Stark staring … madness
David Starkey hasn’t had a good year so far – first the TV historian gets monstered for calling a pupil ‘fat’ on Jamie Oliver’s Dream School experiment Channel 4 and then he’s called a racist for observing that ‘gangsta’ culture is having a pernicious effect on Britain’s youngsters, youtube.com Let’s look at the facts. First the pupil was fat (sorry) and, secondly, you’d have to have been living on the moon if you thought that a ‘culture’ that glorified guns, drugs, misogyny, in-your-face wealth, a perverted view of ‘respect’ and easy money was anything but pernicious. Apologies about the fat pupil comment by the way – but was it really worth such a fuss as self-styled down-with-the-kids head John ‘Chirpy Cockney Dabbs’ d'Abbro made it out to be? ‘Dabbs’ lost a lot of his cred (in my view) when he said that Starkey’s comment ‘summed up everything he went into teaching to fight’ … or some similar right-on comment. Anyway, was Starkey being racist with his comment about gan