Birds
Death List
General
Holidays
Humour
Music
Photos
Politics
Rants
Religion
Tech Stuff
Thoughts
WatchesI read an astonishingly solipsistic interview of Sir Jonathan Miller on the BBC this morning. The main tenor of his grumbling was that at 79 many in the theatrical world consider him past it, his lack of employment being further exacerbated by his having accepted a knighthood for services to the arts.
He was knighted in 2002 but now asks that he is not addressed as Sir Jonathan. “I shrivel as soon as I hear anyone doing that,” he says. ”I have serious misgivings about having accepted it. It’s part of the general hemisphere of English snobberies in which titles are said to be so important. It goes with people who can boast about having been at Eton or having been in the Royal Horse Artillery. I was silly to have accepted,” he continues. “My children urged me in the end. They said, ‘Go on, Dad, you deserve it.’ “My wife was furious when I accepted it and cannot bear to be called Lady Miller.”
Jonathan it’s easy, renounce the bloody thing and the offers of work will surely come flooding in.
Twenty years ago he said he was “quitting mean, peevish Britain” because it didn’t “appreciate” him. Why’s he still here?
Welcome back Harriet!
Indeed Miller’s ego is astonishingly large, possibly larger than the unappreciative country he’s partially renounced. On reading the BBC interview, not the first time he’s moaned at length, he clearly regrets a life in the arts, rather than his initial selection of science or medicine. He would have preferred recognition for his scientific work, which is not a terribly logical approach to the honours system in my view.
This quote from The Humanist also exemplifies a “Pseuds’ Corner” approach to what is for most people a straightforward concept:
“Jonathan Miller: Let me say right at the outset that I’ve always been very reluctant to use the word “atheist,” not because I’m embarrassed or ashamed of it but I think that this view scarcely deserves a title. No one has a special name for not believing in witches–I’m not an “a-hexist”–and I don’t have a word for not believing in ghosts or anything of that sort. So the idea of there being a special name for what I’ve never had–which is a belief in God–seems to me to be odd, to say the least.
Still, my attitude toward the notion of a supernatural being is identical to that of those who do call themselves atheists….”
SIGH!