Observations on sulks

An adult sulk is probably the only childhood sign of ill-temper that has made the transition from playground to office unalloyed. Pulling hair and bullying goes on in the grown-up world, but is rarely seen in public. Sulking, however, is understood and tolerated. Indeed, some families go in for vast and complicated sulks on a regular basis. In one family I know, one member has been in a sulk with another for nearly 20 years. Another has regular sulks, each lasting about three months, depending on how envelopes are addressed to him. Another gets the wind up if you say the wrong thing to him when opening the front door.

As for Gordon Brown, he is just carrying on a long tradition of political sulks (mostly male). The most famous of these was Ted Heath's over his overthrow by Margaret Thatcher. He has only just clambered out of it after nearly three decades. Brown is different only because he maintains his sulk while still in the cabinet.

But the most astonishing sulk de nos jours comes not from a politician, but from the racing pundit John McCririck. An extension of that hilarious racing commentator played by William H Macy in Seabiscuit, McCririck was formerly a rather winning personality, livening up even the dullest meet at Wincanton or Doncaster with his auburn sideboards and deerstalker and a fanatic glint in his eye. Perhaps Diet Coke gave him all that manic energy. It was being without his three bottles of Diet Coke (or as the programme solemnly calls it, diet cola) in the Big Brother house that turned McCririck, a contestant on Celebrity Big Brother, from such a jolly cove into a big old sulker.

Because he wasn't granted his Diet Coke, McCririck decided not to play any more. There he sat, minute after minute, in the "egg" chair, not talking to anyone. He wouldn't even catch the eye of his fellow inmate Germaine Greer for a good old "isn't this all nonsense" type leer. He wouldn't parley with Lisa I'Anson in the loos. At one point we were told that he hadn't spoken to anyone in the house for nearly six hours, which for a racing pundit must seem more like 60, given the rate at which they are trained to converse.

Much like Brown, McCririck was sulking because he felt he had been promised something. Not the job of Prime Minister, but his Diet Coke. It was part of a deal. That deal had, in his view, been welshed on. So he went into a major bate. Or did he?

The whole thing seemed ridiculous until I started focusing on the show a bit more intently. Intriguingly, one of the commercial breaks the other night featured a very long and detailed advert, involving a tortoise in a disco, for . . . yes, Diet Coke. The programme-makers are clearly trying to distance themselves from out-and-out product placement by referring to the drink in the show by a generic name. But is the McCririck "cola sulk", which has come to dominate the show, actually a fantastically orchestrated piece of advertising, with McCririck himself following a script and acting his little sideburns off?

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