Another first-world conundrum. You plunge hand relatively deep into pocket, as I did, and in return they send tickets for the ATP World Tour Finals tennis tournament at the O2 in London. Not yesterday’s final itself, which never happened because Roger Federer pulled out with back trouble. Mine were for a lesser contest: Stan Wawrinka versus Marin Čilić.
So what have you actually purchased? Are you obliged to focus on the tennis, or have you simply acquired the right to make the occasion a backdrop for whatever social intercourse you fancy, breaking off to admire the tennis itself as and when? At the theatre or cinema, the question would not arise. They demand silence, even reverence. The actors or the audience insist on it, and peer pressure sets limits. Watching a film recently, I saw two audience members arguing, one distracted by the glow from the other’s smartphone.
We expect irreverence and vocal interaction in sport. But how much, and when? Does it breach etiquette if the talking is about something other than the spectacle? Last Friday at the O2, the chatter from the financial types behind me was about Barclays and banking regulation. And then it was about the sporting acumen of a colleague. And then it was about golf.
On the centre court at Wimbledon, which has more in common with the reverence of the cinema and the theatre, I would have told them to zip it. At the US Open, where matches progress late into the night and some alcohol-fuelled rumbustiousness is expected, they might reasonably have told me to mind my own business. At the O2, which is neither one nor the other in terms of expectation, who knows what’s permissible in the cheap seats? So I tried to tune them out, and kept shtoom.
A glimpse of Sienna Miller
I chaired a feisty Guardian and British Academy debate on multiculturalism at the British Library the other day. Stimulating and requiring only light-touch management. The formidable Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Ed Husain, thinktanker and author of The Islamist – the war on terror rite of passage book – clashed on a few things. My role seemed clear: light touchpaper and stand well back. Looking into the audience, I could see the former MP Denis MacShane – now diligently rebuilding his life after being jailed for expenses irregularities – but only afterwards did I learn that also there in our cabal, earnestly seeking to put the world to rights, was the Hollywood actor and producer Sienna Miller. I might not have identified her in any event as both she and partner Tom Sturridge sat incognito. Witnesses claim they never took their hats off. Seemed warm enough in the auditorium. The price of fame, I guess.
N-word? I’m with Piers
I have hoarded CDs for years now – soul, blues, jazz, reggae. There’s a Smiths album in there somewhere. But the only section that gathers dust is the gangsta rap. What makes them virtually impossible to play now is the misogyny and the preponderance of the N-word. Recitations of both cause a twinge in the gut uncomfortable enough to rule out even casual listening. People and times they change. Piers Morgan took flak last week when he said the N-word was heard too much and black Americans who used it casually – or in an effort to minimise its sting – should stop. White people he said, might follow suit. A simplistic causal link, as critics pointed out. Still, he’s on to something. Even Richard Pryor, once the comedy high priest of the N-word, ultimately decided it did more harm than good. Oh blimey: am I sort of agreeing with Piers?
@hugh_muir
