The Sun's interview with violinist Nicola Benedetti was a masterclass in sexism
Why have words at all when you could use the space for derogatory comments and suggestive pictures?
By Alan Williamson Published 29 August 2012 10:49
Yesterday I stumbled across this "interview" with violinist Nicola Benedetti in the Scottish Sun, in which Matt Bendoris - ostensibly a grown man and not a fifteen year old Nuts columnist - gives a masterclass in female objectification.
In it, Bendoris tastefully focuses on Benedetti's appearance, not her music:
So I guess Nicola won’t be posing for the lads’ mags anytime soon. Pity, because she looks fit as a fiddle when we meet at Edinburgh’s plush Sheraton Hotel.
But Nicola doesn’t always take the bonniest photo — she’s beaky in pics sometimes, which is weird because in the flesh she’s an absolute knock-out.
The classical musician is wearing skinny jeans which show off her long legs. She’s also busty with a washboard flat tummy, tottering around 5ft 10in in her Dune platform wedges.
He also urges Benedetti's cellist boyfriend Leonard Elschenbroich to get her pregnant:
The one possession she never lets out of sight is her 1712 Earl Spencer Stradivarius — made by the legendary 18th Century Italian violin master Antonio Stradivari himself.
No wonder as it’s worth £2million and is on loan from American banker Jonathan Moulds.
Me: “Gie’s a shot.”
She gasps: “Absolutely not! No one gets to touch this baby.”
Talking of babies, she’d like those too.
Nicola says: “It’s eight years since I won Young Musician of the Year. In the next eight years I’d hope to be a better violinist and I’d like to have started a family. I’ll be in my early 30s so I would probably like a baby or two by then.”
Better get busy making sweet, sweet music, Leonard. Lucky boy...
After reading the article, I had a question for Mr Bendoris:
.
@mbendoris Quick question: did you masturbate before, after or during writing this horrible piece of ‘journalism’: thescottishsun.co.uk/scotsol/homepa…— Alan Williamson (@AGBear) August 28, 2012
I guess there’s a certain skill in writing about a artist and focusing on their physical attributes instead of their art. It requires you to wilfully ignore all of that talent. Bendoris must have trained in the Sun’s cultural isolation chamber, watching endless streams of Big Brother repeats and reading nothing but his own previous columns. Two weeks later, he emerged sweating and crying, screaming “Art is dead”. He was ready.
It’s like interviewing David Hockney and writing about how long and thick his willy is, asking if viewers would enjoy "elitist" painting more if he’d tie a brush to his dick and shake it at a canvas. Except that wouldn’t actually happen cause, you know, every Sun reader knows willies are horrible - not like lovely boobies though, eh lads?
Why do they bother including words at all if they’re just pushing wank fantasy material? They’d get more suggestive pictures in without all that bloody text. There’s an irony in deriding classical music as "elitist" and then sexually objectifying one of its best modern proponents. It’s not the general public who are wrong for ignoring classical music; it’s Nicola Benedetti for arrogantly refusing to get her tits out and bringing it down to “their” level.
Bendoris’ retort was that he loved “folk who get outraged on someone else’s behalf” which is disingenuous. I’m personally outraged that someone would actually write this shit and try to sell it to me as news. I’m offended that a company thinks I am that stupid, misogynist and ignorant - and you should feel insulted, too. But you know, mostly I’m not offended. I’m just disappointed that in 2012 this passes for journalism and there are still numpties out there willing to defend it.
I don’t think most Sun readers are as lecherous and paleolithic as Matt Bendoris and his editor Simon Houston. I hope they vote with their wallet. Right, enough of this filth. Let’s have some nice classical music.
Alan Williamson is editor of Split Screen, where this post originally appeared. He tweets as @agbear.
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19 comments
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Better get busy making sweet, sweet music, Leonard. Lucky boy... I can't believe he wrote that!
I wrote to him, telling him he is a sexist, chauvanist, puerile fool. He replied:
“Mr Withers
Can I deduce you’re not a fan of my work then?
Or is it you think your genre should not be shared with a wider audience?
Thanks for your email anyway, the points are duly noted.
Best
Matt
matt.bendoris@the-sun.co.uk ”
I think, for one, that he actually believes classical music to be a “genre” of music. Oh dear. Oh dear me, on all fronts.
Donald.
Few men can resist a good-looking female perfomer, so to speak. It's difficult to persuade a journalist that some things are better left unwritten. If this applies to Matt Bendoris in the excrutiating Sun, perhaps New Statesman should have left it alone.
"Matt Bendoris - ostensibly a grown man and not a fifteen year old Nuts columnist"
Thats the Sun for you. Copy is even written by Oxbridge graduates doing Dick Van Dyke impressions. So transparent and totally toe curling.
Aren't we all forgetting the thought provoking and often profound comments of the Page 3 girls? I'm sure their excellent summaries of current events are the reason most people spend so long on page 3 (to try and fully comprehend the wisdom on display)
Women sometimes need men to get offended on their behalf. When a woman complains of being offended by her treatment it's usually a trigger for worse abuse, so they stay quiet and put up with it.
The Mirror is just as moronic, even if it does support Mr Milibland.
And the fact is that Labour regards its electorate as idiots. When Ed was elected in 2010, the northwest party sent out a tabloid propaganda sheet with a big feature article on Liz Dawn, (our Vera from Corrie) discussing the retirement of the actor who played Jack Duckworth. It also had features on current talent show contestants. Labour politicians, Labour supporting hacks know what a large swathe of the uneducated working class are like. It was always thus. Dennis Potter said much the same in his Nigel Barton plays in the Sixties. The Grauniad's tv critic was disappointed that BBC1 churns out mindless working class sitcoms without his realising that the audience for whom
this drivel was designed just love it. By knocking the Sun you are knocking the party's core voters.
I'm prepared to argue that he did this after a bet in the newsroom.
I'm just disappointed that in 2012 reporting on others' articles passes as journalism, and there's still numpties out there willing to defend it.
Precisely no one at the Ns can think up anything original, so they do a bit of cut n pasting, express shock and horror at what the proles are reading these days. This gives their (dwindling) readership a cheap frisson cos (a) they read this stuff and (b) can at the same time as reading tablois prolefeed congratulate themselelves on their moral ethical social and educational superiority to the people who read the Sun.
Well, we would hardly read the shite first hand so you should be thankful it gets on our radar at all.
Matt Bendoris? Is that you?
The Sun is written by morons for morons.
Up to a point Lord Copper. Shurely Ms Benedetti's publicist - and therefore Ms Benedetti - will have known what to expect, and if not she needs a new publicist.
I think introducing Sun readers to a bit o' culcher can only be a good thing: and she IS gorgeous after all.
Boys will be boys. Oh, his Mother will not be pleased.
Hi, you chaps!!
"I don’t think most Sun readers are as lecherous and paleolithic as Matt Bendoris and his editor Simon Houston."
ok, it could just be a matter of degree, but anyone who buys the Sun i view with dispair and pity.
It's slightly beside the point, I know, but that would actually be *the best David Hockney interview ever*.