Gillian Gibbons: Grin And Bear It
GILLIAN Gibbons is in jail on a charge of “insulting Islam”, as the Sun puts it. She is “timid” Gillian. She is the Express’s “teddy bear teacher”, and so too the Mail’s.
But there is – alas – no mention of Sudan’s Teddy Taliban, who have seen fit to incarcerate Gibbons.
What readers do get, of course, is to read the account of Gavin Sherrard-Smith, who today appears in the Mirror, having already told Mail and Express readers of his flogging in Qatar for breaking that country’s alcohol laws.
Mr Sherrard-Smith tells a good anecdote, one in the eye for those who return from Arabic country’s with only a pair of Giorgio Ferrari sunglasses and slides of them haggling for a discount on the “Tommy Copper” hat. But having heard the story three times, the pain is growing dim.
The danger is that by the time Mr Sherrard-Smith reaches the Telegraph, readers will have grown immune to the news, some even writing in to say how had the beaten Britisher gone to St Albions School he would have considered his treatment as no more than a light tap on the knuckles.
Over in the Mail, the tabloid voice of Islamic womanhood, former Apprentice wannabe Saira Khan, says the issue is “deadly serious”. It is “far from funny”.
Indeed. It is almost beyond satire.
The call is for the fundamentalist to show sense. Boris Johnson, writing in the Telegraph, talks of a time when Britain would have sent a gun boat to rescue her. “Civis Britannicus sum,” he cries. “I am a British citizen,” says Gillian ‘Gordon’ Gibbons. “We used to send gunboats to your part of the world. Ruddy fuzzy-wuzzies.”
But one thing has been left out: the identity of the teddy bear.
A soppy Rupert, a mentally negligible Paddington or a rabble rousing, not to forget Buddhist, Winnie The Pooh?
Posted: 29th, November 2007 | In: Broadsheets, Politicians, Tabloids Comments (3) | TrackBack | Permalink
