Monday, May 02, 2011

Morrissey uses Poly Styrene's death as excuse for behaving like a tosser

That Morrissey behaved like a self-obsessed boor during an interview with Dermot O'Leary isn't a surprise:

During the interview, he branded the recent royal wedding "dreadful" and criticised other BBC presenters before making a series of prickly comments about O'Leary, telling listeners, "He doesn't listen - he gets paid all this money."

He also told the presenter, "There is just something about your face that says 'Please lie to me and I will believe you'", prompting O'Leary to later tell the singer, "(You need to) listen and not just wait for your chance to talk."

The interview ended with a tense exchange in which O'Leary said, "It's been really difficult but I've enjoyed it", with Morrissey replying, "You don't rule the world, Dermot."
Morrissey, you're not going to enjoy an interview with Dermot, so why bother in the first place? You're like a snob going into Nandos so you can just honk on loudly about how "of course the peri-peri sauce isn't authentic".

So, so far, so unexpected. But since then, Morrissey has issued what he seems to think is an apology:
"I'm sorry I made the (Dermot) O'Leary radio interview so difficult but I was in a foul mood, having spent a full week surrounded by the royal dreading (sic). England may very well be a Windsor dictatorship, but - PR Weddings aside, it is usually quite bearable...

"During the week of the royal dreading, Poly Styrene died. Having made an enormous contribution to British art and sound - at a desperate time when so many of us needed her - Poly Styrene's death was all but ignored by the British television news media, who instead rained hours and hours of blubbering praise onto Kate Middleton - a woman about whom nothing is known on a personal level. The message is clear: What you achieve in life means nothing compared to what you are born into. Is this Syria?"
Somehow, Morrissey seems to have taken his rude performance on Radio 2 and twisted it into Britain being like a repressive dictatorship that kills protestors in cold blood.

There's a bit of a perspective problem there.

Worse, though - worse even than repeated use of "royal dreading" in the apparent belief that this is somehow a witticism that can only be made better by constant repetition - is the attempt to try and explain being an arsehole on the radio by somehow suggesting that it was because he was angry about the media's lack of interest in Poly Styrene.

If that was the case, wouldn't you have mentioned it to Dermot at the time, rather than waiting a couple of days when it might just look like you're using someone's death to try and excuse your own shoddy behaviour?


3 comments:

danbutt said...

The interview was pre-recorded - http://www.morrissey-solo.com/content/147-MOZ-Dermot-picture-on-Radio2-website - so it's not clear if he would have known about Poly Styrene at the time. But in any case, the sense in which this is an apology is undermined by the reference in the original statement to "Detergent O Leary"...

SJ Crow said...

I'm not really interested in Morrissey's views on British life. He buggered off to California years ago and only comes back here when there's some money in it for him.

Hel said...

I've been a fan of Morrissey for several years now but it really annoys me when he does things like this - he has a very good point, but then he screws it up by being rude and arrogant to the presenter, and comparing UK to Syria is either overexaggeration or ignorance. I expect better from him :-(

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