Sunday People: Hotel Vacancy

The Sunday People used to be quite a good tabloid, as British tabloids go.
A sister paper to the Mirror, it used to do old-fashioned things like investigative journalism.
Not just silly kiss-and-tell and MP-caught-with-his-pants-down stories, but regularly exposing crooks and villains in business great and small.
Now it's mainly football, babes and showbiz gossip, and all done badly.
Today we are promised an "exclusive" - though the story comes from website Exaro; Paedo Brothel Advertised In Tory Leaflet: Party's gay link to guest house.
In fine, a gay-friendly small hotel in London once advertised in a tiny newsletter published by the Conservative Group For Homosexual Equality. 
In 1982, the owners of Elm Guest House in south London were convicted of running a "disorderly house" - meaning male prostitutes had worked there, basically.
A cynic might ask if there is a hotel in London not regularly visited by prostitutes.
Now, "Operation Fernbridge is investigating claims that boys who were in council care were brought to the Elm to be sexually abused by bigwigs and VIPs.
"It was launched after Labour MP Tom Watson claimed a paedophile ring used top-level connections to dodge justice..."
Such allegations have been doing the rounds via conspiracy theorists, Westminster village gossips and the wilder shores of the internet for decades.
Big names are invariably dropped - and are also invariably dead; Blunt, Heath, Cyril Smith, your funny uncle Tom Cobley and all...
The People teases readers with a blind list; "Among the names are two former Conservative Cabinet ministers and four other senior Tories.
"There is also a Labour MP, a prominent Irish republican and a leading National Front member.
"Others on the handwritten note are two members of the royal household – one a former Buckingham Palace employee – plus the owner of a multinational company and two pop stars."
They are terrible accusations - and they are only accusations at the moment - though tragically it wouldn't be surprising if it turns out children from a care home were being systematically sexually abused, and the establishment drew ranks to look after their own.
But this advert is hardly a smoking gun. 

Benjamin Britten: Our Greatest

Britten was homosexual, but in all external respects he comported himself like a respectable tweedy middle-class bachelor of a liberal persuasion. Aside from his stubborn but undoctrinaire pacifism, he was conventional in his habits, manners and dress. Competitive and athletic, he was head boy and Victor Ludorum at school. He drove fast cars fast, played a mean game of tennis and enjoyed freezing seawater dips and hearty roast lunches...
Britten’s one-time assistant Colin Matthews also identified in the composer an unsophisticated reaction to his own sexuality. He never made gay jokes or inferences, nor did he even use the word “gay”; he disliked socialising with gay couples, and was initially aghast at the idea of wearing checked trousers. 

Eh?
From the Telegraph, who are going big on Benjamin Britten's centenary, and are currently serialising Paul Kildea's biography (Its big scoop is a somewhat speculative claim syphilis may have contributed to his death).
It's tricky terrain, as it's nigh on impossible to write about the man - "our greatest composer" - without mentioning that he had a thing about boys, and how the late "national treasure" was a notorious pederast.
As Richard Morrison writes in a thoughtful piece in The Times; "Yet this enormous celebration only compounds an enormous problem for Britten’s champions. Coming so soon after the revelation of the serial child abuse inflicted by Jimmy Savile, it forces them to confront the ugly elephant in the room. The composer himself was, at least technically, a paedophile.
Not a predatory sexual one, perhaps. But a platonic paedophile, certainly. He adored the company of boys."

Here's The Sunday Telegraph's Rupert Christiansen; "His emotional focus was a loving if occasionally scratchy marriage to the tenor Peter Pears, for whom he wrote much of his greatest music, but his life was also marked by a series of intimate relationships with pubescent boys.
This has caused much anxiety among both his admirers and detractors, but as a sensitive study of the matter by John Bridcut recently revealed, these relationships were pseudo-paternal and involved no genital contact. It seems rather that in some respects Britten remained a prep-school boy himself, and that his fondness for other prep-school boys was what modern jargon describes as “being in touch with your inner child”.

Okay. But post-Savilegate, this year expect more of the hysterical tone set out by The Daily Mail; DG's little Britten headache: RICHARD KAY asks whether BBC will acknowledge late composer's obsession with young boys 

• Britten 100 website 

Update: Britten syphilis claims 'ludicrous' - The Guardian. 

Mail On Sunday: From The Message Boards

I HAVE ALWAYS HATED THE C BEEBIES SHOWS AND FIND THEM CREEPY THERE IS SOMETHING VERY ROTTEN AT THE BBC ITS CALLED BRAIN WASHING AND NOT MANY PEOPLE UNDERSTAND WHATS GOING ON - WHATAWORLD

The government needs to do the right thing and axe the licence fee. We shouldn't be expected to fund the BBC any longer - Archie Andrews

It does make you wonder who is incharge of this network. My daughter and I was also watching this, this morning thank god she's too young to realise - Tyrus 

This is an absolute disgrace! This is obviously some kind of sick joke that someone at the BBC thought was funny, there's no way this can have been done by accident. I think substantial compensation should be paid by the BBC to anyone who saw this - fatherofthree

broken Britain - normal chap

Mail On Sunday.

Before you finally totally lose all faith in humanity, I should point out that many Mail On Sunday posters pointed out the programme was ten years old, and said they thought the Mail was being even more ridiculously hysterical than usual by trying to manufacture a scandal out of this.
The Mail bigged it up with the terrifrying intro; 'It's a total disgrace' says one parent who saw programme this morning.
Sub headline: Tweenies character appears on show dressed as Jimmy Savile.

Erm, is that the same Tweenies character dressed as Jimmy Savile that the Mail published five photos of online - plus a videolink to this paedo-enabling, mind warping and frankly disgusting scene?
And by the way, the glowing tributes to Sir Jim the Mail published when he died are still available on their website. 
Won't somebody please think of the children!?

Update: And how did The Sun address the sheer horror that some little kiddies might have seen a puppet pretending to be Jimmy Savile?
That's right - they put him on Monday's front page!
"I saw that in the newsagents and had to explain it to my daughter, aged 4. Thankfully she didn't know who he was."
I. Give. Up.

Savilegate: Read All About It!

One of several souvenir issues published today for the titillation of the nation.
Remember: Kinky sex makes the world go round.