[Image by vpjayant under Creative Commons Attribution 3.0, details here]

“I’m afraid our furry companion has gone and done something… rather rash…”

It’s in Return of the Jedi; all the heroes are wondering how to distract the stormtroopers, and one of the Ewoks just potters over and nicks a bike from them, which leads to a chase through the trees of the forest moon and eventually the salvation of the galaxy. Never has petty larceny been so lionized. At the time, of course, Han Solo and the others think the wee furry menace is insane, and true enough, the direct approach is perilous. But when all’s said and done, the Ewok (apparently his name is Paploo, although I don’t know how anyone knows that) is absolutely right, and everyone else was just hanging around being timid.

Is it possible, even slightly, that Stephen Fry has Ewok blood? I mean, there are exactly no physical signs of it, but all the same, there’s something about this recent interview on the subject of MPs’ expenses which has a gentle touch of Paploo’s noble yet somewhat risky strategy.

The thrust of what he’s saying – and he is one hundred percent right – is that this present uproar about expenses absolutely misses the point, which is that we have been pretty appallingly served by our elected representatives. We were taken into a war on bad evidence (or some would say false evidence), we were led to believe we were financially mighty when it turns out we were participating in the greatest economic self-immolation in a century, and over the last decade we have been tested, measured, surveilled and managed to the point where many of our public institutions are about to fall over and shatter. We have been gifted with four thousand new laws, some of them unfathomable, some of them blatantly poorly drafted, many of them mis-used or over-used. Our environmental position is questionable at best, we’re flirting with ‘clean coal’ and nuclear and ignoring renewables, our prison population has expanded so that we’re having to release genuinely dangerous felons early, and the gap between rich and poor has distended until it’s painful to see. Our moral authority in the world, such as it was, has been greatly reduced by our involvement in torture, and at the end of eight years of effort in Afghanistan and Iraq we are withdrawing from the latter without any certainty that we’ve done any good and the conflict in the former, unresolved, has moved across the border into nuclear Pakistan. 

Stephen Fry is spot on, and what he said is important: the free wallpaper issue is definitely not the best reason to be annoyed with your MP.

That said, the Paploo Method for getting attention has its drawbacks. The allegation that journalists might fiddle their expenses – and the description of the profession as ‘venal’ – seems to have made the BBC peevish, because they’ve headlined the interview with Stephen’s rhetorical throwaway remark that everyone fiddles their expenses, and he’s done it himself.

Yes, yes. That is the most important aspect of what he said, after all. I see a new set of headlines tomorrow:

Call For Public Inquiry Into Comedy and Satire

Ministers have said there will be an immediate investigation into comedy finances today, after the revelation by Stephen Fry that he routinely fabricates his expenses. “We all do it,” Mr Fry said.

In the House of Commons, Luton South MP Margaret Moran demanded that satirists be called to account. “I think it’s vital,” Ms Moran said, “after all, how can the public trust their comedians if they don’t know where the money comes from? Many of them are involved in public projects and charitable works. I think we have a right to know about their probity and conduct.”

“This can’t happen,” one senior comic said, on condition of anonymity. “If details of my finances are revealed to the public, it will become apparent that I have sex with large numbers of people, sometimes more than one at a time. I once banged two members of the cast of Dick Turpin and a sound engineer in the back section of a pantomime horse! How will anyone find me funny after that?” Several well-known comedic figures are said to be on suicide watch.

“Everyone does it,” one former Perrier-winner explained, “because basically we don’t make a lot of money. I mean, not everyone’s Jim Carrey, you know? Where’s my Hollywood career? Three minutes as an amusing farting bloke, and they paid scale. So yes, we put beer on the professional expenses chitty if we can get away with it. What’s so bad about that?”

But the Prime Minister described the situation as grave.

“In circumstances of what we might call monetary overstretch,” Gordon Brown said, “when the fiduciary climate is non-ideal for the creation and propagation of wealth, this kind of under-the-table dealing is not appropriate in public figures in whom the voters must be able to place their absolute confidence. Whereas with MPs and bankers a certain amount of leeway is necessary to promote creativity and induce the brightest talents to devote their lives to the dark and painful business of self-depriving service to the nation, in the case of entertainers, the rules are – and must remain – very clear.

In the face of such a potent threat to our way of life, my only option is to order a full inquiry under the new anti-terror laws. Jack Dee, Simon Pegg, and Sandi Toksvig have been arrested already and sent to our wit-debriefing centre in Diego Garcia, and we have no doubt we will soon capture the remaining major offenders, including Nina Conti and Armando Iannucci.”

The crisis continues.