The prime minister, at the time of writing, is still prime minister. With dogged persistence, many of us have kept banging on about her dogged persistence. I’m torn between using my right hand to salute her, and making a different kind of hand gesture altogether.
What do we go with here: Churchill’s quote about success being about stumbling from failure to failure without noticeable loss of enthusiasm? Or the Einstein one about doing the same thing over and again, hoping for a different outcome, being indicative of madness?
Disappointingly, a little light research suggests neither Winston nor Albert said these things. I’ve quoted them so many times, too. What a failure I am. But I’ll persist, doggedly, regardless.
I watched Finding Fame, the documentary about David Bowie’s early years, agog at his capacity for failure. It turns out that he failed and failed over and over again. The bands he was in came and went; auditions were failed; records were released that no one bought. But on he pressed. And then he had a big hit with Space Oddity. Rejoice! But then he went back to failing a few more times before he properly made it. Someone remarks in the film that, while naturally disappointed with all these knockbacks, young David never stopped loving himself.
I wonder if Theresa May still loves herself.
Where does the strength come from to keep going? If I was Bowie, I’d have been done and dusted with the whole sorry business by around the time of failure No 3, possibly even earlier. And the world would never have had that amazing body of work.
A long time ago, I met a master of wine called John Downes. He remains the only wine expert who talks about wine in a way I can a) understand and b) not cringe at. He doesn’t reference the taste of gooseberries or tobacco or any of that business. John and I did a pilot for a TV show. It was rejected. We moved on to an unpaid column about wine in the Daily Telegraph. We thought it rather good. That it was unpaid was something I dealt with; all the free wine took the pain away. Honestly, it never stopped coming. It became a nuisance – I couldn’t get rid of the cardboard.
Sadly, Her Majesty’s Daily Telegraph dropped the column. So, that was a TV pilot and an unpaid newspaper column rejected. I was done. John, however, for the 15 years since, has never stopped trying. One time I emailed him begging him to leave it, and just accept that nobody wanted us. “Hope is the last thing to die,” came back the reply.
“Not for me, it’s not,” I said. “It’s not even the first thing to go; I never have any in the first place.”
When does it being madness to stop trying turn into it being madness to keep going? How do you know? Who tells you?
I seem to recall it was Denis who finally convinced Margaret Thatcher to throw in the towel. Who knows what Philip May is thinking just now. If he needs dutch courage, I might have some wine for him because John just told me he’s got us a decent deal to do a podcast. Great news, but my heart still sinks at the thought of all that cardboard.
