It’s likely that some politicians, journalists and broadcasters wish to ask if the poor initial police response to the rioting was in part down to the fact they were facing cuts, and some police officers took the view that “If they don’t think they need us let’s see how they get on without us.”
But they are fearful to spit the question out. I’ve heard the point made in pub conversation, doesn’t mean it’s true, but if it involved anybody but the police the issue would join the debate.
It’s called The Elephant In The Room. Not everybody knows the phrase. I once worked for a fullsize lady at the BBC who was trying to rig her ratings using a well known scam. Everybody at the station knew but nobody wanted to challenge her. I whispered to her one day “There’s a big elephant in the room”. She replied, with hurt in her eyes: ”Are you calling me an elephant?”
I
September 8, 2011 at 10:33 am |
This was well reported at the time, but when street artist Banksy held his first legal exhibition he had a real life elephant in the room. The animal was painted up to blend in with the wallpaper and furnishings of the viewing area where his standard wall art was hanging. Of course the irony was that the elephant stole the show, reporters turning up expecting to talk about the wall art spent all their time talking about the elephant in the room.
September 8, 2011 at 11:14 am |
Hi Grant, perhaps you could point me towards exactly where it was reported at the time.
September 17, 2011 at 3:34 pm
The Banksy ‘Elephant in the Room’ stunt at his first L.A. exhibition is documented in his brilliant mock-you-mentary ‘Exit Through The Giftshop’.
Can be seen at 4:30 in this clip. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxW9Th_MP3U&feature=related
September 26, 2011 at 9:58 am
Hi Tomny, just checked back and saw your comment I guess you have probably googles this by now but here is a BBC link that explains it and includes some fantastic quotes from pundits in the US for which the stunt went totally over their heads.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5344676.stm
September 9, 2011 at 9:50 pm |
The Elephant in the room is never alone with the Emperor with no clothes.
It is all about polite denial.
For example..Tony Blair lives everyday with his pet elephant..we all know that and one day that elephant will leave the room possibly because uncle Chilcott will explain that the elephant cannot go on a plane to The Hague!
That would be cruel to elephants..who are gentle giants. And I am sure the BBC lady cannot be blamed for eating her body weight in false words and compliance..in order to work for Mark”my words I will destroy the BBC ” Thompson..
September 10, 2011 at 7:22 pm |
Jumbo’s can fly…
Maybe it’ll turn out you’re right, but the ex-Emperor still has his trunks on, & he sort of swam through the enquiry when many hoped & prayed he would drown.
September 10, 2011 at 2:35 pm |
I remember watching the riots start live on TV, and advantage of being unemployed. I knew exactly what the MET was up to. Even my flatmates who generally couldn’t give a monkeys chuff about current affairs were wondering why the police weren’t “Kicking arse!” I told them they were making a point about cuts to CONDEM and were basicaslly saying, if we had more money we could have saved the situation. The thing is they were just kids initially and the force which was present could easily have handled it. The initial line of policital bollocks was, “It’s just mindless violence!” Any idiot will tell you if young kids, who are told from birth that they have no future and the planet they are growing up in has been fucked up beyond repair by previous generations who push an unatainable lifestyle down their necks with a constant barage of advertising from dawn til bloody dusk, are given the opportunity to loot, then they will.
Kate makes a good point about Blair’s Elephant. I think he has a number of Elephants in diffrent rooms as opposed to one mooching around behind him. Cameron and Whats His Face? ride their Elephants in full view of the public evertime they step in front of a camera. I love watching them speak, they start off with a point, then start picking holes in thier own points before the press can draw breath and then sort of saunter off. LIke Spike Milligans part in The Life of Brian. Utterly hilarious.
Rgarding the slight embarrassing whisper Tommy, I don’t know if I ever told you this but I once committed the ultimate Fruedian Slip. I used to work for a large train company selling tickets over the phone and we often had famous people ring us up instead of getting some lackie to do so. I was at my desk reading Michael Khan’s Basic Frued and a call came through and I isntantly recognised the voice at the end of the phone but could’nt grasp the name, a husky bored old man wanted a ticket from Kings Cross to Edinburgh. I got him a good deal and was at the point of taking his card details and asked his surname, he said “Frued… F… R…U…!” And I interupted him to explain that by coincidence I was reading this book about Sigmund Frued and he asked my opinion on the man. I told him I though he was a genius bordering on being a nutter and he laughed his head off and said he told me my synopsis on his grandfather was highly accurate. The laugh gave him away and his excellent speaking voice finally connected with something in my memory bank as I often listened to Just a Minute so I asked, “Is your initial C?” and he told me I had him bang to rights and did I expect a prize! He said I’d just committed the ultimate Fruedian Slip and should be proud. The thing is I should have known for sure who he was because the week before’s episode of Just a Minute stated that they’d be live from the Edinburgh Festival next week! But the effect of working in a call centre does that to the brain. A prime example of call centre mentallity was that at the time I was actually being monitored by a supervisor who bollocked me for being too friendly to a customer? I asked in a bit of a rage, knowing fine-well the answer I’d get from the numpty, “Are you taking the piss?… Do you even know who Sir Celement Frued is?…..!” Have a guess what she said!…
That’s right. Bloody tit.
