Just One Little Word
by Sam Gisoad

Sorry, contrary to the musings of songwriters – who are, in any case, not the best people to take advice from – is not the hardest word. It’s a very easy word. Most English people will apologise for stepping in dog shit, let alone treading on someone’s foot or committing some really disgusting crime, like requiring the attention of a shop assistant. When it comes to apologising, Britons have screaming, raging logorrhoea, unlike the Zulus who have no word for it.

Which is why it is absurd to place so much importance on it. When Tony Blair apologised for going to war with Iraq, it was billed as a huge event, as if millions of bereaved Arabs would be watching the press conference and say, “well, I suppose that’s okay then, but I hope he’s learnt his lesson.” Of course what was really at issue was liability; to say sorry is an admission of having done something wrong, etc etc. Yes, we know. It’s absurd and annoying that front-of-house workers are trained not to say sorry in case it is taken as an admission of legal fault whilst at the same time the automated system at Waterloo has a man apologising personally for late-running trains which a) have sod-all to do with him, and b) will still be late.

But when the slebs get involved it’s different. Did you know that Kate Moss’s earnings have tripled since her ‘cocaine furore’? I bet you did, because the papers can’t shut up about it. Amanda Platell went on and on about it in some bloody paper (Standard? Mail? Metro?) and now Lorraine Kelly has stuck her sensible shoe in. “Kate’s sick message” she screams “is take drugs to get rich.” She also begs you to tell her that she is ‘not the only person who finds this frightening and utterly irresponsible’.  Because `Moss won’t say sorry. And then has a huge go at Pete Doherty for something.

‘Doherty is our whipping boy, better: our sin-eater.’

Let’s get a few things straight from the off. Taking cocaine does not make someone a bad model – or musician – any more than liking Turner makes them a bad plumber or eating cheese makes them gay. Moreover, anyone who sincerely believes that taking drugs is more morally reprehensible than, say imprisoning someone for a month without trial or access to a lawyer should find a copy of Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man and then slowly beat themselves to death with it.  We are used to the parasitical nature of the voyeuristic gossip-scratchers; it is, after all, their job to live vicariously. The shock and outrage with which they greet the newest drugs shame or addiction hell is exceeded only by the glee with which they scream for sales.

It is woefully obvious that the red-top wordsmiths would gladly drop all, hunt through the dirty backstreets and give even unto half their petty kingdom to buy Doherty’s next scag wrap if only to drive the next front page. Doherty is our whipping boy, better: our sin-eater. He takes upon himself the addictions of the world that we might be spared and hoovers up the crack – our crack – that we should live. A walking vision of pasty decrepitude at once both temperance advert and grim warning. If Pete Doherty did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.

‘She won’t crawl onto our screens and cry, beg for our forgiveness, wail that she is an bad mother, a terrible person, do penance for taking our money and blowing it on, um, blow.’

But his one-time paramour; oh, how they hate her. Because where Doherty enacts a very public theatre of shame, she’s never said sorry. If Kelly thinks that the message she sends is ‘take drugs; get rich’ then it is because Kelly cannot read. The real message is brutally clear. Do what the hell you want, as long as you’re prepared to pay for it in public pain. Moss is not the first, and I wager won’t be the last, public figure to take cocaine. But she won’t apologise. She won’t crawl onto our screens and cry, beg for our forgiveness, wail that she is an bad mother, a terrible person, do penance for taking our money and blowing it on, um, blow.

The Mephistophelian pact that the chat-rags offer is simple. Untold acclaim, and people giving a damn about what you wear, with whom you sleep, the frequency and volume with which you break wind. In return, we own you. And they can’t be poor terms, because so many are willing to sign, and do well out of it. But Moss cheated them. She won’t give interviews, nor parade her child – our child – as a photo-op. Whatever pain she has gone through remains her pain. Does she not realise that we hold the deeds to that pain? In another age, she might have been lauded for her privacy, her sense of decorum. No more, she has welched on the deal.