The Biggest Show in the Country!

Back in the day when good sense and taste were lost to youthful exuberance and a critical fashion by-pass, my friends and I were guilty of serious and sustained crimes against co-ordinated dress codes. Electric-blue wide-leg, parallel trousers would be cut to fit exactly to the top of our eighteen eye-hole Doctor Marten boots. I have no idea why we did this nor have I any concept of how we possibly believed it made us look anything less than ridiculous. The multi-coloured striped tank-top worn over a screaming red shirt with Harry Hill collar, seemed at that time to be the perfect frame to highlight the black shoelace necklace. The shoelace held the solid steel letter of the alphabet that denoted the first letter of our name. How any of us ever got to leave a girl home is beyond me but, it must have been a quirk of nature that the females at that time had no better idea of fashion than we had. We knew no better and so were blissfully and innocently content in the belief that we were no less than Gods gifts to women.

My mother had other ideas that conflicted with my false reverie. “You’re making a show of yourself and your making a show of me. You’re destroying good trousers by cutting the legs off them and wasting my money into the bargain” she would yell exasperated. “People are laughing at you for ruining your own clothes and goin’ out like that”. It wasn’t until many years later as I cringed looking at the old photographs that I realised she was right – I was “A Show”. My excuse is that I was only a kid and peer pressure played no small part in it and I eventually reached maturity and caught myself on. It seems that some others have failed to recognise or rectify the “Making a show of yourself” syndrome.

Stephen Nolan of BBC Radio Ulster and BBC Radio 5 Live is a grown man and yet he continually boasts over the public airwaves that he is the, “Biggest Show in the Country”. Leaving aside his appearance and fashion-sense he seems not to realise and therefore not to care how most people interpret this claim.

It is racially insulting to the forty-five per cent of people in the north who describe themselves as Irish and who would not want the BBC to dictate on a daily basis the geographical borders and national identity of its radio listeners.

Northern Ireland is a politically loaded term that is utilised by only one section of the community. Equality and parity of esteem demands that this frequent daily assertion on the BBC be dropped completely or, the North of Ireland be given equal usage.

The crude and vulgar tackiness of this mans programme is sometimes as unavoidable as the witness trying to avert their eyes away from the ugliness and horror of a car crash. No subject is too sensitive or beyond his manipulation and reduction to sensationalist garbage. Goading listeners into extreme responses both for and then against an issue is a clever way to keep the lines hot with calls and the hunger of an ego-maniac nourished.

Some people get a bit of craic out of this kind of radio and that’s fair enough. Each to their own I say but, Mr Nolan should not be allowed to use the BBC to ram his personal perception of Northern Ireland down our throats. The legal status of the six north-eastern counties is one thing but, the BBC is supposed to be impartial and receptive to the sensibilities and traditions of all who live here.

My electric-blue trousers were no less garish than The Nolan Show. They were hugely popular for a time. As time moves on we progress and learn from the mistakes we made. We try more and more to make less and less of A Show of ourselves. For reasons he still hasn’t grasped, in at least one true respect he really is “The Biggest Show in the Country”.