Am I the only one cheering for the iceberg during ITV's Titanic?

How different it might all have been if Sir Matthew Pinsent had been born a century earlier, so that he could have served as a lookout on the Titanic.

One of his timely cries of “there’s something in the water” might surely have made all the difference, as they did to that witless protester’s chances of survival in the Thames on Saturday afternoon.

Though the greatest risk was not that impressionable children might witness a well-deserved decapitation on live TV, but that the contest might be spoiled by one of the rowers breaking an oar in the process. As it was, that catastrophe was luckily averted, and … oh yeah.

Until this Easter weekend I had never taken the slightest interest in the boat race, even though I grew up in a household where it was religiously observed on our tiny black and white TV. It was one of those annual events that my parents considered simply unmissable, like the Grand National (the only horse race on which they ever placed a bet).

Yet the only thing I can remember from my childhood is some grainy footage of the 1951 Oxford boat sinking, endlessly recycled on compilations of great sporting disasters along with that bloke being pipped at the post of the 1948 Olympic marathon and the Queen Mother’s horse Devon Loch landing flat on its stomach at Aintree in 1956.

Cambridge 1978, not Oxford 1951, but you get the picture

Then came this Holy Saturday, when I was so desperate for a break from the sound of three small children wrecking my garden that I pulled the “I must support my old university” card from my pocket and settled down in blissful peace and quiet in front of the TV. It was certainly a memorable experience. And, what’s more, I only had to see it once.

Unlike Julian Fellowes’ take on Titanic, which is apparently stuck in an endless loop where the same characters do much the same things to each other every week. The big surprise comes right at the end, when the ship sinks. Who could have seen that coming? Surely I am not alone in spending my recent Sunday evenings shouting “Come on, you iceberg!” at the TV?

For variety, next week I think I shall treat myself to a download of the classic 1980 box office flop “Raise the Titanic”, of which Lew Grade memorably observed “It would have been cheaper to lower the Atlantic Ocean.”

It is strange how Titanic has retained its hold on the popular imagination, despite the subsequent and infinitely greater human tragedies of the First World War. I do not recall any similar fuss being made on, say, the centenary of the Tay Bridge disaster in 1979.

Come on Fellowes, it had first class passengers, too. Anyone for the memorial crossing?

What we can say with certainty is that no one would currently be paying almost £6,000 for a cruise to retrace Titanic’s maiden voyage if it had ended safely in New York. Just as few would remember Donald Campbell’s achievement if he had broken the world water speed record on Coniston in 1967, instead of becoming fatally airborne in Bluebird.

Similarly, how many of NASA’s 135 space shuttle launches have lodged in the memory, apart from the Challenger disaster of 1986?

Call me superstitious, but I would not wish to step aboard a Titanic memorial cruise at any price. Though a century of progress in marine engineering meant that MS Balmoral had to leave Southampton two days earlier than Titanic because it cannot match its speed. This presumably reduces the chances of adverse consequences from any unanticipated encounters with sea ice.

For added authenticity, they have ditched three quarters of the lifeboats

And if by some quirk history should repeat itself, at least the participants will never be forgotten.

Just as the sore losers in the 2012 boat race may console themselves with the thought that they have come as close as any of us ever will to immortality. Because winners soon fade from memory, but people will surely be replaying footage of their tribulations on YouTube for decades if not centuries to come.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.

Are they really all the same?

Once again I am proud to bring you a column that is spectacularly out of touch with the mood of the region, the nation and quite possibly the entire human race.

I fear this must be so because I spent last Tuesday evening doing a badly co-ordinated jig of glee in front of the television while the helicopters hovered over Downing Street. Between swigs from my celebratory glass, I loudly enquired why the departure of the Browns could not be more like that of the Ceausescus, while my wife murmured soothingly “He’s gone now, love. Just let it go.”

Then David Cameron arrived outside the famous front door and blow me down if almost his first words were not a glowing tribute to his predecessor: “Compared to a decade ago, this country is more open at home and more compassionate abroad and that is something we should all be grateful for.”

Really? More open to all those immigrants who hoovered up most of the new jobs created in the New Labour years, certainly, but how else? And what exactly do our major foreign policy initiatives in Iraq and Afghanistan have to do with compassion?

My mystification only deepened when I turned, for light relief, to a social networking site, and found a friend reporting that she had wept over Gordon Brown’s departure, even though she is not a Labour voter. It must have been those well-scrubbed children that brought a lump to the throat, I guess. At least Lord Mandelson and Alastair Campbell have not lost their touch.

A myth is being constructed in which Gordon Brown was all along simply a dedicated public servant who strove to do his best for his country, was unluckily wrong-footed by a global financial crisis that blew up on his watch, and finally departed with dignity. This is untrue in every particular.

Right from the start, with the cut-price sale of our gold reserves, the destruction of our private pension system and the introduction of divided, “light touch” financial regulation, Mr Brown’s 13 years in Downing Street were a disaster. Only one great service to the nation stands out to underpin his claim to a place in Westminster Abbey, and that is his success in keeping Britain out of the euro, without which our financial predicament would be even closer to that of Greece.

While giving due credit for this, it should perhaps be qualified by the suspicion that it owed less to sound economic principles than to a determination to deny Tony Blair his bizarre but sincere wish to go down in history as the man who abolished the pound.

Now, it can be argued that I should indeed let all this go. When the Titanic was sinking, it doubtless made more sense to focus on saving as many lives as possible, rather than sitting down in the crazily tilting first class saloon for an in-depth discussion of who was responsible for the ship’s defective design.

Given the depth of the financial hole in which we find ourselves, it is perhaps right for our politicians to put aside their differences and pull together, as Messrs Cameron and Clegg have already done. Were Dave’s emollient words uttered with a view to the possible need to draw Labour into a new National Government if the crisis should deepen, as it well might?

The downside of this, along with the clustering of every party around the “centre ground”, taking their core supporters for granted so as to focus on luring in the wet and naïve floating voter, is that it fuels the suspicion graphically put to me by one elderly neighbour: “They’re all the same. They’re all in it for what they can get.”

Because if no major issues of principle divide our mainstream political parties, what other explanation can there be?

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.