Robert McNeil: Forget the family, Bob the Builder's a fine role model

Published on Monday 25 May 2009 20:16

HOW encouraging to hear that children are forming closer bonds with top television entertainer Bob the Builder than with their own families.

Boys in particular appreciate Bob's catchphrase "Can we fix it? Yes, we can!", adapted from the real-life builder's expression: "It's going to cost you. And I can't do it till December."

Bob, furthermore, is associated with "safety and happiness", whereas real parents exude dim-wittedness, cowardice and hypocrisy. Also micturating on the fathers' parade is Fireman Sam, whom boys similarly look to for inspiration and comradeship.

Many commentators despair of the nation's nippers – principally the males – painting a picture of them as obese yahoos forever pining for more chocolate and screen-based entertainment. These commentators are correct. However, there is hope, particularly if the new identifications with Bob and Sam lead to the breakdown of the family.

Owing its continuance to unthinking primitives, the family is an evil, antisocial institution, imbued with Stone Age sensibilities and displaying the worst dog-eat-dog attributes of humanity. Smug, superior, unthinking, sad and self-limiting, the family thrives on fear (of loneliness, of who's going to look after you when you're old, of not conforming).

The family is inimical to friendship, solidarity and co-operative endeavour though, paradoxically, it practises these attributes exclusively within its own walls. Unless they play golf, most people in their 40s have few or no friends outwith their families, having withdrawn into the shell of nature's most primitive grouping, restricting their communication with the outside world to excuses as to why they can't come out.

At this historical juncture, we see a deepening rift between the old-fashioned majority, thirled uncritically to family life, and the advanced minority, in tune with evolution and the glorious march of mankind towards oblivion. But, unfortunately, evolution works dialectically – thesis and anithesis; two steps forward, one step back; yin and yang; Morecambe and Wise – and while recent social progress takes us away from the primitive family, the simultaneously increasing privatisation of society, principally in its most vital form – home entertainment – encourages the family to become more antisocial than ever, its adult members rarely ever leaving the cave.

It's a sad fact that the parliaments at Westminster and Holyrood are stuffed with family members. Indeed, many prospective members feel obliged to form families to impress the electorate, which is largely made up of thickies.

Well, any party that promised punitive tax measures against the family would get my vote. Instead, however, our troglodytic lawmakers give them tax breaks and make the thinking, principled minority of family-deniers pay disproportionate amounts to make up the shortfall, forcing them to contribute more than actual families do to the education of the Neanderthals' sprogs. Outrageous!

This must be remedied by new legislation in forthcoming parliaments – purged of fraudsters, gangsters and other family members – with special measures rushed through to force all families to adopt the surname Gumby. Indeed, it should be written into the marriage ceremony: "And do you both agree from this day hence to be called Mr and Mrs Gumby?"

Bob the Builder is blazing a trail for humanity. His only family is Pilchard the cat and he appears none the worse for that. Fireman Sam, similarly, while close to his nephew and niece, eschews the trap of tied family life and spends his spare time in his shed, the traditional male refuge from reality. Bob and Sam should be on plinths with that Darwin, as harbingers of evolutionary progress and unpopular enlightenment.

History's fighting a losing battle

I WAS unsurprised to read recently that Merlin came from Glasgow. The Central Belt was Welsh-speaking when he was on the go, a salient fact that most sceptical reports neglected to mention. However, now we're being told that King Arthur was from Argyll. Well, it's arguable, I suppose. There was a 6th century King Arthur MacAedan, according to a new book Finding Arthur by Adam Ardrey), and he had a sword and everything.

Evidence elsewhere suggests that Guinevere (from the Gaelic for Britney) was a right slapper fae Niddrie.

The truth about the Dark Ages would be less obscure if the legends of the time had not been misappropriated by the wicked Christian church, which wrote out the Pagans and substituted pious prats.

In other historical bombshell news, two films are being made about the the Ninth Legion, a gang of Roman braggarts who marched confidently into deepest Scotia and were never seen again.

Experts say the films could become bigger than the documentary, Braveheart

One wonders how long it will be before the Craven Scotch start greeting aboot them, as they did with Braveheart, the only historical drama ever to be cavalier with facts.

One of the films is based on a novel by Rosemary Sutcliffe, of whom I'm a great fan though, if I remember rightly, she wrote it from a Roman point of view. She did not, however, seek to rewrite history, as modern anti-Scottish historians do.

Their other thesis is that Hadrian's Wall was as far as the Romans wanted to go, as if such a psychotically aggrandising empire decided just to stop half-way through an island because they couldn't be bothered carrying on to do the other bit. Watch my lips: they stopped because, in the dense forests north of them, they kept getting blootered. Any other thesis is nonsense.

OK, we lost the only battle recorded in history – by the Romans, and fairly too – at Mons Graupius, but that was a formal affair and we didn't have the right clothes.

Also, our tactics consisted of getting bladdered, shouting "Heuch!" and charging recklessly into the enemy. You can see historical re-enactments of this on Sauchiehall Street most weekends