The Trueman Show (or, "In it to win it")
April 13, 2012
And so it has happened. Carl Trueman, Puncturer of Bubbles, has been invited into the celebrity cauldron of T4G to discuss celebrity. Quite apart from the obvious irony of having the cachet actually to sit on the same platform as "Lig," "C.J." "Al," "Mark," "Thabiti," and other one-name monsters, and perhaps even to breathe - at least temporarily - the same air, it seems to have been fun. We are looking forward to the video.
But it is, sadly, at this point, that I must rip the carpet out from under Trueman's feet: he has a Facebook fan page. It is so select that it is a closed group. Perhaps that means you have to be invited. It is so exclusive that only five people have been allowed to join it. That means that the countless thousands of others who long to lick the ground that Carl has walked on are kept at bay, having to be content with a distant view (from seat 487ZZ) of their demagogue in the spotlights at T4G, willing to give almost anything for the merest wisp of wool from one of those scholarly cardigans. And if that were not enough, the ultimate accolade approaches: I hear that a Trueman bobble-head doll is on the way.
As an aside, it is rumoured that Paul Levy, Trueman's alter ego, enjoys the attentions of the Paul Levy Appreciation Society, an underground network of thousands, organised in chapters through every country of the globe, all imbibers of the tenets of "Free Writing" (which is to coherent communication what parkour is to marathon running). They meet to extol the virtues of writing untrammelled by the restraints of grammar and unshackled from the chains of punctuation, all the while affecting a Welsh accent.
Anyway, while a more mischievous man than I might be tempted to set up an open fan-page with the sole intention of seeing if we can get 10000 ardent devotees of Mr T signed up and so forever ruin his credibility as a destroyer of celebrity, I leave you with this gem from the soon-to-be-released "at home with Carl" DVD: "The Truman Show is all the more noteworthy for its remarkably prescient vision of runaway celebrity culture and a nation with an insatiable thirst for the private details of ordinary lives." Or have I got something mixed up?
But it is, sadly, at this point, that I must rip the carpet out from under Trueman's feet: he has a Facebook fan page. It is so select that it is a closed group. Perhaps that means you have to be invited. It is so exclusive that only five people have been allowed to join it. That means that the countless thousands of others who long to lick the ground that Carl has walked on are kept at bay, having to be content with a distant view (from seat 487ZZ) of their demagogue in the spotlights at T4G, willing to give almost anything for the merest wisp of wool from one of those scholarly cardigans. And if that were not enough, the ultimate accolade approaches: I hear that a Trueman bobble-head doll is on the way.
As an aside, it is rumoured that Paul Levy, Trueman's alter ego, enjoys the attentions of the Paul Levy Appreciation Society, an underground network of thousands, organised in chapters through every country of the globe, all imbibers of the tenets of "Free Writing" (which is to coherent communication what parkour is to marathon running). They meet to extol the virtues of writing untrammelled by the restraints of grammar and unshackled from the chains of punctuation, all the while affecting a Welsh accent.
Anyway, while a more mischievous man than I might be tempted to set up an open fan-page with the sole intention of seeing if we can get 10000 ardent devotees of Mr T signed up and so forever ruin his credibility as a destroyer of celebrity, I leave you with this gem from the soon-to-be-released "at home with Carl" DVD: "The Truman Show is all the more noteworthy for its remarkably prescient vision of runaway celebrity culture and a nation with an insatiable thirst for the private details of ordinary lives." Or have I got something mixed up?
