Peter Rhodes on naming boys, predictable gags and the irrational rage of the trolls
A reader tells me he was shopping next to a man and his two small sons who, it turned out, were called Stanley and Ollie. Did the parents knowingly choose that pair of names, or was it another fine mess?
Names come and go in popularity. My parents had five sons and the first four got names beginning with a P. By the time the fifth son came along, they had run out of Ps, apart from Percy which, back in the 1950s, was way above our social station. Percy being ruled out, Number Five Son got a T-name instead. Sixty-odd years on, a neighbour is rejoicing in the birth of his latest grandson. The lad is named Percy which is apparently very fashionable these days.
However, those of us of a certain age will always associate the name Percy with the tragic final scene in Patrick Barrington's comic poem, I Had a Hippopotamus. His housekeeper takes exception to Barrington's enormous pet: “She borrowed a machine gun from from her soldier nephew, Percy/ And showed my hippopotamus no hippopotamercy.”
Welcome back, Two Doors Down (BBC2), the Scottish comedy of appalling neighbours. You could criticise it for being predictable; in every episode the snobby ones are unbearable, the gross one is revolting, the gay couple are offended and the nice couple are endlessly put-upon. But what's wrong with a formula? From Round the Horne (1965) to the Fast Show (1997) we have laughed at the same old gags and the same old sketches, reworked week after week. Familiarity breeds contentment. This week Oi have bin mostly watchin' telly.
David Baddiel's documentary Social Media, Anger and Us (BBC 2) should be compulsory viewing for all politicians. From nowhere, the likes of Facebook and Twitter have empowered idiots and turned nobodies into tinpot judges and juries who can destroy the reputations, careers and even lives of those they happen to disagree with. In the court of social media there is instant, irrational rage and no room for clarification or apologies because the trolls don't want an apology. They want power. They want you out.
Some pundits, including the singer David Bowie, saw this coming. But no-one heeded the warnings and, having released this malevolent genie from its bottle, no-one knows what to do next. Baddiel raised some crucial questions but there are no answers.
