Here's a shocker - Parky didn't like Jade. He's been talking (ranting) at the Radio Times about 'all that is paltry and wretched about Britain'. Meaning the fact that people are celebrating the life and mourning the loss of a 'barely educated, ignorant and puerile' woman. I don't know who he wants us to feel the angriest about - the wicked media who have created a 'smoke screen' around her death, the 'media chattel' herself, or the British public who have seemingly elevated her passing to that of a martyr.
Personally, I feel the most contempt for Parky himself, for not having the grace or wisdom to recognise his own role in all this, or the irony of his comments. Think about it. Throughout his whole interminable career, this tedious suck-up has earned a fortune from the 'media' for conducting grovelling, obsequious interviews with celebrities. Throughout the seventies and eighties, Parkinson wheeled a never-ending cavalcade of celebrity before our eyes, pausing only to laugh at hopeless anecdotes until he almost slipped out of his leather chair in uncontrollable mirth.
He taught generations to worship at the altar of celebrity, and as the show wore on (and on and on), Parkinson became as big as many of the names he was interviewing - remember Robbie Williams' giddy glee at achieving the stratospheric heights of a Parky interview? So he himself became a celebrity, for little more than a regional accent and a talent for tossing under-arm questions at people like Judi Dench.
In the end, he even turned his back on the BBC, ostensibly because he was tired of the format. Only to turn up presenting the exact same show on ITV, but for more money. Yes, if there's anyone qualified to criticise a nation of celebrity worshippers, and condemn people for making money from a woeful lack of talent, it's the king of both. I salute you Sir.
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