Young people. Aren’t they dreadful? Either they’re falling over in the street and showing their knickers, or they’re lying on soccer balls and getting a thoroughly deserved kicking.
Luckily, we older types are around to give them the benefit of our advice. This is where actress Joanna Lumley comes in, putting her long and lovely foot in it.
During an interview with the Daily Telegraph last week she started talking about the behaviour of young women. And, you know how it is, once you start banging on about how appalling young people are, it’s kind of hard to stop. Not that Lumley’s advice was wrong exactly: “Don’t be sick in the gutter . . . in a silly dress with no money to get a taxi home, because somebody will take advantage of you. Either they’ll rape you, or they’ll knock you on the head, or they’ll rob you.”
It’s just that it was somewhat chilly in tone: “Don’t look like trash, don’t get drunk, don’t be sick down your front, don’t break your heels and stagger about in the wrong clothes at midnight. This is bad.”
Don’t break your heels? Don’t break your heels? My goodness, Joanna, I know you’re from a military family, but that’s a bit of a tall order. Your shoes are held together by your own effort of will? Broken shoes are a sign of moral laxity? This is a tough love indeed.
Of course there was murder about this advice, which Joanna Lumley insists was meant kindly.
Hate figures of the week
In fact she and young Charlie Morgan (17), who appeared to delay the return of a soccer ball while working on the sidelines of last Wednesday’s soccer match between Chelsea and Swansea, became the hate figures of the week. Lumley was accused of snobbery and blaming young women for bringing rape upon themselves. Morgan was accused of being cheeky and a spoiled young pup, who deserved to be kicked by the Chelsea player, Eden Hazard, who had lashed out at him – allegedly and not very hard – in frustration. (Morgan’s father, Martin Morgan, is a director and the principle shareholder of Swansea football club. He has also been named as the 32nd richest man in Wales.)
To some of us the greatest surprise of the sorry soccer incident was not so much the nerve of Charlie Morgan, but the fact that there is a real person called Eden Hazard. (All right, he’s Belgian, but all the same.) In the Joanna Lumley outburst there were no surprises at all. Censorious adults have said exactly the same things about young women and how they drink/dress/fall over, usually when we ourselves are gathered around a bottle of wine, or six. That’s when we get really furious – I mean concerned – about young women’s public behaviour.
It is also true that Joanna Lumley, a national treasure in her native country, and most famous for portraying Patsy Stone, an adult drunk, has serious form on the subject of dressing with what she considers decorum. She has appeared in the Daily Telegraph under headlines and introductions like “Joanna Lumley On How To Do Classic Chic” ( July 15th, 2012). And, perhaps most starkly: “Joanna Lumley, the star of Absolutely Fabulous, says women should stop going out in ‘practically nothing’ and follow the example of the Duchess of Cambridge” (September 17th, 2012) .
So Lumley had pinned her colours – black, beige and navy, she says – firmly to the mast some time ago. Even those of us who do not wish our young women to follow the example of the Duchess of Cambridge must admit that Lumley’s views are predictable, to a large extent common sense, and actually quite usual among those of us in the lower orders.
It’s just that her advice was so unfriendly and remote. You would think adults had never made mistakes – never got drunk, never got sick, had never broken their heels or staggered about in the wrong clothes at midnight. Or that there was some sort of moratorium on doing these things, an iron curtain of good sense that falls across all lives once they reach the advanced age of 30, and which then protects us from our own stupidity.
Wild young people
If only all our drunk drivers, our stumblers and our idiots were wild young people who can be ridiculed in the newspapers . If only all adult women swanned about the place in tasteful pieces of Jean Muir jersey – in black, beige or navy – making Joanna Lumley happy with the rest of us forever. If only the only people who made mistakes were under 25.
But instead we find our young people – to give just one random example from this weekend – stone cold sober, sitting on the floor of the Dublin to Cork train, at five o’clock on a Friday, having been charged the price of a seat. We find them in the casualty departments of hospitals getting their stomachs pumped as they try and emulate their elders by getting plastered.
Or we find them tweeting details of their brand new Audi A19 (#rascal); and photographs of themselves experiencing Virgin Business Class, as Charlie Morgan did (#bigtimer). It is comforting for adults to think that such vulgar and ill-advised behaviour is the preserve of young people. If only it were true.