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All of us feared that a lockdown like this was coming. By the time I found myself listening to the radio on tenterhooks — not normally something I’m on while waiting for Boris Johnson to speak — at that press conference, what I wanted, above all, was clarity. I’d spent the week before in a weird malaise, never entirely sure whether the show was going to go on or not. On social media, someone called me a murderer for pressing ahead with the show; others called me a killjoy for saying it might be cancelled. Neither bothered me much: this is what happens online. The primary thrill of the internet, it seems, is not seeking sex or fame, but telling people off. I saw that the Stereophonics went ahead with a sell-out concert in Cardiff, and were also called murderers. But for most singers, comedians and performers, we don’t decide to perform or not. We’re contracted to do a show unless the venue calls it off. The venue, that is, or the government. And by Monday, I very much wanted the government to excrete or get off the pot.
We did not get a clear decision, though. The shows were not banned, but audiences were asked not to turn up. It was a weird and — for performers — pointless compromise. The Prime Minister’s response reminded me of Sergeant Wilson in Dad’s Army who, on receiving a direct instruction from Captain Mainwaring to order the men to fall in, would murmur: ‘I say… would you mind awfully forming a sort of… line thing?’ I just thought: what’s the matter with him? Why is he being so vague?
I’m not given to conspiracy theory, having said in the past that it is how idiots get to feel like intellectuals. But still, I began to sense another agenda. That by not ordering, by law, theatres (and pubs and clubs and cinemas) to shut, but advising instead people not to go to them, the government was avoiding something — in this case, the spectre of compensation. Either paid out by them, or by — and the Tories have a lot of pals in this industry — insurance companies.
I have no idea if this is true. It may be simply that Johnson, with his self-image as a cuddly laissez-faire old-style Tory, hates sounding like a statist. But either way, handing over the decision about what to do at this time to individual performers and venues feels like a massive dereliction of duty. We’re hearing a lot of wartime analogies right now, not least from the Prime Minister. In which case we need him to be more like his hero, Churchill, and less like Sergeant Wilson.
David Baddiel may — or may not — be touring with Trolls: Not the Dolls later this year (davidbaddiel.com).
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