretty embarrassed by that.
We thought this was very un-British behavior
and couldn't understand why people were making really quite such an enormous fuss
over the death of one woman.
I can remember.. the day of her funeral
there was a war game show in Newcastle, and of course I went to it
Because... it's a war game show!
And I walked through the center of Newcastle
and almost every single shop, including all the really big shops
on a Saturday
had little notices in their closed doors saying:
"Out of respect for the former Princess of Wales, this shop will be closed on Saturday the...."
And so amazing, I walked through a ghost town, a ghost city,
in order to get to a war game show
There were quite a few people at the war game show.
Perhaps not as many as there would on a day when
the Princess of Wales (the former Princess of Wales) wasn't being buried.
But, you know, it still happened.
Clearly the war gamers weren't too put off
Yes, there was that outpouring of grief
which smacked of idolatry to people with my culture
I suppose I have been brought up to believe that idolizing people is not a good thing.
Never meet your heroes, they have feet of clay
And, I would go further, in that...
This ties in with the fact that I do not support any political party.
Never have, and never expect to.
Because, if I were to, for instance, support the Conservative party,
I would have to somehow support every single policy put forward by the Conservative party at that time.
Despite knowing full well that they will be changing their policy in a couple of month's time
on this, that, and the other,
which is ridiculous!
What are the chances that I really truly agree with every single thing that the political party is doing,
and will agree for the rest of my life,
on fundamental principles?
It's zero, it's not going to happen.
Well similarly,
what are the chances that everything about a person is great
is worth admiring, and idolizing, and using as a model.
I don't actually buy the whole idea of role-models.
I don't think they're a good idea
I don't even think that they really exist, but maybe that's a topic for another video.
So, if you say Horatio Nelson was a wonderful guy because he stuffed the French!
Yes, he did! Hurrah! Build the guy a column.
But you don't have to like everything about him.
That scandalous affair he had with Lady Hamilton.
Maybe that wasn't such a good thing.
The way he treated Sir Sidney Smith, for instance,
Maybe that wasn't, you know, all that nice really.
Quite unreasonable given that Sir Sidney Smith, who was another up-and-coming
young.... well he was an up-and-coming young naval officer
when Nelson was the established guy at the top of the tree,
and Nelson disliked Sir Sidney Smith because Sir Sidney Smith was doing
all the sort of stuff that Nelson used to do in his early career
which won battles and so forth, but was quite insubordinate.
Well, you know, um...
Perhaps he wasn't perfect, he didn't see his own flaws.
So, I don't admire whole people.
I admire people for a thing they do, or a skill they have
Mike Oldfield is a spectacularly good guitar player,
he's an amazing musician.
"Tubular Bells" is a master-piece
"Hergest Ridge" I think I actually prefer.
Loads of people say it's rubbish, even Mike Oldfield
rather unfairly says it's a bit disappointing, but okay
apart from that loud bit maybe in part 2, I think it is absolutely
gloriously beautiful, and I love it, I love it, I love it!
But even Mike Oldfield, as a musician has come up with some duds.
He made an album called Guitars.
It's rubbish
And I've read his autobiography, and when he starts giving his opinion on
why he thinks he's turned out the way he is and so forth
I find myself thinking: Yeah, stick to music, Mike.
Just tell me about how you made the records, you're better at that.
So, I can admire Mike Oldfield's music.
I can admire an album by Mike Oldfield
but I then dislike something else that he has done.
And publicly, as I am now, say that an album like Guitars is rubbish.
Whereas other things, like
the album Five Miles Out - absolute masterpiece!
So, that is how I prefer to carry on
I will admire a thing that a person has done, an idea that a person came up with
but the idea of idolizing a person I see as completely unhelpful and un-British.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was brilliant, and so was Sir Issac Newton.
But both of them in their later lives got into all sorts of weird stuff
spiritualism and so forth. They got religiously a bit weird
and were perusing all sorts of weird crank theories and both went a bit bonkers, frankly.
So I can admire his Sherlock Holmes stories
and I can admire his Principia Mathematica
and calculus, you know all that sort of stuff
gravity
apples falling out of trees [really Lloyd?], that was brilliant!
Well, you know what I mean.
So, yes. Idolizing a person is not something I intend to do
I don't think it's helpful, I don't think it's British
and it doesn't fall within my moral code, if you like
But wait a minute! I haven't answered the question. "Whom do you admire the most?"
Well, I haven't named anyone
or except I have.
I've named Mike Oldfield, and Issac Newton
There are people in Britain called national treasures.
We have these people called national treasures, there aren't very many of them
and they tend to be quite old, they tend to die a lot
Thora Hird's gone, Victoria Wood's gone
But we've got Helen Mirren,
Judy Dench, Joanna Lumley
Stephen Fry, Alan Bennet
These people are called 'national treasures'.
I think Brian Blessed, I think I've heard described as one.
But they all tend to be actors and so forth
They're not people who really do much to improve our lives greatly.
Yes, Judy Dench can be really good in Shakespeare in Love
And, she was, she played the Queen really well in that film. Won an award, you know.
But if she hadn't played that part
chances are that some other actually very able actress would have played the part
and perhaps we would all be saying how great she was.
Whereas if Sir Issac Newton hadn't stood on the shoulders of those giants
and come up with all that calculus and stuff [what about Leibniz?]
then we wouldn't perhaps be where we are today
When Isambard Kingdom Brunel improved the design of propellers and steam engines and so forth
and made transatlantic liners a possibility
suddenly he was opening up new worlds to civilization.
He affected hugely the lives of millions of people who came after him
But I still don't have to admire him as a person all-round, surely.
Why would I have to do that