A New Low for GBNews: Marc Dolan’s tirade on mental health.

My plan for this afternoon was to write a nice little piece about a rather lovely jazz album that was released this weekend by my friend Alex Bird.  Sadly, though, that has to be put on hold because of an idiotic and ignorant monologue from GBNews host Mark Dolan last night about mental health, or, rather, his belief that such issues are an indication that we have “lost our balls.”

Dolan’s nine-minute tirade began with sixty seconds of reminding us of all the hardships the country has suffered in the past, from the Blitz to famine to those who worked down the coalmines, and how “grit and determination” got us through those hard times.  He then tells us to “fast-forward to 2022” where we have the internet, smart-phones, and “free healthcare for all at the point of need” (clearly he hasn’t been waiting two or three weeks for a doctor’s appointment, or a couple of years for a knee replacement).   Of course, you know exactly where this is going.  Ah, yes, because “we have never had it so good.” Dolan says that he is “sceptical about the current obsession with mental health,” stating that we have turned mental well-being into a “religion, a cult.” 

Of course, being GBNews, it doesn’t take very long for Prince Harry to be mentioned – the obsession of all GBNews presenters – who shouldn’t be having mental health problems, we are told, because he has “sixteen bathrooms.”  What more could you possibly want in life?  Ironically, Dolan tells people that are really struggling (in other words, not one of the fakers) to “reach out” because “help is there” – we can only presume that he hasn’t been in a position where the wait for talking therapies is six months to a year in many parts of the country. 

As is so often the case, Dolan makes no sense.  He tells how he finds it a tragedy that so many young men are committing suicide, and then he tells us that the young have been “infantilised by this cult of mental health” (yes, folks, he’s been looking at that thesaurus again).  He accuses the country of “wrapping people in cotton wool” and indulging in a mental health “hypochondria,” and that we should tell young people that negative emotions are “like the weather…You have sunshine, you have rain.”  It sounds like a hippy Ladybird book.

All of this simplistic, baseless, and downright ignorant spiel would be funny if it wasn’t so dangerous.   He tells us that mental health issues are treated with “adverse medication” (without providing proof or evidence of the adverse effects) and that “before you pop any pills,” make sure you are controlling the parts of your life that are controllable, and make sure you’re getting enough sleep.  Stop taking drugs, and apparently cannabis is the “elephant in the room when it comes to mental health.”  He also tells us that if we cut down on alcohol “your mood will lift.”  And don’t forget that eating “plenty of fruit, vegetables and well-sourced animal protein is like a happy pill.”  And water.  That helps, too, apparently.

What Mr. Dolan forgets is that if people are not eating well, are in debt (another source of mental health issues, he says), not getting fresh air, not sleeping well, or drinking too much alcohol, it may well be BECAUSE they have mental health issues.  He doesn’t understand at all, it seems, the difference between a cause and a symptom. 

Maybe this is because Mark Dolan is not a doctor.  He’s a comedian (apparently).  He has a degree in politics, but not one in medicine, but that didn’t stop him from telling Talk Radio listeners in 2020 that a facemask was “wretched, godawful, damned, blinking, uncomfortable, [and] scientifically empty” – with the final comment as baseless as the conspiracy theories surrounding the Covid vaccines.  No doubt, by cutting up a mask live on air, he thought that he was channelling his inner Sinead O’Connor, who famously tore a photo of the Pope in two on Saturday Night Live thirty years ago.  But Dolan achieved something that O’Connor did not:  he made himself look like an idiot.

His lack of qualifications clearly hasn’t stopped him telling the nation that young people generally don’t have mental health conditions, they’re just expecting too much from life.  He then goes on to blame social media, where the “me, me, me egomania is the business model.”  So says the man who has been on Twitter since 2010 and makes around a dozen posts a day.  “Give it up,” he says.  And then, most alarmingly:

“pull your socks up, get your life in order, and soldier on.  Whatever happened to the stiff upper lip?…Grow up, man up, and get on with it.”