Hope this tickles you and everyone reading …
September 10, 2011 at 9:12 pm |
An elephant in the room? The current state of speech/talk radio. How did we as listeners go from what we had 10 years ago to where we are now, where the only real choice listeners have is as of today a 1am slot at talksport, Iain Lee and maybe if you like , Radio 4. Not forgetting some great local radio either!*
Anyway, what brings me to think on this is, is the end of the Ian Collins show and its replacement with yes, more sport. So I’m led to believe.
I like sport on the radio, but in that spot, it just seems like we’re coming to the end what was at one time a fantastic radio station. I might be wrong here but this recent change bothers me.
Great ‘Talk’ radio as I knew it is dead. I just accept it. Its remnants are in memory and old mp3s.
Such a shame. 10 years ago to this….Sport overload and Iain Bloody Lee.
Apologies for going on.
–Alex K.
*The saturday show you did at SCR was stand out stuff that in terms of quality rivals much of the stuff you get nationally these days btw. I only listened to it for the first time a few months back and have since listened to all the shows bar a couple. Great radio. Got a few best of bits for a compilation for other fans too. Will post in the shrine forum sooner or later too.
September 11, 2011 at 1:53 am |
If you looking for an elephant in the room then look no further than the increasing population of England. It’s completely unsustainable. Undoubtedly the greatest threat to every single part of our lives. Population demographics suggest a swell of upto and above 9bn in 30yrs. Where are they going to go? Please if you know where they are going to go then enlighten me.
There is no room big enough for this elephant. Anyway when are you back on the radio? I used to love your shows. Figures quoted may be slightly inaccurate! I heard them years ago, found your site after a wiki trawl, can’t sleep.
September 11, 2011 at 10:49 pm |
The Guardian Style comments..on this metaphor.
It has been over used..except for
“There’s only so long they can ignore this elephant in the room{the iraq war)before it takes a **** on the carpet”
(Gary Younge 5/72010)
And , as we watch 9/11 10 years on we have to address the Elephant in the room…which was the reaction. 600.000 innocent iraqis dead would be a start?
September 13, 2011 at 7:51 pm |
I think that there is a positive elephant in the room..and that is the truth.
Those with honesty at the heart of their journalism and their politics will win.With democracy as their agenda.
That is thanks to such as Nick Davies and Heather Brooke and indeed Julian Assange..who will never give up in their fight for freedom of information in the face of a manipulated media holding hands with those in power..
Oh and let us hope that we can realise that?
September 15, 2011 at 11:11 am |
Here here Kate.
Even I can remember when the news was just that. NEWS!
A pasty old man would come on the TV and say. Today, this happened…then this happened… then this happened then that and the other happened… and so many people ecsaped/died./had a party/demostrated/rioted/attended a gig, heres our reporter being shot at/watching someone being shot at/annoying politicians/reporting on corruption…and here’s the weather with Michael Fish and his cack magnet clouds!…
Rain…oops!…. rain… oh dear….sorry about this… you get the picture… have a look outside
Credits!
Now especially if you watch ITN or Sky News it’s barely distinguishable form Armando Iannucci’s The Day Today with Chris Morris which was meant to pillory the way News braodcasts were heading but seems to have been taken up by these people as a behind the scenes “making of” documentary.
Another rant over! TOMMY GET BACK ON AIR SOMEHOW YOU SWINE! Even if its just on http://www.blogtalkradio.com.
Cheers Big Ears!
September 15, 2011 at 10:56 am |
An elephant in the room regarding the recent barage of watered down insipid party line documentaries on 9/11 shown over the last month or so… almost evryone of which I watched… is that not one of them… not a single one… even mentioned the collapse of building 7.
It’s as though they can’t explain it so they wont even mention it. I think if you ask most people ten years on about buliding 7 they will most likely not even know about it. But it was there… then it wasn’t… and the BBC reported it’s collapse 20 or so minutes before it did so… Hmmm… I smell something fishy… and I’m not talking about the contents of Baldricks Apple Crumble!
