Tuesday 9 June 2015

That's entertainment

What's wrong with folk? The semi naked chained up guy above is a street performer we watched in Covent Garden this afternoon. The guy was good, a bit of comedy, a bit of this, a bit of that, he put his body through a tennis racket and finished with a bit of escapism, hence the chains; for 20 minutes or so he gave us his all and none of it was boring. I enjoy things like this, it reminds me of festivals and such performers always get my respect, because it must take something to get up and make a fool of yourself in an entertaining way in front of a crowd.

Now there must have been 150 plus people watching this guy, all laughing, all enjoying the spectacle of the show; come the end of the performance I moved forward to thank the guy and put a few quid in his hat, he thanked me and was glad we enjoyed his show; I turned to return to my spot expecting to have to dodge fellow audience members heading to spare some change...I was wrong, it turned out that of all the people there only a handful had bothered to contribute, the rest had wandered off. I was shocked, no, I was angry. What are we like, why are we so shite? Thousands of people are willing to subscribe to sky or some other provider of banality, thousands of people are happy to phone in a vote, for a price, on I'm a celebrity, big brother, Britains got talent or some other bollocks; but here was a real guy, in person, entertaining people and hardly anyone could be bothered to chip in a quid. I was appalled. I went back to put a bit more in his hat; he only had about £20, £20 from over 150 people, as I say, appalling. Sometimes I think we'll end up with the culture we deserve and most certainly the culture we've created; a banal mix of celebrity tosh, corporately endorsed nonsense and utter bollocks. Seeing how people have become made me angry, but mainly sad for the humanity we've lost. 

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