He wonders why suicides amongst young men are so high, and then he tells them to basically stop snivelling because there’s nothing wrong with them – not to mention that the term “man up” is one of the most toxic when talking about mental health.

IMPORTANT:  If you think you have a mental health issue, see a professional as soon as you can, and ignore the Mark Dolans of this world.

It is impossible to underestimate how dangerous Dolan’s comments are.  While he covers his back by referring to those who have “real” mental health problems occasionally, he makes the accusation that most people’s problems are not real, and that they should go for a walk, eat a carrot, or have an extra hour in bed.  This kind of advice then causes more delays in people getting help, resulting in more problems for both the patient and the failing mental health system – a system which seems to get worse with every passing month. These comments on mental health issues are just as dangerous as those made on the channel about Covid vaccines and other conspiracy theories that it tries so hard to get clicks from on social media.

When GBNews started, most thought it would fail in a year (including me), and it probably still will fail in the long term.   We thought it would be simply an echo chamber for a hundred thousand or so people who all felt the same way, and that it would have no influence.  That would have been the case without social media, but GBNews does have an effective social media presence, and its tweets do cut through to the masses, meaning many will have seen Dolan’s diatribe who wouldn’t ever watch the channel itself.  

Presumably, courting such controversy is the channel’s way of getting attention, alongside its roster of nobodies and has-beens that are unable to stay away from the spotlight when their star has faded, rather than keeping some of their dignity and letting their career slide quietly away: Alistair Stewart, Anne Diamond, and (soon) John Cleese. 

Despite its name, GBNews isn’t a news channel but a studio-bound TV tabloid (and the worst kind of tabloid at that), surviving not by providing its own quality journalism and news reports, but by simply criticising everybody else, and making cheap and irresponsible claims to get attention on social media.  It criticises Sky and the BBC with alarming regularity, accusing them of bias – which is rather hypocritical coming from GBNews and its presenters.  And yet, its actual news bulletins are about three minutes per hour, with the rest of its time filled with self-indulgent rants such as the one that prompted this post, and “discussions” amongst “superstar panels” that make this year’s contestants on Strictly seem like Hollywood A-listers.  It demonstrates the very worst aspects of our world of multi-channel TV, and there are no indications that it’s going to get better or any more responsible.

NB. I really and truly do not want to post Dolan’s monologue in this post, but I feel that I should for transparency. Therefore it is below:

Returning to the Proms after Covid

The Proms this year have a strange feel to them.  After the spectator-less few concerts of 2020, and the shorter season of 2021, this 2022 season is (on the surface, at least) back to normal. 

And yet things are different, as my own visit this year showed.   In 2018, I rang up for a ticket on the opening day of booking, and only just got one for the concert I wanted.  In 2019, I rang up at the same time and didn’t get a seat at all for the concert I wanted to see.  This year, while everything is back to normal after Covid, I could have got a seat in any part of the Royal Albert Hall even if I didn’t buy until five minutes before the concert.  And the concert I saw on Thursday wasn’t a random exception this year.  Anyone who has seen the concerts on television will know that there are many empty seats for most performances.   Is it still because of Covid?  I don’t think so, to be honest.  My own theory is that people have simply got out of the habit of attending.  For many, going to one or two of the Proms was an annual jaunt to the capital city, but, when that didn’t happen for a couple of years, I think people simply get out of the habit.  And train strikes and a cost-of-living crisis hasn’t helped.  But one has to wonder if the Proms can survive in their present form long term on 70% attendance – and the Royal Albert Hall itself is in debt to the tune of £60million following Covid.

From my own point of view, going to London to the Proms gets more difficult with each passing year.  My arthritis is getting worse, and London’s transport infrastructure isn’t exactly kind to those who have mobility issues.  There are no lifts in either of the tube stations closest to the Royal Albert Hall, for example – and they’re hardly close to the hall anyway.  I know nothing about travelling around London by bus, and so the only way for me to get from the train station to the venue is taxi, which isn’t cheap.  Gone, at least for now, are the days when I could spend the day going in and out of the book shops on Charing Cross Road before the concert.  There is less enjoyment in simply going to London by train and doing nothing but wait for the concert to begin. 

