“I’m sick of these celebrities living their life out in the open. Why would you do that? Fuck the makers of this show! The Victorian freak show never went away. Now it’s called Big Brother or The X-Factor. We wheel out the bewildered to be sniggered at by multi-millionaires. Fuck you for watching this at home! Shame on you and shame on me!”
So said Ricky Gervais on Extras the other night.
Why do we need to sit and watch people famous and ordinary flounder around on television night after night ? Why do we find the need to popularise and reward them ?
In July of this year Gordon Brown made the following statement at Westminster whilst launching his book, “Ordinary Heroes”,
PM targets unsung heroes in revamp of honours - Scotland on Sunday
“In this spirit of recognising and celebrating service to local communities and our whole country, it is right that we look at how our honours system can recognise those in our emergency services and members of the public who showed such bravery and heroism in the face of the recent terrorist attacks, and those who have worked in the last few weeks far beyond the call of duty in the recent floods.”
Tim Coulson went to the help of those caught up in 7/7. He smashed his way into a bombed Tube carriage from another train adjacent to it in the tunnel and gave first aid to the injured and dying. One man, whose body had been severed at the waist by the blast, died in his arms.
Nominated by his wife for an award The Cabinet Office advised her that, “honours are awarded to people for meritorious service over a sustained period and not specifically for saving someone’s life”.
In contrast the heads of Transport for London and the London Underground received CBEs; senior representatives of the police, ambulance service and Salvation Army got OBEs, and MBEs for those, such as the supervisor at Russell Square Tube station, who helped injured passengers.
Speaking to The Sunday Times Coulson said :
Medal snub for civilian 7/7 heroes - Times Online
“I saw things I had never seen in my life before, people in pieces and others who were dying.” He began tending to the wounded, including putting a tourniquet on one man’s leg, before finding a man trapped in a crater where the floor of the carriage had been.
Unable to free him, Coulson climbed out of the carriage and attempted to grasp the man from below, at which point he realised that his lower body had been severed.
Lowering the man to the floor, Coulson held him and said a prayer as he died in his arms.
Then he went to the aid of a woman who was slumped against the tunnel wall having been blown out of the train by the blast.
He tended to her wounds and comforted her for more than an hour until help arrived from the emergency services.
In a statement she provided to the Cabinet Office, the woman, whose identity is being withheld by The Sunday Times to protect her privacy, said: “It takes an instinct that the majority of us don’t possess to throw yourself into potential danger rather than the instinct for self-preservation.
“It is hard to put into words the kind of gratitude I feel towards Tim. He is indeed the bravest person I’ve known and I feel deserves the recognition of his bravery.”
Gervais is right. It’s the quiet people we pass in the streets who, in one terrible moment, do more than any celebrity or attention seeker could ever comprehend we need to celebrate and reward. The fact that this never happened and that this promise was broken should shame this Prime Minister, this Government and us all today.
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