Welcome to mid-August. Some source I’ve just made up tells me that, as long ago as the 11th century, town criers identified this fag-end of summer as “Ye Sillie Season”. Sounds plausible. “Oyez, oyez, oyez! Old Ladie in pointed hat turns childe into newt!”
One can hardly imagine a better example of a contemporary silly season story than the report that an undersea cable had been moved to avoid desecrating the brine-blasted Welsh grave of Dobby the House Elf from Harry Potter. You will have read that everywhere. We all loved it. Any opportunity to poke fun at Potter fans should be enjoyed with the greatest relish.
There was no greater gift for the British papers than the arrival of Count Binface to challenge Nigel Farage at that bizarre byelection in Quixote-on-Sea (actually Clacton, but you get the gag). Indeed, you could see Binface – real name Jonathan David Harvey – as the quintessential silly season figure. Last week, as polling day loomed, he delivered the most memorable TV appearance by a British politician since John Prescott, then deputy prime minister, punched a mouthy protester on the nose in 2001. Interviewed for US media about his place on the political spectrum, Binface placed himself in the position of primal force. “I am the galactic centre and everything else just revolves around me like little planets,” he said. The interviewer, keeping an impressively straight face, wondered if he could put that in American political terms. “Yes! Ah um the galagtic centuh,” he said in a comic-book yankee accent. “And evuhthing else ...”
Binface’s achievement has been no small one. For many decades, joke candidates at British elections came across like the man in the pub who thinks it hilarious to propose that any rainy day is “nice weather for ducks”. The opportunity was always there for political commentators to remark how you wouldn’t see Barack Obama or Emmanuel Macron standing beside Lord Toby Jug or Mad Cow-Girl (actual candidates) on their night of electoral triumph, but you can be sure none of those political journos would relish sharing the ride home with Captain Beany (also a real joke candidate). Binface is properly funny. I write 24 hours before the polls close. He is now either the most unlikely MP in UK political history or the next guest host of Have I Got News for You.
Welcome to silly season, starring Dobby, James Bond, Count Binface and Brian May
Four new films to see this week: The End of Oak Street, Lady, The Mahabharata and Tony
Tony review: Dominic Sessa captures the contradictions of Anthony Bourdain in fond biopic
The Movie Quiz: How many films in the Rambo franchise?
Now the Clacton jamboree is over, the papers will – as this column has often done before – fall back upon the staple of James Bond speculation for the remaining weeks of August. There are not really grown adults with no memory of a time when we weren’t living in a 007 interregnum, but it genuinely does feel as if this has gone on as long as the Hundred Years War (actually 116 years). “Oyez, oyez, oyez! Lord Richard of Osman dubs Sir Jack Lowden the next scourge of Blofeld.” It’s true. Well, it’s true that it’s a rumour. The amiable author and quiz specialist announced on The Rest is Entertainment podcast that he had heard Lowden, best known as River Cartwright in Slow Horses, was being “strongly considered” to replace Daniel Craig as 007. For what it’s worth, the Scottish actor had drawn alongside Callum Turner as bookies’ favourite for the role.
What else is being silly this season? Well there is always artificial intelligence. Anything about AI will do. Here is Brian May, an actual space scientist, as well as founding member of Queen, demanding that Andy Burnham, the UK’s new prime minister, block the technology “before it’s too late”. It was already too late to stop the corkscrew-haired guitarist getting a glance of how badly one programme rendered his old mate Freddie Mercury. “This is the kind of intelligence that will soon be ruling the world ??!” he bellowed.
Over at the Daily Mail, Vogue Williams “calls out Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis, 63, for dating a 19-year-old”. The same paper had great fun with the eclipse – a gift in August – as Romeo Beckham spouted it “doesn’t get any better than this”. Even the serious news takes on a silly aspect at this time of year. Over in the US, midterm elections have been bizarrely overshadowed by (unsuccessful, as it transpired) Democrat hopeful Francesca Hong’s disobliging comments about cancelling Thanksgiving.
Maybe we should enjoy it while we can. Controversies about Harry Potter characters, gags from comedy political candidates and rants from prog-pop guitarists give some relief from the heat and humidity. The stories belong with the holiday specials kids’ comics used to issue when the schools set their readers free. The greater miseries will all be waiting for us when the clocks go back. “Oyez, oyez, oyez! Ye black mist descends and all must weep on the dead land!” Or some such nonsense.
