No excuse for Carol Thatcher!

By George Tyndale on Feb 6, 09 01:29 PM

Friends of Carol Thatcher have been lining up to issue explanations for her G-word gaffe.

Apparently she's naïve, unsophisticated, "an extraordinary mixture of intelligence and foolishness" and "not highly conscious of politics or deeply serious". And she has made a habit of saying outrageous things because she was ignored by her parents.
OK.

So does any of that excuse the daughter of the former Prime Minister comparing the French tennis player Jo-Wilfried Tsonga to a golliwog? Of course not.

The only acceptable excuse for uttering such an explosively offensive term would be that she had spent the first 54 years of her life locked in a dressing up box in the basement of 10 Downing Street.

And that she had no idea that the golliwog was inextricably connected with the worst kind of racial degradation and mockery.

Only Ms Thatcher, 55, has been anything but shut away. She's made a living for herself in the world of newspapers and television even, unaccountably, winning an "I'm A
Celebrity" series. As Margaret Thatcher's daughter she has even written an autobiography about growing up in the full glare of publicity.

There can hardly be a woman in the country who is more aware of the importance of what is said in public. Or, incidentally, anyone more conscious of the old truth that there is no such thing as a private conversation.

And even if for some inexplicable reason she thought it would be amusing or outrageous to use the term why choose to do so on the premises of the BBC and front of the notoriously uncompromising Jo Brand as well as a dozen other people including The
One Show presenter Adrian Chiles.

That's not naïve or unsophisticated. It's down right bonkers.

As a West Midlander Mr. Chiles will, like so many of us, be aware that too many black youngsters grew up in the region being mocked with the word golliwog. And that a short form of it became--for years--a term of derision and contempt used by the white community about members of the black one.

So, given that Ms Thatcher herself has so far failed to come with any explanation for her behaviour, the BBC is quite right to have given her the boot as a One Show reporter. So it's got one decision on public taste and decency right.

Now what about the unspeakable Jonathan Ross and his vile, schoolboy, obscenities? The vulgarity of the boorish DJ, Chris Moyles? And the totally unacceptable smut and crudity of shows like Mock The Week and QI?