Fiona McCade: I'd hope Gordon had no idea about H either

Published on Monday 23 November 2009 20:26

THERE are some things it's best not to know. Years ago, when the pop band Steps were ubiquitous in the charts, I hated them so much, I did everything I could to avoid them.

It became a point of honour not to know their names, but although I tried my best, popular culture is a tough thing to ignore. Steps were everywhere – in newspapers, magazines, on the radio and television. There's only so much putting-your-fingers-in-your-ears-and-going-la-la-la that any one person can do.

Finally, the camel's back was broken when I was watching The Weakest Link (I know, I deserve everything I get) and Anne Robinson asked the question: "Faye, Claire, Lisa, Lee and H are members of which pop band?" And I simply couldn't make it out of the door in time.

Now, nearly a decade later, I lead a full life, I have a child, I have things to do, places to go and people to see and, quite honestly, I resent the fact that my brain is wasting precious space remembering, with depressing accuracy, the names of the bleedin' members of Steps, when it allows me to forget all sorts of vitally important things, like where the hell I put my purse, my husband's birthday and what year it is.

So, last week, when Gordon Brown appeared on This Morning and all they could do was ask him about whom he was supporting on The X Factor, my heart – for perhaps the first time – went out to him. OK, he was on This Morning, which means that questions about quantitative easing and the public sector deficit were likely to be thin on the ground, but why should he care about who wins The X Factor? Why on earth should anybody care?

Poor Gordon. Not only did he have to defend the fact that he had slightly disparaged Jedward in a previous interview, he said "Daryl" instead of "Danyl".

Shock, horror; like, omigod. A 58-year-old man with a highly pressurised job doesn't know all about Danyl. Like, how uncool.

It's a sad day when our dear leader has to pretend to give a flying Factor finalist what happens on a TV show, when he's coping with financial meltdown, war and quite probably Cherie Blair pushing dog dirt through his letterbox because she thinks he didn't do enough to get Tony the president of Europe gig. When did it become normal to ask the person in charge of the country what they think about inane ephemera?

Am I missing something here? Have world leaders always been asked about their talent show favourites, biscuit preferences and what's on their iPod?

Perhaps I haven't been reading my history books carefully enough, but I don't recall anyone ever saying to Ramsay MacDonald: "Never mind the rise of the Labour Movement, social democracy and pacifism, Mac. Whaddya reckon to Gracie Fields?"

I don't want Gordon to sit at home watching crappy telly. I want him hard at work in his office, finding blindingly brilliant solutions for getting us out of this mess; or going out and showing strong leadership, as he tried to in the recent flooding crisis.

Although I suppose he could make himself useful keeping people without electricity updated on who's in and who's out on The X Factor. "Prime Minister, we've lost everything in the flood. What's going to happen to us?" "Er… no idea, but good news! Jedward have finally been kicked out!"

Somehow, knowledge of pop culture has become an accepted way of measuring a person's involvement in society, and there's a kind of automatic assumption that if you're not interested in this mindless minutiae, you don't care.

So Gordon believes he has to jump through these mad hoops to show us he's one of us and he feels our pain. Our real, visceral pain. Like when Lucie got voted out.

I'm not running a G8 economy, but I know that my brain is way too full to carry around pointless information like the names of Steps and the correct spelling of Danyl.

I also think I might still have something to offer the world even if I didn't know these things.

So, let's cut our Prime Minister some slack, accept that there are some things he doesn't need to know and urge him not to waste valuable grey cells on them.

Knowing the difference between Daryl and Danyl only matters if it's the name of a dead soldier and he's writing a letter of condolence.

Anyway, I wonder how many of the X Factor contestants can name the Prime Minister?