Black-tie Brown misses the point...

Good old Gordon Brown; he's so very in touch with what people want, isn't he? While the last few weeks of his tenure as Chancellor of the Exchequer drag on, and we are left to reflect on his choices on how to handle the nation's money, he is "making a stand" on the issue of- wait for it- the traditional black tie dinner suit. His ludicrous decision to sell off Britain's gold reserves at the very bottom of the market for a sickeningly low price to cover his own shortfalls, for instance, is brushed under the carpet so as to allow Gordon to discuss this most pressing of issues. Or his criminally careless mistreatment of the nation's pensioners, raiding pension funds left right and centre to impoverish thousands of our elderly, again to cover his own decisions. These are things which, all things considered, it would be nice to hear him defend himself against- but alas, we are denied.

Instead, this week, we are told that, groundbreakingly, dear Gordon will not be wearing the customary black tie attire for functions where it is required- he thinks it "smacks of privilege and elitism". Well good for you, Mr Brown- you no doubt think this is an easy way of sounding socialist and pacifying some of the "little people", and indeed Labour left who have become disillusioned with Tony Blair's tenure as Prime Minister. How about putting some money back into the pocket of the pensioners you ripped off, Gordon? Oh, I see, we haven't got any... because you've spent it all. Good lad.

Of course, what is blindingly obvious to even the most obtuse of observers is that nobody could care less what he wears. To be blunt, a bloated Scotsman with a few too many chins isn't really meant to think too much about sartorial matters. A further problem is that one of the functions which Brown is refusing to dress up for is a forthcoming dinner to honour the Queen. The danger is that, while taking a half-hearted stance against elitism in clothing, he becomes the focus of attention, instead of our dear old Queen. And he will, no doubt, look like a petty attention-grabber, stealing the limelight at an event that has little to do with him.

And if black tie dress smacks of elitism and privilege, then what about the tailored suits his image consultants have had him buy from London's most expensive (dare I say it) 'elite' tailors of Savile Row. You would think that, all in all, the kind of people who would object to black tie would also object to the lounge suit he will be wearing instead, given that it cost more than your average blue-collar worker's monthly wage. Perhaps a better idea would have been to forego the stand against elitism and instead humbly comform for the sake of the occasion; but let it be known that his dinner suit and bow tie came from Matalan. His campaign to prove that he can, in fact, fill Tony Blair's shoes has seen him indulge in all the horrendously spin-doctored PR rubbish that characterised all that was bad about Blair. The saving grace for Blair was that it quite worked for him. The term "polishing a turd" comes to mind with Gordon.

Try telling the scores of secondary school leavers who, in the coming weeks, will enjoy indulging in the anachronism that is the black-tie dinner that they are indulging in something which is elitist. My own leavers' dinner at the particularly un-grand Staincliffe Hotel in Hartlepool surely makes a mockery of this. One female PE Teacher brought a change of clothes because, halfway through, she disappeared upstairs with a man- noone's quite sure who he was- and returned an hour later looking slightly dishevelled. The pupils and half the staff alike had smuggled bottles of vodka in to avoid the prices at the bar. The poorest of kids from the poorest of schools will still, on the whole, quite enjoy the irony of dressing up like Edwardians, in their suits hired for the weekend from Greenwood's.

Fun, it appears, and indeed irony, are not things that el Gordo is particularly familiar with. If ever a turd was worth polishing, he is surely not it.

What Team America Did Next

The International Olympic Committee must have, at one time, thought that sending that famous torch in the direction of Beijing was a good idea. Whether they would privately maintain that opinion is something that seems increasingly doubtful, given the ludicrous firestorm of abuse they have received recently from some unlikely sources.

In a scenario that is oddly reminiscent of the movie Team America (for the uninitiated, Hollywood’s elite form a politically active union called the Film Actors’ Guild- F.A.G for short), the IOC have found themselves harangued by none other than actress turned UN Goodwill Ambassador Mia Farrow. The sixty-one year old starlet of yesteryear has gone so far as to call the Beijing games “the Genocide games”, and has forced the powers that be to answer some very awkward questions about the Chinese government’s support for the Government of Sudan after atrocities carried out in Darfur in 2004.

What Jacques Rogge, the IOC President, must be feeling is anybody’s guess. His organisation runs itself on a strictly non-political mandate to use sport as a power for good around the world. To be accused of being in favour of genocide by a greying Hollywood veteran is, I would venture, new ground for them.
Mia Farrow did not stop with the organising committee, however. None other than Steven Spielberg, that grand old duke of Hollywood, has been dragged into the melee because he is currently acting as an artistic director for the Olympics. In a comment either devastatingly critical or horrendously unfortunate, the man who brought us Schindler’s List is told he is in danger of becoming “the Leni Riefenstahl of the Beijing games”. Leni Riefenstahl was, of course, the woman who produced all sorts of Nazi propaganda films for the 1936 German Olympics- you would imagine for Spielberg, the Jewish director of the world’s most famous holocaust movie, that’s got to smart just a little. He immediately joined in with Farrow’s criticism and demanded that China condemn Sudan’s behaviour.

Rogge, for the record, avoided the Darfur question when it was put to him recently, but did insist that he hoped the Games would eventually be a "force for good" in China. In fact, all this ludicrous celebrity pressure seems to have worked, and the Olympics may well end up being a force for good, as Rogge wishes. The Chinese Government, clearly unused to dealing with the pressures of high profile celebrity haranguing, promptly sent officials to Darfur and asked the Sudanese government to clean up their act. It is unfortunate that it was they who sold the weapons to Sudan in the first place for them to commit such atrocities, but let us not nitpick. Let us dwell instead on the reassuring power of Hollywood.

Soon, we must hope, Angelina Jolie and Madonna will arrive in Beijing, each with shopping trolleys full of Sudanese refugee babies, freshly exported for the inevitable photocall in Tiananmen Square. Arnold Schwarzenegger will appear to add his considerable weight behind the “Genocide Olympic movement”. Alec Baldwin, the leader of F.A.G in Team America, will also be there, taking his eleven year old daughter on an apology holiday for recently calling her a pig in a voicemail message that found its way onto the internet and into the homes of millions. Soon the cause will be the perfect way of salvaging credibility for the disgraced celebrity- Jade Goody and Danielle Lloyd will offer to carry the Olympic torch. And everyone will forget that behind the scenes, in the parts of Beijing they won’t let you see, the government are happily bulldozing swathes of centuries-old traditional Chinese homes, glad of the celebrity distraction Hollywood is providing.

Jacques Rogge may well be scratching his head at the onslaught of criticism; or maybe he’s delighted at the publicity. Perhaps, after London 2012, he had pencilled in North Korea and Iran as the next two hosts. A fabulous idea; by that time McAuley Culkin will be forty years old and in need of a Geldof-like reinvention, Lindsay Lohan will be onto her third nose, and Daniel Radcliffe will be looking for “a new challenge.” Countless others will join them under the flag first raised by the venerable Mia Farrow. Ridiculous though it is, in the case of the Chinese, it may well have worked.