UFO Info Week-End

Greg Dyke was never going to let his critics go unanswered

Greg Dyke was never going to let his critics go unanswered and this weekend they felt the full force of his avenging fury.
The former BBC director general’s list of targets includes Tony Blair, Lord Hutton, Alastair Campbell, the BBC governors and a number of other assorted enemies.Mr Dyke has never accepted Lord Hutton’s conclusions that Andrew Gilligan’s report based on an interview with Dr David Kelly was “unfounded” and that the BBC’s editorial system was “defective”.In his book, Inside Story, the former BBC chief tells of his mounting disbelief as he read the report the day before its official publication on 28 January.”I read the summary of his conclusions in total disbelief. While living in London he would find a pack of photographers outside his home at all hours.’Feel’ by Chris Heath is published by Ebury Pressand goes on sale on Wednesday. He had long been dogged by rumours that he was homosexual, and he decided to pose emerging from a gay shop holding hands with a male friend.”My thinking behind it all was if I flood the market with loads of stuff they won’t know what to trust, therefore they’ll stop taking pictures.”He eventually gotcold feet about the gay pictures and they were destroyed.His distrust of the press is partly behind his decision to decamp to Los Angeles. They were then touted as genuine paparazzi shots, and the proceeds were given to charity.Williams then went a step further. Williams hatched the plan after his friendship with Hunter, the estranged wife of Rod Stewart, became public knowledge when they were pictured together.”I said, look, if we give them what they want – exactly what they want – then there’ll be no call for them. If we give them everything, they won’t hang out and there’ll be no money for it.”He and Hunter “got excited like schoolkids” when they discussed it, he recalled, and the next day his management arranged for the shots to be taken. and if I think that someone’s got the upper hand on me in any way I want to find a way to beat them.”His photoshoot with Hunter was a bid to do just that.

Very few successful comedians would denigrate another successful comedian’s skills – a reluctance you’d never get from pop stars, for instance. It’s taken as read that a band can be hugely popular even if it’s hugely terrible – indeed, sometimes that’s an advantage. No one leaves a stand-up show muttering, “Well, I didn’t really understand it, but maybe I’m just not clever enough to pick up on the references.”Several of the comics we polled refused to pick a Worst Comedian Ever, while those who did name names either despised their nominee’s politics or admitted to having a blindspot of their own. But it’s impossible for a comedian to bluff his or her way to fame and fortune.

Also, the measures of success in sport and comedy are so fundamental that there’s never any debate about whether someone’s doing well or not. The audience either laughs or it doesn’t, and if someone doesn’t think a joke is funny, you can’t change their mind with reasoned argument. It’s this basic gauge that explains why, by and large, the cream rises to the top of the comedy milk bottle. Artists, musicians, film-makers and playwrights might persuade an audience that their work is intellectual and avant-garde, even if the audience is desperate to get out of the building before the pubs shut. For decades, the Greatest Ever Film (Citizen Kane) and Greatest Ever Band (The Beatles) have been set in stone, but comedy progresses more like sport does: world records are always being broken.There are other ways in which comedy is closer to an Olympic event than an art form. In a stand-up show, as in a race, all that counts is one person’s ability, preparation and performance-enhancing drugs (in comedy’s case, that usually means nicotine and caffeine).