I wish I thought of this phrase, but sadly, I am not that witty and clever.
I have just read Jonathan Meades review of Slow Burn City by Rowan Moore, and I feel the entire section deserves to be posted here. He’s talking about the “Garden Bridge” which, thankfully, has been jettisoned…
“Boris Johnson, a provenly mendacious mayor; Joanna Lumley, a gurning veteran dolly bird; Thomas Heatherwick, a cute salesman for himself with an abject record of design failures, astonishingly compared by the dotard shopkeeper Terence Conran to Leonardo da Vinci: these three ‘national treasures’ should take note of Moore’s startling description of the bridge as ‘digital jism’, a useful addition to the architectural lexicon. They are of course not alone in their antinomian arrogance. One longs for a National Treasure Island, to which the professionally characterful and the strenuously lovable might be transported, there to anecdote each other to tears and expire in a storm of names dropped from a great height.”
So, apart from Boris Johnston, Joanna Lumley and Thomas Heatherwick, who deserves to be dumped onto “National Treasure Island” and why?
This is a tricky one for me to answer myself; Stephen Fry is sometimes annoying as fuck but his documentaries on Bipolar Disorder preclude me from having a go at him, they were genuinely valuable. Judy Dench strikes me as a blameless lovely person with a real talent and Alan Bennett is a force largely for good. Meades, as usual, might well have hit the correct targets square on here. But have we forgotten someone?
Alan Titchmarsh? Jeremy Clarkson? Gyles Brandreth? Russell Brand?
We also need a National Scumbag Island, safely sited just the other side of a shark-infested reef. No prizes for that list of castaways…
Not sure about any national treasures, but…Digital Jism – TMFTL.
You can’t put Lumley in the same category as Johnson. She’s lovely
Doesn’t the expression “professionally characterful” succinctly describe Jonathan Meades himself?
Possibly, but he lacks the ubiquity which tips over into irksome…
I suspect that on balance Julie Walters is safe from this island as her public persona is beyond reproach, but a friend told me she was a proper diva on a promotional job she did for our company a few years ago…
Judi Dench, blameless?
Danny Baker is a prime candidate.
Unless trash really has become treasure, Boris belongs on Scumbag Island.
Can I nominate Peter Alliss, the golf bore. Although I’m from and live in Ireland, I feel I lived among your tribe for long enough to be entitled to a say in this…
…
Nigella Lawson. I was going to write my reasoning but I think I just need to say that she is very annoying.
Whatever the UK statutory holiday entitlement is, that’s how much John Lydon should be allowed to be off-island. Same for David Hepworth.
Morrissey to be kept in the top-security section.
JIm Broadbent and Bill Nighy will surely be on said island.
On Cnut island will be terry Christian, Owen Jones, David Mellor, Phillip Greene, Liam Gallagher, all of Spandau Ballet, David Cameron and George Osbourne. They will be naked in a field of nettles and wasps. Yoko Ono will be playing very loudly.
“all of Spandau Ballet” What, even the saxophone player?!
Regardless of their music, the Ballet boys all come across as decent chaps.
I hate most of their records, but it took balls of steel to go around in 1980 with a picnic blanket draped over your shoulder.
Chris Evans
I have a begrudging respect for him (sort of) having read his autobiographies.
Whilst his ubiquity has died down somewhat in recent years, I still can’t deal with his “over excited teenager after too much fizzy pop” persona
Gertrude Schilling, Lady “Bubbles” Rothemere, Jeanette Charles, Cardew ‘the cad!’ Robertson, Andy Stewart.
John “Motty” Motson, a boring man and a terrible commentator.
Noooo! I love Motty ! Yes, he’d be a nightmare to be stuck with at a function but we all have an uncle like that, don’t we? I do – he will talk at length about roadworks and ridicule you on your journey times and/or route choices, as if you decided to swim the channel rather than take the ferry. But he’s a lovely man and I am hoping Motty is the same.