Fry Fry!

(Sorry to those of you who are sick of the sight of Katie Price's jugs--actually, cisterns is maybe the better word. I am too. In fact I feel positively alienated by them, and haven't visited EMG for days as a consequence. Moving on then ...)

Damian Thompson takes issue with the Edenbridge Bonfire's choice for this year's celebrity effigy--Katie Price, coincidentally enough--suggesting that there is a more deserving candidate:

[My choice] would be Stephen Fry. Yup, let him fry. Or, rather, melt, since this particular guy would be made of wobbly, self-pitying blancmange.

Hear, hear!

I used to love Stephen Fry--so much so, that for a number of years after I stopped loving him I still bought and read his dreadful books. But that's all over now. His transition from hugely talented, witty, self-effacing sceptic to twee, clownish, self-absorbed luvvie is complete and the mere sight of him makes me cringe. He has joined that sickening class of Englishmen who clearly know their cultural inheritance to be of extraordinary value, but refuse to defend it openly because they can't stand the thought of being disliked or, far greater crime!, being considered lame. So Fry's gone the route of relentless self-parody; that way he gets to retain for his personal use some vestigial remnant of the thing he can't bring himself to stop adoring--but always with a wink, so nobody thinks him unclever for doing so.

Let his example be a warning to all of you who try to serve two masters. (Apart from anything else, it gets on the brain. And you end up saying the funniest things.)