THIS ISLAND LIFETHE art of extrapolating the good from the bad and transforming insult into praise has been practised by film and theatre production companies for many years.
They cherry-pick a handful of words from an unfriendly review and contrive to make them sound like a compliment, which is then promptly plastered all over their next set of promotional posters.
Many newspapers have been stung in this way, including one of which I was the editor in the Nineties.
A raunchy show was staged locally. Private parts were flaunted, bosoms were bared and bouncing about all over the place and our reviewer, sitting in the front row, found it all a little too much.
He wrote that sitting so close had had a profound effect upon his equilibrium and added: "To be honest, with all that nudity there were moments when I thought I was having a stroke."
When the show arrived in the next town, a triumphant strip at the top of the posters read: "All that nudity — I was sitting so close I almost had a stroke!" — Chichester Observer.
It had our newsroom chuckling for days afterwards. Our staid county newspaper had been invested with a raciness it had never before possessed — and the show hadn’t done itself any harm either.
I was reminded of all this when I read IW Council leader Cllr David Pugh’s reaction to a lazy piece of hackery in The Times by a woman called Bronwen Maddox, who had popped over here for a day or two and immediately became an expert.
She reached the conclusion the Isle of White (sic) was stuck in a time warp and in desperate need of regeneration.
There’s no pulling the wool over the eyes of these top-notch London writers is there?
Mr Pugh, of course, immediately went into outrage mode and started blathering on about the vibrancy of the place, Pan Meadows, the PFI initiative and the Island festivals. Instead, he should have had someone pick the bones out of Ms Maddox’s article with the intention of using it to promote the Island. It would have achieved the double benefit of annoying the hell out of her and amusing the rest of us.
For example, the phrase 'Time-warp Island’ appears in the headline on her piece and, with its connotations of dinosaurs, Doctor Who and halcyon days long gone, would attract more people than it repels.
Like La Hofton, the cellar-dweller on this page, I do wish our council leader would stop feeling so earnestly affronted on our behalf.
She rightly took him to task for his indignant response to Emma Thompson’s light-hearted allegation that gays were still being stoned to death on the Island.
He really must learn to spot blithesome remarks and spasms of unqualified criticism and react accordingly. I recommend a dose of amused disdain with a hearty dash of cynicism.
In recent weeks, the beaches at Sandown and Shanklin have begun to achieve a reputation for libidinous hanky-panky which would undoubtedly have frightened the donkeys, had they still been plying their trade there.
Their worships have now become involved and if there’s one more case, the lads from Wapping may well be on to County Hall for a considered opinion.
They will already have written the headline — 'Randy Sandown! Frolickers get fruity as tourists look on’ — and will be looking for a story to fit around it.
Should this happen, young David must avoid the temptation of delivering some moral exposition about the inadvisability of noon-time nookie and treat it with the amused contempt it deserves.
I suggest the following (with apologies to John Masefield):
"I must go down to The Bay again, to the crowded beach and the sky,
People keep trying to have sex there, and I really don’t know why.
With the gritty sand, the chilly breeze and the smell of cod fish frying
The drunken fools should take the hint and cease their vulgar trying."
We don't need to be told what we want
While the Cleggeron toys with the idea of hiving off a section of the Island to become part of a mainland constituency, perhaps we should learn from the lessons of history.
Angela Snow sent me this old poster, which was distributed around Newport when the first general election proper was held in the Island in 1832.
It reminds voters how important their suffrage is and how they fought for the right to express it.
We now have a similar struggle on our hands to convince the latest lot of would-be reformers we’re quite happy with things they way they are, thank you very much.
We do not need ill-informed mainlanders to tell us what is best for the Island.