A STAND-up comedy routine being performed by the writer, Will Self, had him coming to a sudden realisation regarding the ownership of the media: unless you are of a certain age, nobody cares.
Writing in today’s Big Issue in Scotland magazine, he was talking about an improvised routine, with a friend, that usually gets a laugh when he’s done something similar in the past.
It was to prove not that funny this time around….
He begins: “We both thought it would be amusing, given the Evening Standard’s relaunch, if we made none-too-gentle fun of its billboard advertising campaign, which has featured first a series of apologies – Sorry for losing touch, Sorry for being negative – and then a number of ‘promises’, such as We promise to listen.”
He later continued: “After a few minutes of the audience tittering bemusedly at our antics, an uncomfortable realisation began to dawn on me: these young folk couldn’t give a toss about who owned the Standard – or indeed any other newspaper or media organisation.”
He went on: “Moreover, both of us [including his on-stage colleague] belong to a pre-internet generation for whom media control is one of the most salient facts of the political landscape.
“Our audience, on the other hand, had no such scruple (or at least, that’s my hunch).”
