The mucky allegations about a ‘household name’ BBC star – who is said to have paid thousands of pounds to a teenager for sexually explicit pictures – has exposed our obsession with TV presenters. We invite these people into our homes every day. Stars we never meet become familiar, a part of our lives and daily routines. Now, for one of these presenters, their world has come crashing down, and we can’t get enough of it.
There are plenty of questions hanging over this story: we still don’t know the identity of the presenter concerned, even if social media is awash with a list of suspects. And we don’t know whether the allegations are true. But there’s no doubt that we find presenters caught up in scandals fascinating. There is also something deliciously exciting about such stories. It’s futile to pull a shocked face and pretend otherwise.
Perhaps our obsession is because TV presenters are an odd type. Presenting, when you stop to consider it, is a strange job. The presenter’s job is a simple one: to read an autocue. Yet, for this task, they are paid a fortune – hundreds of thousands of pounds a year – and attract loyal, even cult followings.
In recent years, these figures have multiplied like rabbits and become more and more central to their shows, and to our culture in general. As Julie Burchill has written, the logical endpoint of all this would be a TV programme called Presenters Present Presenters. Increasingly, as with so much else in our cultural diet – superheroes, stand-up comedians, the SNP – what was once an amuse-bouche is plated up as a main course. We now have the likes of Carol Vorderman, Kirstie Allsopp, Gary Lineker and Chris Packham anointing themselves – incredibly – as our moral arbiters.
The neutrality and squeaky cleanness of many of these on-screen roles means the contrast with what my gran used to call ‘mucky behaviour’ is severe. Disgraced Blue Peter presenters are the great exemplars of the syndrome. The juxtaposition of gluing tinsel to washing up liquid bottles and cavorting with male strippers in a gay bar, or being secretly filmed snorting cocaine is irresistibly comic. We’ve all seen, and if we’re honest felt, the little frisson that ripples around a group of people when we hear such news.
This conflict between cuddly national figure/treasure and reality happens too frequently to be a coincidence, surely? Is there something about the people – oh let’s face it, the men – who are drawn to this curious role? They are famous simply for saying ‘and now this’, or for pulling the exactly appropriate face for each news story from ‘holidaymakers crushed by collapsing cliff-face’ (oh how awful) to ‘adorable tot hands bouquet to Princess of Wales’ (oh how sweet). Is there something about wanting that role and being something of a secret wrong ‘un?
Perhaps, though, this is to put the cart before the horse. Could it be that it is the role of presenter which does something to people? A life in the public eye, where you are required to be stultifyingly bland, a lowest common denominator everyman, where you have to constantly be neutral and formal, or at least pretend to be. Yes, we the public love the mask slipping, for its savoury comedy value. But what about the men behind the mask?
As Iggy Pop observed in his 1977 song Some Weird Sin, ‘Things get too straight, I can’t bear it’. He goes on that ‘The sight of it all makes me sad and ill. That’s when I want some weird sin’. This is followed by what I think is the key line of this splendid lyric – ‘Just to relax with’.
I think Mr Pop hit on something very profound there, about male sexuality and social roles. The contrast between things getting too ‘straight’ and some weird sin is the whole point of such activity – and the contrast is particularly great with TV presenters. It is both the spur and the spice. It is what adds the piquancy.
If the allegations transpire to be true, what we find here in this latest scandal is our old friend, the imp of the perverse. The desire to do something incredibly out of character. To have something of one’s own, away from the public gaze. It’s amusing that these aberrations are often referred to, even by the perpetrators, as ‘a moment of madness’, because perhaps some men indulge in them, defying all logic, to keep themselves sane.
The exact nature of the activity is, I suspect, often not important. The big factor is the inconsistency with the public image. Having to be perkily polite, the model of decorum, day after day, to everybody you encounter, must surely be exhausting. I think such men might feel subconsciously that their personality and individuality has been blotted out, and it is this that sparks some sort of crazy, ‘stupid’, reckless reaction.
We’ve seen this in many men who hold down important jobs. What else could explain why Tory MP Neil Parish clicked that porn link in the chamber of the House of Commons? What the hell was going through the head of his colleague David Warburton when a woman who spoke fluent Russian plied him with strong drink and served him up class A drugs?
Activities like this are suicidal for men in the public eye, and yet these stories keep on coming. This latest scandal is unlikely to be the last.
