Idiots who remove Roald Dahl’s darkness are just utter Wonkas
WHAT a trogglehumper1: the ucky-mucky2, bopmuggered3, crodsquinkled4 beginning of the end for literature.
References to gender, weight, mental health, physicality and race in the fantasy world of Roald Dahl have been edited, slashed and, in parts, entirely rewritten.
His unique, magical, wonderful, life-affirming words haven’t so much been filleted and gutted as entirely lobotomised.
The censoring of one of our most loved authors is an irreversible, irreparable loss in the culture wars — less a slippery slope, more a fatal, mountainous crash.
Crucially, it is also a terrifying assault on the imaginations of today’s children; tomorrow’s leaders. Overtly sanitised leaders too terrified to call a spade a spade (racist), or fix Britain’s growing obesity epidemic because, apparently “fat” doesn’t exist.
“Sensitivity readers” at Puffin — puffed-up only by their misguided sense of self-importance — are anything but.
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By purging words and phrases they deem non-inclusive, the suggestion is they’re preserving the innocence of young minds.
In reality they are destroying it. How will kids learn right from wrong if wrongness is disguised in the first place?
Over what will youngsters laugh so hard they get cheek ache if made-up animals aren’t endearingly anthropomorphised?
And how will young imaginations run riot if characters are no longer assigned characteristics?
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Yet, in a move too Orwellian for Orwell, this is literary totalitarianism. In Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Augustus Gloop is no longer fat (he’s “enormous”) and the Oompa-Loompas are gender neutral (“small people”). Roald, apparently, was a ghastly, monstrous fat-shamer. Gone, then, are double chins, belly rolls and phrases such as “tremendous flab”.
Perhaps, more criminally, Dahl’s impeccable turns of phrase have been eroded.
His idiosyncratic rhymes have been replaced by Cecilia, with her low-to-middling B in GCSE English and her equally thick mates over at Puffin.
In the original James And The Giant Peach, Aunt Spiker was “thin as a wire/ And dry as a bone, only drier”. Now she’s “much the same/And deserves half the blame”. Except it’s not the same, guys. It’s rubbish.
The Witches is where we reach peak insanity (although all references to madness have been removed because, you know, mental health).
“You can’t go round pulling the hair of every lady you meet, even if she is wearing gloves. Just you try it and see what happens,” reads the original. In the latest edition, this reads: “There are plenty of other reasons why women might wear wigs and there is certainly nothing wrong with that.’”
Wait, what?!
The beauty of Roald Dahl was that he could be ugly. Very, very ugly.
His descriptions, his themes, his plotlines: They were messy, brilliant, visceral, unpleasant.
But good always overcame evil, kindness outshone darkness. As the BFG himself said, two rights don’t equal a left.
My earliest, happiest memories are of my dad reading to me in bed, roaring with laughter as this Big Friendly Giant whizzpopped away and ate snozzcumbers.
Danny The Champion Of The World inspired me to do better, be more grateful.
Roald’s words are — or were — a power for good.
He wasn’t a particularly nice man. An anti-Semite and misogynistic.
By all means Puffin people, put a disclaimer at the beginning of each novel explaining Dahl was an absolute t**t. But keep his books as they were.
As the man himself once wrote: “Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.”
If only the powers that be at Puffin agreed.
1 trogglehumper – a Dahlwellian nightmare; 2 ucky-mucky – messy; 3 bopmuggered – in a very bad situation; 4 crodsquinkled – to be caught out at something
Some tricks up my sleeve thanks to Ellie
MY friends call me “T-Rex” – a nod to my unfortunately small, squat little arms.
So, finally, here’s Ellie Goulding providing the sartorial answer to my little-limbed prayers . . .
TO paraphrase Baz Luhrmann, if I could offer you one piece of advice, it would be this.
Do. Not. Google. The. Joe. Westerman. Twitter. Video.
Mum, this includes you.
A new look at Nadine
SOMETIMES the smallest things can entirely change the way you view someone, or something.
In this case, one interview with Nadine Dorries.
An MP I previously dismissed as, well, a bit of a laughing stock, obsessively loyal to Boris Johnson and never far from a malapropism.
How wrong, how cruel, I was.
In a deeply moving interview with The Times Magazine, the former Secretary of State for digital, culture, media and sport, casually – and without fanfare – reveals the litany of hardships she’s faced, and so stoically overcome.
The TalkTV host, who grew up on a council estate in Liverpool, found her father dead a few months before her 21st birthday. He had been dead for seven days.
Her brother died in a road accident, her cousin took his own life and her husband, the father of her three children, passed away three years ago.
She gets endlessly trolled and had a stalker for nine years.
And, as a former nurse, Nadine witnessed yet more death – more than anyone, ever, should face in one lifetime.
Sneered at by the liberal elites, Nadine has probably seen more real life than any one of them.
REAMS have been written about the ailing NHS, and precisely how useless our health service is.
But are we, too, to blame?
Yesterday Dad – sadly never far from a hospital these days – had a call from the endoscopy unit, reminding him about his appointment tomorrow. According to the nurse, staff are now having to phone everyone in advance because so many people simply fail to turn up.
When frontline staff are already so overworked, telephone calls to selfish, inconsiderate patients are surely a huge waste of time and resources. Depressing.
Wrong to diss Smith
AS women, we really can’t win.
Take Detective Superintendent Rebecca Smith.
The inspirational 51-year-old copper, leading the investigation on poor Nicola Bulley’s disappearance, was widely slated online – and by media commentators – for wearing a “skin-tight” dress during a press conference last week, and mocked for “flaunting her gym-honed arms”.
Jesus.
When do we ever, EVER, comment on a man’s work attire? We don’t.
Det Supt Smith is a role model.
It’s time we treated women in power as such.
OF all the lost-in-showbiz details to emerge from the shambles that is Brooklyn Beckham’s £3million wedding to prima donna Nicola Peltz, the most depressing, surely, is the burger one.
Forget the £83,000 spent on hair and make-up, the white roses that “weren’t white enough” or the “all-pink after-party room”.
No, the biggest takeaway from life Chez Beckham-Peltz is that the couple planned on serving guests boy and girl burgers.
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In WhatsApps detailed in the ongoing lawsuit by wedding planners, Brooklyn, an aspiring chef, texts: “We should do a brooklyn burger. Like double or single burger and a nicola burger witch (sic) is no bun and it’s lettuce instead of Bun and meat for the girls.”
Rolls eyes.