Anyone who has ever watched the BBC cookery show, MasterChef, may feel the series is criminally bad. However, the adverb would be used metaphorically rather than forensically.
In any case, judging by the show’s popularity, few people would share that metaphorical aesthetic judgement. However, they are now told that both presenters, Gregg Wallace and John Torode, are vicious malefactors who aren’t fit to grace the TV screen.
If we ranked all crimes in an ascending order of heinousness, the crimes they committed have been steadily climbing to the top of the list, rising higher than, for example, burglary.
Judging by police records, had Gregg and John knocked off a corner shop or broken into a few cars, they could have got away with it. Such little peccadilloes are usually not even investigated, never mind punished. And they certainly don’t cause an outcry of moral indignation.
Not so with the offences committed by Gregg and John. There, the reaction was swift and decisive.
Gregg was the first to get nabbed. Over 80 allegations were made against him, most relating to inappropriate sexual language and humour.
Just 80? In my advertising days, I probably perpetrated that number of such offences in an average week. This makes me glad my advertising days ended over 20 years ago, when public sensitivity to such delinquency hadn’t yet been honed to razor sharpness. I’d still be doing porridge otherwise.
It’s good to see though that Gregg’s dossier hasn’t yet been forwarded to the Crown Prosecution Service for a possible indictment. Judging by the vector of our judiciary concerns, that outcome will be certain in a few years. So, while Gregg Wallace must resent his summary sacking from the BBC, he ought to count himself lucky that some vestiges of tolerance still survive.
Having taken care of Gregg, the BBC has now come for John. He has been axed from the show too, but he is less of a repeat offender than his partner. In fact, if Wallace was nailed by dozens of allegations, Torode faced only one – but, as far as the Beeb is concerned, his one weighs as heavy as Gregg’s 80 (and counting).
You are bound to gasp with horror, so brace yourself for the shock. John Torode allegedly uttered one racially offensive word on one occasion, when the crew were having a post-filming drink. That was enough for the BBC. Off he goes.
That piqued my curiosity. What was that awful term? Fair cop: the way things are, if it was the dread N-word, the felon should have been tarred and feathered, if perhaps not yet drawn and quartered. So was it?
Since the BBC has declined to elucidate the issue, I had to dip into social media in search of the answer. As far as that source can be trusted, which probably isn’t very far, it turned out that the offensive word had been ‘wog’.
In Britain, ‘wog’ is used colloquially and, yes, pejoratively to describe dark-skinned people, wherever they come from. The common belief that the term stands for ‘Wily Oriental Gentleman’ is just folk etymology in action. In reality, ‘wog’ probably derives from golliwog, the blackface doll from an old children’s book, The Adventures of Two Dutch Dolls and a Golliwog.
The word came into general use some time around the First World War, but after the next big war it occasionally expanded its meaning to include anyone not born in Britain. At that time, an MP accused Winston Churchill of xenophobia, saying that to him “all wogs start at Calais”.
The phase has gained some currency, but it’s always (and the word ‘wog’ usually) used in jest or sometimes even lovingly. At least, that’s what I choose to believe every time Penelope applies the word to me, which is rather often. Then again, I may be deluding myself, and perhaps I ought to report her to the DEI committee. Penelope’s saving grace would be that she has no job to be sacked from. (Although she may get in trouble next time she programmes Debussy’s Children’s Corner, in which one piece is called Golliwog’s Cakewalk.)
John Torode had such a job, and he is planning to sue the BBC for unfair dismissal. He might have a case even in our hypersensitive times, for, to use the word the way Penelope uses it, Torode himself is a wog.
He is an Australian, and in his country ‘wog’ is usually not derogatory. In Australia, it tends to refer to Italians, Greeks and other inhabitants of the Mediterranean region. The term is considered inoffensive, although it may be used pejoratively in some contexts.
Torode’s defence is that he doesn’t remember ever using the word and, if he had indeed used it, he certainly meant no offence. The poor chap is on a losing wicket there.
Racism is a crime that doesn’t have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. A simple, even unwitnessed, allegation usually suffices. And if Torode tries to base his defence on lexical differences between England and Australia, he is on a losing test match, not just a wicket.
The English Common Law relies on precedents and one such scuppers Torode’s lawsuit before it’s even filed. In 2021, the ManU Uruguayan footballer, Edinson Cavani, received a congratulatory note from his countryman.
“Gracias, negro,” he replied, which in River Plate Spanish means something like “Thanks, mate”. When used that way, ‘negro’ or ‘negrito’ has no racial connotations whatsoever, never mind derogatory ones.
Yet that argument cut no ice with football’s morbidly self-righteous authorities. Cavani was fined, banned for many games and forced to issue a grovelling apology. The whole time the poor chap was perplexed, not understanding what he had done wrong.
You’ll easily see that, if wokery rules the roost over usages in a foreign language, it definitely claims dominion over English, whichever one of its variants or dialects is involved. If I were John Torode, I’d save my money on legal fees and look for another job.
The rest of us can lament the country Britain is becoming. If one bad joke or an incautious word uttered in a private conversation can destroy a man’s career, the time won’t be long in coming when the same word would put him in prison.
In fact, that was a prediction I made in my book How the West Was Lost, written some 25 years ago. Quoting from oneself is rather in bad taste, but I hope you’ll forgive this indiscretion:
“Remembering Cassandra’s fate, it is perilous to make predictions. However it is relatively safe to predict that, over the next ten years, more and more people in Western Europe and North America will be sent to prison not for something they have done, but for something they have said. That stands to reason: a dictator whose power is based on the bullet is most scared of bullets; a glossocrat whose power is based on words is most scared of words. At the same time, real crime is going to increase, all to the accompaniment of governmental bleating about giant advances in law enforcement.”
We are getting there, wouldn’t you say? John Torode would certainly agree.
It’s a culture that gives power to people who haven’t earned it, and don’t deserve it.