However, the concert on Thursday was an excellent one.  Unusually for me, I chose the concert this year based on a performer rather than the compositions being performed.  I had no real burning desire to hear Brahms’s Violin Concerto in a live setting, but the soloist was Daniel Lozakovich.  When HMV reopened after the first lockdown, his recording of the Tchaikovsky concerto (on a disc called None But the Lonely Heart) was my first purchase from them, bought on impulse rather than any real need to own another version of the work.  It turned out to be a truly wonderful recording, and exciting in a way that only a live recording could really be.  The only downside to the disc is that we don’t get to hear the rapturous applause that must have followed.   Through this disc (and his others dedicated to Bach and Beethoven), my choice of Prom this year was a no-brainer when I saw he was performing.  As expected, Lozakovich delivered a vibrant and exciting performance of the concerto, and an out-of-this-world encore of Milstein’s Paganinia.  Lozakovich is just twenty-one years old, has model good looks, and is mesmerising on the concert platform.  As I seem to be saying a lot lately, we are so lucky to be living through a period where there are so many wonderful young classical musicians.

The rest of the concert contained less-performed pieces.  Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole was one of the first classical pieces I owned when I was a teenager, and I’ve always like the composer’s work since, even if it’s not performed much.  The overture to his opera Le Roi d’Ys opened the concert.  The second half of the evening was dedicated to Franck’s Symphony in D minor.  What was remarkable was that the Lalo hadn’t been performed at the Proms for 80 years, and the Franck not for 20 years.   Quite how or why either piece fell out of favour, I have no idea.  The Franck was recorded multiple times in the second half of the last century.  Perhaps it simply shows that great works sometimes just disappear from the repertoire through sheer luck or misfortune.  A review of Thursday’s concert by Mark Valencia on the Bachtrack website suggests that the Franck has disappeared “because conductors and orchestras have learnt to sniff at its simple pleasures.”  That may be true, but there is also the issue that classical concerts are shorter now than they used to be, meaning that less pieces are being performed in general, and some fall by the wayside.

Because of the length of the Proms season, it does at least have a chance to resurrect some of these forgotten or neglected pieces.   It is interesting to look at the mega-box released by Decca a while back, containing fifty albums from the mono era, and seeing how many pieces have since fallen out of favour.  When was the last time you heard (or saw) Roussell’s ballet The Spider’s Banquet, for example?  Or how about La Peri (Dukas), The Gingerbread Heart (Baranovic), A Colour Symphony (Bliss), or even the four Tchaikovsky orchestral suites?  And yet they (and many other obscurities) all appear on that Decca set, suggesting that they would have been popular pieces in the post-war classical music world.  The Proms resurrection of such pieces is welcome, but such performances seem to do little to make these works popular again in the long term. 

In a week or two, the Proms will once again be heading for the inevitable last night, which really desperately is in need of an overhaul. Soon, the social media sites will be alive with people who have never been to a Prom (or watched any of the season on TV) moaning about the EU flags in attendance and any chance that Rule Britannia might be dropped in future years (oblivious to the fact it was barely performed in the 2000s).   Quite why these people think they have a right to demand X, Y and Z about something they only become interested in for the last twenty minutes of the season is anybody’s guess.  It is rather like me tuning in for the last ten minutes of the World Cup final having not watched any football on TV for the previous year, and then demanding changes to the rules and how it is broadcast.

What seems certain, though, is that in future years, the Proms will be having to do some naval-gazing.  How can it alter to bring in more bums on seats if this year’s attendance figures are repeated next year?  Will more concerts move away from London to allow more people to attend?  What kind of balance will be made between the old warhorses and the forgotten and obscure?  And how will it adapt to changing times when, for many people, the Last Night programme’s is getting more and more unpalatable as patriotism turns to nationalism? Time will tell. 

