The recent incidents involving Steve Irwin and Richard Hammond have crept into his soul in the night. He has awoken - a thin sheet of moralising sweat clinging to his corpulent but sensitive body. He must share his thoughts with us.
"The astonishing fact is that, on recent statistics, television presenting is a more dangerous profession than formula one motor racing"
Well, I'm fucking astonished, Mark. Strike a light. Knock me down with a feather. How many umpteen thousand TV presenters are there? Compared to - what? - a couple of dozen F1 drivers? So go ahead, bespectacled statistician, enlighten us about the relative dangers. Please - I's begging you, Mastuh. Nice use of the qualifier "recent" there too. There's no amount of chicanery you people won't stoop to to impose your cunting governance on us all, is there?
Like everyone in this creeping menagerie of risk-averse, sensibly shod clipboard carriers, he operates from a sensibility that Joe Soap - me and you - are dumb sheep. Show us that it is fun to do something dangerous, and we'll be out of the door, gagging for speed, inclines, explosions and danger. We'll be recklessly chasing mind-blurring speed on the way to work tomorrow, veering to splatter infants over our windscreens in the name of fun.
"a television show that advertises the thrill of driving at four times the national speed limit might have a significant influence on the everyday actions of its viewers."
He wails, rhetorically clasping and unclasping his porky little hands as he frets about the danger to the nation's armchair bound simpletons.
"So sick is our culture that there would be a sizable internet audience for the footage of Irwin's and Hammond's catastrophes."
Ah - it is 'sick'. Argument ended. Go home. Actually, it's called human curiousity. The same impulse that drives us to put our finger in the flame from time to time to see if really does burn. To find out what happens if you try to drink 14 pints in a couple of hours. We want to know, to see, to learn, to do, to be. Funnily, if it was a performance artist doing something similar, you'd probably find it very "challenging" wouldn't you? But then I suppose you're too clever to mimic what you see on telly aren't you?
Where does this desperate policy of Lawson's end? Look around you. Speed cameras that can't tell how close you're driving to the car in front or whether you're the only car on the road. Church roofs crumbling because scaffolding companies can't afford the insurance. Centuries-old organs decaying because licenses cannot be granted to move the lead pipes. Doormats being taken and shredded because of the "tripping risk". Faceless Health and Safety "executives" with the power to cancel your street party, close your business, take your property. A pale, emasculated culture, where 'risk' is something you can avoid by filling in an Excel spreadsheet.
I was told to move my son in his car seat from in front of the fire exit in a pub recently because he "posed a tripping risk" in the event of a fire. As if we're just going to sit there as the claxons chime and people lie in an increasing pile in front of the door, burning to death. As if someone couldn't pick him up and move him by bending at the waist for - ooo - two seconds? As if anyone, anywhere, ever has died because of something like this.
I'm off to YouTube to try and find the footage now, Mark. Put that on your fucking clipboard.
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