Delingpole: Not Just for the Nasty Things in Life

Clubbing and drugging

Eddy Temple Morris. I am not worthy

To listen to some of the people on Twitter you’d think all I ever did in life is go round being evil, abusing hamsters, stealing rusks from toddlers, hampering the noble work of the selfless scientists trying to save the planet from global warming, etc.

But actually I do find time for other stuff, you know. For example, I happen to have been blessed with really excellent taste in music and as part of my outreach work to the community I regularly recommend albums which may have skipped most punters’ notice in order to bring joy and good after-dinner sounds into their otherwise squalid, miserable and thankless lives. (Still really recommend the John Grant Queen of Denmark album, btw. That would be the topmost of my top tips from the last couple of years).

What I’m not, though, I’m afraid, is down with the kids. The last cultish yoof genre I really got into was drum n bass – and that was well over ten years ago. Problem is if you’re not going clubbing or taking the right drugs, you’re never going to keep up. (Simon Napier Bell has a fascinating theory on this in his seminal Black Vinyl White Powder: he says the most important people in the development of pop culture are gay men because, having a clubbing and drugging career so much more extended than heteros who tend to get married, have children and turn staid, is that they keep the old traditions alive while easing the transition into the new ones).

For example, if you listen to the thing I’m about to recommend you realise I’m hopelessly not up to speed on dubstep. A man who is, though, is one of my best old schoolfriends Eddy Temple Morris who has ended up as one of Britain’s most successful DJs, with a long-running show on XFM (remixes and mash-ups are his speciality), residencies in Ibiza, the works.

He’s also one of the nicest men you could possibly hope to meet, so I was fascinated to discover a few years ago when I was grumbling about the flak I get (and that was in the old days when I got way, way less than I do now) and he said to me: “You’re kidding aren’t you? If people hate you it means you’ve arrived.”

Eddy is massively talented. Anyone, I think, who has ever seen one of his live sets will know exactly what I mean. (When I’m 50 I definitely want him playing at my birthday party). Yet it turns out that amount of hate he still gets is tremendous. “Look you’ve got to realise, it’s not necessarily about you. It’s about them. If you’re in the public eye people want a pop at you because they’re kind of upset that you’re there and they’re not.” Eddy’s policy is generally to be nice to these people and empathise with their pain. It’s not mine but then, I’m not as nice as Eddy.

Anyhoo, the trolls will all now be thinking this is some kind of personal therapy session about the perils of minor celebrity, but it’s not. All I was really trying to do was cobble a few interesting words together just so I could promote this.

It’s a podcast Eddy and I have done together for Ricochet – the latest episode of my ongoing series Radio Free Delingpole. Usually my podcasts are about US politics (I recommend the recent ones I did with Toby Young and Douglas Murray), but this one is totally about music. You will hear me discovering that my tastes aren’t nearly as cool as I thought they were (though Eddy lets me down very gently), as well as learning what Moombahton is and who Skrillex is. (I really REALLY like Skrillex.)

Related posts:

  1. Life’s too short to be nice to Lefties
  2. Four Tet, Owl City, Hot Chip
  3. My incredible Big-Oil-funded life
  4. Life’s a Bowl of Toenails

3 thoughts on “Delingpole: not just for the nasty things in life”

  1. G Teal says:5th February 2012 at 12:20 pmThank you for injecting some common sense into the climate change fiasco.
  2. Graham Teal says:5th February 2012 at 12:22 pmthank you for injecting some common sense into the climate change hysteria.
  3. Cuffeee says:6th February 2012 at 6:58 pm“But actually I do find time for other stuff, you know.”What? You find other animals to abuse apart from hamsters?

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