NB: The concert discussed in this post can be heard on BBC Sounds: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m001b5nk

Review and Goodbye: Locke and Key, season three

It is with a heavy heart that I said goodbye to Locke and Key tonight on Netflix. I realise the final season has had somewhat mixed reviews, but I’m very much in the camp of those who thought it was an improvement on season two. The charm and innocence of the first season couldn’t be rekindled – although surely that was partly in discovering the secrets of the house along with the Lockes themselves – but at least the final season didn’t seem like the creators had run out of ideas, as is so often the case with series these days – in fact, it almost feels as if season two was merely a prologue to these eight episodes.

I confess that I find Gideon a rather revolting villain, although I’m sure that’s the intention, but at least he does have something of a game plan in what he plans to do when he gets hold of the keys. We never did find out what Gabe/Dodge actually intended to do with his army of demons in season two – or did I miss something in the two times I watched those ten episodes?

In many respects, Locke and Key is a series strangely associated with the Covid pandemic – for me, at least. That charming first season dropped just as things looked as if they were going really pear-shaped in February 2020, and, as our own freedoms were taken away, it was the perfect show to get utterly lost in as the family gained the kinds of freedoms we could only dream of. Sadly there was a wait of well over eighteen months for season two, which felt like something of a let down. As already mentioned, the endgame of what the demon had planned for the world was never really made explicit, and it all seemed to drag on for a bit too long.

And now, with our freedoms mostly returned with regards to Covid, we get the final season. I was a little bit sceptical when we were suddenly told “we always planned it to be three seasons,” but actually that statement is quite believable as this season gallops along to its conclusion. The pace is cranked up this time around, with only eight episodes, clocking in at nearly three hours shorter in total than the previous two seasons. I was disappointed that this was going to be the case, but, on viewing it, it seems the right length, and very little of that time is wasted, with the exception of an oddly protracted head key experience in episode seven.

At its best, Locke and Key has been more than a simple fantasy series. It examines the issue of grief and loss in a way that most major serious dramas could often only ever aspire to. Too often, we see films and shows where someone dies and the funeral takes place and everything goes back to normal, and everyone is happy again. Locke and Key is not remotely like that. The heartache caused by the loss of Randall Locke is up front and centre for the entire twenty-eight episode run. There’s bitterness and anger and heartbreak and regret, and each character goes through these emotions in different ways and at different times – just as happens to all of us in real life. And this is never pushed aside or dealt with lightly in order to let the fantasy narrative take over, and that is particularly true in the long half-episode wrap-ups to both seasons two and three. Nobody could ever accuse of the series leaving plotlines unfinished. Locke and Key takes over twenty minutes to close the doors of Key House in the final episode of season three, and there’s little room for a return in the future.

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when we could have expected a popular series like this to carry on for six or maybe eight seasons. Supernatural limped along for fifteen, despite the fact that you don’t miss much if you stop watching after season five. But now, TV series tend to have a shorter shelf-life, and there are pros and cons to that, but where would Locke and Key go after a third season anyway? Plus, this is a predominantly young cast, and it’s a good thing for them to be able to go out and stretch their wings with other projects. Emilia Jones (Kinsey) has certainly wasted no time in doing just that, winning multiple awards and getting a BAFTA nomination for her role in Coda (2022). We have to wait to see what the future will bring for Connor Jessup (Tyler), as IMDB gives us no hint as yet, but anyone wanting to see more of him should check out 2015’s Closet Monster, one of the best queer films of the 2010s. Jackson Robert Scott (Bode) is also someone we’re likely to see much more of – and he clearly had a ball going taking Bode over to the dark side for an episode or so of this final season.

No doubt, the series will be something that I return to watch again in the future, although I wish there was a key to make us forget having watched it the first time so we can enjoy all it has to offer afresh. Sadly, such things do not exist, and so it’s time to bid farewell to Locke and Key. Aloha!