Anyone remember Noel Edmonds? If you are of a certain age, Edmonds was that bleach-blonde, cheeky chappie who presented some of Britain’s blandest television. Noel’s House Party, Telly Addicts, Noel’s Christmas presents. The list isn’t endless. I understand the wee elfin-like character, still bleach-blonde, cheeky senior citizen now presents a show on Channel Four called Deal or No Deal which, I am amazed to read, started 11 years ago and I have never seen it. Am I missing anything?
I am not missing Edmonds very much because he seems – and I have to be careful how I say this – more than slightly off the wall. He’s into spiritualism and cosmic ordering for starters and that’s never right and he drives around Bristol – or did – in an old taxi, with a mannequin in the passenger seat in order to use the multi-occupancy lane on the Bristol Ring Road to get to places quicker. And, if we are being honest, he is very much the day before yesterday’s man.
It is on twitter when the great man makes his latest leap into controversy, asking if Britain is full. Now before I read the full tweet, I thought to myself: “Oh no. He’s joined Ukip” but perhaps he hasn’t and it’s all a big misunderstanding. Let me quote the actual tweet:
“Just tried to get somewhere. Allowed loads of time but abandoned journey. Am I alone in believing Britain is full?”
My initial reaction was that he meant it was too full of people, but he wasn’t specific. He might have been referring to the roads being too full of cars, in which case he was moaning at himself since he drives everywhere, or did he mean something more sinister?
We have no way of knowing whether Edmonds was making a coded disparaging comment about the country being full and that could only possibly be because of these wretched immigrants coming over here, working hard for the minimum wage, stacking our supermarket shelves overnight and doing our plumbing.
I have to give him the benefit of the doubt for a number of reasons. One is that he so so up his own backside it’s hard to tell what he’s on about most of the time anyway. Two that hardly anyone knows who he is these days. Plenty know who he was but to young people he is about as relevant as Max Bygraves. Three is, who cares?
He has probably remembered the old adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity but unless Noel is very lucky, it will only be big news if one of the nationals picks up on this non story and the only publicity he has gained locally is the confirmation to some of us that he isn’t quite all there.
