Life

Mary Kelly: Gregory's now wondering, why were there no white girls in The Supremes?

Gregory still has work to do on racial diversity in many other programmes, from Countdown to Pointless. He should also be checking out what was going on at Tamla Motown

DUP MP Gregory Campbell recently made the astonishing discovery that gospel singers are mostly black. Picture by Press Eye
DUP MP Gregory Campbell recently made the astonishing discovery that gospel singers are mostly black. Picture by Press Eye DUP MP Gregory Campbell recently made the astonishing discovery that gospel singers are mostly black. Picture by Press Eye

TO US columnists, sometimes DUP politicians are – to paraphrase Lord Falconer – the gift that keeps on giving.

First there was Jeffrey discovering the terrible truth about unfair borders, and Ian Óg with his teary…"what did we do that was so wrong?” sob to the prime minister for the Brexit betrayal. Then along comes Gregory Campbell and his astonishing discovery that gospel singers are mostly black.

While watching Songs of Praise a few Sabbaths ago, featuring the Gospel Singer of the Year contest, he had a rather unchristian feeling of discomfort that there were no white people on the screen.

The five semifinalists were black, the judges were black as was – gasp – the presenter. And despite the fact that something like 99.8pc of gospel singers come from Afro-Caribbean and Afro-American communities, he was shocked, I tell you.

Gregory likes putting the boot into the BBC, so now its crime was having a "Black Lives Matter” agenda. No doubt it was his constant complaints that changed the originally all-white judging line-up on Strictly. Though the presenters are still distinctly white – apart from Claudia Winkleman, who is orange.

He still has work to do on many other programmes, from Countdown to Pointless.

He should also be checking out what was going on at Tamla Motown. And why were there no white girls in The Supremes, he’s now wondering.

Of course, this could all be a diversion – the dead cat strategy. This is when you divert attention from an awkward topic – like the DUP Brexit debacle – by chucking a dead cat on the dining room table. Everyone’s attention is thus taken up by the cat.

It was a much loved tactic of Lynton Crosby, the Australian who managed Boris Johnson’s mayoral victories.

But then Gregory does have form on cultural issues. He had a go at the singer Dido, a few years back, because she used lyrics from Men Behind the Wire in a song. At the time, he fumed: “Given her Irish roots, she must know it was written about people who were murderers, arsonists and terrorists. She should clarify her position so that her fans and the wider public knows where she stands on these things.”

Leaving aside the fact that it was about internment, I think he’s got Dido all wrong. She is, after all, more famous for her song White Flag, where she promised to go down with her ship.

“There’ll be no white flag above my door,” she warbled.” In other words, “No Surrender”.

* * *

JACKIE Weaver is a household name after her calm control of the running of a Zoom meeting of Handsworth Parish Council.

If only she had chaired meetings of Belfast City Council back in the 1980s. This was when the chamber was known in a column in this paper as 'The Dome of Delight'.

Most of the antics were sparked by the election of Sinn Féin’s Alex Maskey in 1983. To signal their disapproval, DUP members went into full pantomime mode, including then councillor Rhonda Paisley, who used a toy trumpet to drown him out when he spoke. Deodorants and perfumes were also sprayed liberally in his direction.

A few years later, Máirtín Ó Muilleoir was escorted out of the chamber by the RUC, called in by the lord mayor, for his “crime” of speaking in Irish – or the “leprechaun language”, as Sammy Wilson preferred to call it.

There was also a punch-up between two nationalist councillors once and on another occasion a lord mayor took off his chain of office and ran upstairs to the public gallery to grab a heckler by the throat.

It had all mostly calmed down at the city hall by the time I started covering meetings, but Castlereagh council would have also provided a challenge for the redoubtable Jackie. It was dominated by the DUP and because there were no nationalist councillors back then, the Alliance Party members were the main focus of abuse.

During one heated argument, a unionist councillor spluttered, "Typical Alliance party…always trying to stir up harmony.”

* * *

I wonder if Jackie Weaver also had a word with Yoshiro Mori, the former Japanese prime minister who has resigned as chief of the Tokyo Olympics. He reportedly said that allowing more women on to the Olympic committee, which currently has 19 men to five women, would mean they would have to have their speaking time restricted. Why? Because women have difficulty finishing talking, which he found annoying.

After “Mori must go” started trending on social media, he apologised. But when pressed on whether he really believed women talked too much, he replied: “I don’t listen to women that much lately, so I don’t know.”

Gold medal for diplomacy to you, Mori-san.