Why did non of the networks, including the hip and envelope pushing Channel 4 show Loose Change or the 3 Zeitgiest Movies? However innacurate they may be they at least throw the odd question or 20 into the cosmos for us to pick at, and offer an alternative perspective. If I see one more clip of that staged piece of Rummy “Bastard” Rumsfeld run over to assist a bunch of people, who were coping very well thank you very much, pulling a stretcher up a grassy knoll (hang on!) at the Pentagon I’ll bloody well vomit… cue… smug studio interview with satan himself going, “I just felt I had to do something, so I just went over and helped a guy from the wreckage!”… HE JUST DIDN’T! HE CAN’T EVEN REMEMBER WHAT HE DID AND WE WATCHED IT ON THE CLIP!,, Nothing wrong with a slight embelishment to make you out to be a hero now is there?…
By the way… If anyone reading this wonders why I called him Satan it’s because Abraham Lincoln said people get the face they deserve and Rummy looks like Satan! End of. Just an observation.
We’re gonna need Hannibal to sort out all these elephants!
Dubbya see’s elephants evrywhere he goes, but that’s as much to do with dug fuelled alchoholic flashbacks as anything else! I simply don’t think he had a clue what was going on when he was in power. Like a puppet on a string, I think Sandie Shaw once sang!
Here endeth my rant!
Peace and love!
September 15, 2011 at 10:46 pm |
The police have been shown to be incompetent and compromised as part of the on-going hacking scandal. I’m pretty sure your elephant has been seen in the media, what have they got to fear from not mentioning it?
This is not an elephant, there is nothing to see here.
September 29, 2011 at 1:26 pm |
Hi Tommy,
I have been listening to a podcast from the good old days when you were explaining to Matt and Stu about the Star Trek – KKK conspiracy, you mentioned that the address of the Philip Morris tobacco company in Richmond, Virginia was 1701 and was also the location of the first flying of the Confederate flag. That number struck me and I suddenly had a compulsion to look at the Starship Enterprise:
http://teaching.zachwhalen.net/comics/content/starship-enterprise
Look at the number. It nails it. Made the hairs on the back of the neck stand up.
CyberJohn
October 3, 2011 at 3:02 am |
Hi Tommy,
Sorry if this is in the wrong place, but I couldn’t find any other way of contacting you.
I had a really bad time in the late 90s and remember having a lot of sleepless nights. I watched a season of a sport I knew nothing about (baseball) and your assistance in explaining really hooked me. I’m no big fan now, I’ve watched the odd game – I actually went to the last ever game at the Yankees stadium (luck more than judgement) but thought of you as I watched.
Unfortunately, I’ve found myself in a bad place again, and instead I get Danny Kelly presenting American Football. He does his job, but just wanted to say thanks for getting me through those dark times.
Thanks man.
Jay.
October 5, 2011 at 1:17 am |
TOMMY? ARE YOU ALIVE???
October 8, 2011 at 3:02 pm |
I well recall Nightline, and your ‘love them / hate them’ view of the Pythons on consecutive weeks.
October 19, 2011 at 1:45 am |
hi tommy.
Hope you are well on the coast enjoying the vino no doubt.
I am listening to your various archives in good spirits, as talk radio phone ins have all perished (RIP the two iains, lee and collins, c.bull etc).
The thought provoking existential and jovial pub chat for the wee small hours.
The world is a sadder place when its just overnight playlists on the wireless and fill in guys, but the legend lives on. Like captain beefheart out in the desert playing his clarinet to the dandelion moon – except hes actually dead now. Elephants and I tend to share the same expression when sharing a room, – one of feigned disinterest, although they are much better at that than I am – especially the pink ones.
cheers.
nathan
October 20, 2011 at 3:25 am |
Tommy…. seriously. Where are you?
October 26, 2011 at 5:44 pm |
The Elephant In the Room…by the one & only Karl Pilkington Esquire…
Hiya Tommy, how you doing? Long time no speak. I feel like I been around the World & back, even though I technically haven’t. Hope all is well.
Ricky, (vivid rick)
Newcastle
October 27, 2011 at 10:26 pm |
Come on Mr Boyd, keep us up to date with the thoughts inside your mind. This blog is feeling a bit stale. Is that how one spells stale,,,,,,,,,I mean like out of date bread.
Love and light
December 29, 2011 at 10:15 pm |
Been listening to The Wake Up Call with Richard Martin.
A bit like Lord Haw Haw but for the good guys.
January 22, 2012 at 6:54 pm |
what’s happening with this site?anyone?