Watching Brief - Amanda Platell gives rules for public confessions
Published 03 June 2002
Deayton's claim that his cheating is a form of schizophrenia gives new meaning to the notion of a two-headed monster - one lives in his head, the other in his Sloggis
TAKE ME BACK, screamed the splash headline, I've been a naughty boy. I've taken my punishment, I've been humiliated on national television - hell, I nearly had tears in my eyes at one point. Surely, all's forgiven and I can return to the fold?
Well, it may have been that easy for Angus Deayton, but the public rehabilitation of Roy Keane is another matter. We are living in a world where newspaper interviews and television appearances have become substitutes for proper personal discourse.
Instead of giving "his and hers" simulcast splash interviews to the Sunday Mirror (Deayton) and the Mail on Sunday (Deayton's partner, Lise Meyer) a week after the News of the World broke the story of his "cocaine-fuelled romps" with a hooker, shouldn't Angus and Lise have been talking to each other? What purpose could possibly have been served by dragging the story out for another week, replacing the hooker's lurid revelations with their own deeply personal and, one could argue, private ones? All it did was to give the story legs.
And instead of giving an interview to the state broadcaster RTE pleading to be allowed to return to the World Cup to play for Ireland, shouldn't Keane have picked up the phone and spoken to the one man who can make that happen, the Ireland manager, Mick McCarthy?
It stinks of stunt, PR opportunism run wild. Both sagas followed the first three rules in the PR bible of crocodile tears: return to the bosom of the family; walk the dog (why do they always have a dog?); go public. Exit the stiff upper lip, enter the wobbly bottom lip.
The public confessional should be the domain of the page-three girl. It works wonders for Jordan (the 34FF model who has just had a baby by the footballer Dwight Yorke) when attempting to squeeze extra dosh out of a father.
But what did the Deaytons achieve by pouring their hearts out to the newspapers? Deayton's claim that he blames his cheating on a form of schizophrenia gives new meaning to the notion of a two-headed monster - one lives in his head, the other in his Sloggis.
I can imagine that one working on Jordan, but Lise? She is a clever and talented woman. That she even entertained this explanation defies belief.
And what does it say about a woman, so seedily cuckolded, that she sits down and writes jokes for her partner's show about his infidelity? Probably that she was distraught and her judgement clouded.
In these situations, public figures should stick by the old fail-safe - "least said, soonest mended".
In the classic love triangle of our time - Charles, Diana and Camilla - two of the protagonists spoke out. Charles and Diana later admitted that their television interviews were both personal and PR mistakes. Only Camilla remained silent - and look at her now.
"Prison taught me a valuable lesson," said the mother who was jailed for failing to stop her two daughters from playing truant. She said it with about as much sincerity as we'd expect from Jeffrey Archer on release. Patricia Amos opened her heart on ITV's Tonight with Trevor McDonald, and the Today programme, and in the Telegraph and, frankly, all over the place.
But - as with Archer - I fear that all prison will have taught her is how to make a fast buck out of the misery she has caused other people.
Call me reactionary, but there is still something disorienting about waking up to the editor of the Times on the radio and hearing the dulcet tones of a fellow Australian. In fact, I woke up to two News International editors last weekend, Robert Thomson on the Today programme on Saturday and David Yelland, the editor of the Sun, on Breakfast with Frost on Sunday. Both were, coincidentally, defending their paper's stand on the euro.
For Thomson, it was not about patriotism, but pragmatism: whether it is in the country's interests to sign up or not. And for now, it's not. Yelland was equally emphatic that, for the Sun, it was simply a case of not a euro more.
Why is it that our two favourite red tops, the Sun and the Mirror, can find plenty of clear blue water between them, but our main political parties still fail to do so? The latest battleground, set against the hand-to-hand combat of the price war, is not Topless Yoga (a Sun exclusive), but the return of Channel 4's Big Brother. The Sun went nuclear with a front page headlined: "Flirty Dozen . . . will we see first bonk?" The Mirror retaliated: "Halfwit House. It's back and we hate it already."
Whatever the outcome, Big Brother is feel-good TV, a dramatised version of Mother's remedy that, however bad things are, there are always people less fortunate than you. Ten minutes watching these dysfunctional dullards is enough to make anyone feel good.
Post this article to
We want to encourage people to comment on our content and to exchange views with other readers and hope this will be done on a courteous basis. However, if you encounter posts which are offensive please let us know by emailing comments@newstatesman.co.uk and we will take swift action where necessary.
