Thursday, May 09, 2013

Steve Brookstein: Surely candidate for a column in the relaunched Spare Rib

Steve Brookstein, who you'll remember as a handy punchline from The X Factors (I think he was the one with the dancing dog act), has decided the world needs his take on sexual politics.

Kent Labour Students tweeted a complaint about a card Tesco sells, which uses sexual harassment as the set-up for a joke:

Ha-ha, because who wouldn't want to be groped at work, eh?

Tesco replied in a fabulous, missing-the-point entirely way:


"Knowingly a joke that many find humorous" doesn't quite qualify as coherent English, much less an explanation.

(Just as an aside, the people who dressed as a pantomime horse who went into Tesco while they were selling adulterated beef was 'knowingly a joke that many find humorous', but it didn't stop Tesco putting a stop to it.)

For some reason - probably 'having a lot of time of his hands' - Brookstein decided to get involved:

You've almost got to feel sorry for someone who confuses Kent Labour Students and Communists, haven't you?

Jessica Atto saw the tweet, and decided to point out to Steve Brookstein the difference between a "joke" and "trying to turn sexual harassment into a joke":

Perhaps Steve had forgotten what it's like to have an audience, but he came back with this:

Yes, that's the best way to react when someone is trying to clarify if you really are a sexist knobpacket.

A wise man might withdraw at this point. Even a man who struggles a bit to keep up with this modern world where women are, all of a sudden, people, might withdraw. But Brookstein, who clearly thinks he's some sort of Richard Littlejohn in waiting, saw this as somehow proving his point:

I suppose Steve has made a point; he just seems blithely unaware that it's the exact opposite point of the one he thought he was making.


1 comment:

Hutcho said...

Blimey. Weirdly I always used to feel a bit sorry for Steve Brookstein - he was sort of the standard bearer of those unceremoniously dumped in light of the short termism that underpins the reality TV model; I always felt he got a bit of a raw deal. However, I can now happily chortle at how his career nosedived and I hope he never sells another ticket/CD because he's patently an absolute whopper.

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