MPs are demanding an apology over remarks made by the outspoken historian Dr David Starkey. Dr Starkey described Scotland as a "feeble little country" and said Robert Burns was a "deeply boring provincial poet." He made the comments on the BBC's Question Time programme after he was asked if he supported a public holiday for St George's Day.
Dr Starkey has refused to apologise and says he stands by his comments.
Dr Starkey has refused to apologise and says he stands by his comments.
To boos from the audience, Dr Starkey said: "If we decide to go down this route of having an English national day, that means we become a feeble little country, just like the Scots and the Welsh and the Irish. "Once upon a time England was a great country. Remember we're distinguished by the fact that we don't have national dress.
"We don't make a great fuss about Shakespeare like the Scots do about that deeply boring provincial poet Burns."
He said England did not have national music "like the awful bagpipes"
From the BBC News Website
Now Dr Starkey is not an unintelligent man. But he's not very smart. Clearly sales of his numerous books and tickets for his after-dinner speeches are plummeting, possibly because people are beginning to forget who he is. So, Dr Starkey thinks to himself, how to remedy this? Aha! I'll wangle an invitation on to BBC Radio Five Live and criticise the Scots (as he did last Sunday) and do likewise on national television via BBC Question Time. I'll think of something outrageous to say - yes, call Scotland a feeble little country and slag off Robert Burns. That should do the trick. This will cause so much controversy people will rush out in their thousands to buy my books and flock to my after-dinner speeches.
Sadly for Dr Starkey the finger of ridicule he pointed at Scotland and Wales has now turned on himself. Had he made these comments about Pakistan, Iran or Israel there would have been widespread condemnation of the BBC for allowing such extremist views to be broadcast on national television. But most Scots, I suspect, will view Dr Starkey in the same way as something we've trodden on.
Which is equivalent to the prose in his books...
7 comments:
Dr Starkey is some pretentious pratt - gosh some people are stuffy idiots who take a decaying interest in the past. People will ignore him and see him for the tosser he is.
I tell you what is a bigger issue is the Scottish accent. I just got off the phone to a friend of mine there. She was upset so talking quite quickly - I am sure I just had a one hour conversation with her and couldnt understand a bloody word she said. It was funny and I just hope I said, oh dear, or it will be ok, in the right places. Its funny when you dont hear the accent for a while it's hard to understand. Scotland is a beautiful country with lovely people. What the hell would Starkey know.
I've never paid any attention to him since he split up his partnership with Hutch...
as is my habit of confusing people of the same name... I have this mental picture of David Starkey drumming with the Beatles...
Ach, even if he is a bit of a camp auld tosser - we shouldn't really rise to the bait. I quite like his sense of 'wind-up the Jocks' mischief... I do it back to them all the time...
One day I turned the tables on a couple of southern English guys who came into the shop I was working in. They were complete prats and were going on and on about Scotland and things Scottish just as if no-one else could hear them, so when they handed over English bank notes for their purchases, I couldn't resist the opportunity and shouted over to the supervisor "Can we accept these ENGLISH notes?" The consternation on their faces and the fact that they shut up was sooooo worth it! Why must the southerners (no, not ALL of them) be so patronising?
I don't have the words to describe this 'man', well not polite ones anyway. Personally I think that to call him a tosser doesn't go quite far enough, plus the fact that I think it would be an insult to tossers.
What he actually need is a lesson in historical facts, and I mean as they are, not as he thinks they should be. I watched ten minutes of one of his b awful programmes recently, ten m inutes of cringe worthiness riddled with factual inaccuracies; just enough to realise that his mother should have stuck his head in a bucket oa whater as soon as he popped out.
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