I’ll be hopping off abroad for a quick trip in a day or two. Soon after my return I should be able to put out a blog on a topic of immediate relevance and personal significance for many MAPs in a way that some of my recent work has not been. A notable example of that was the most recent one, on Robert Trivers, an evolutionary psychologist whose heyday was half a century ago.

Not exactly hot news, then, and his highly abstract theory of sexual psychology isn’t everyone’s cup of tea. But that does not detract from its importance to MAPs, in my view, and I make no apologies for focusing on that theme.

However, there needs to be balance. As well as long, weighty, often extensively researched pieces, there should be shorter, snappier ones that go straight to the heart of the daily lives of MAPs and youth. Actually, just between you and me, I should confess that Heretic TOC must in any event get back to such basics for a while for purely practical reasons.

When I started this blog in 2012, long before the Ukraine war or Covid or Brexit or the energy price shock, Donald Trump was just a brash New York business boss with a TV show; and, in the UK, we were basking in the warm glow of a great London Olympics.  Happy days!

Happy days for Heretic TOC, too, in a sense. Although there were lots of grim developments to write about, especially the relentless rise of victim culture from the Jimmy Savile moral panic onwards, the business of writing a blog was relatively simple. Or it was the way I did it. I’d just knock out a few thoughts that came to me in the moment, and put them out there and then, without spending a lot of time on background research. That’s how I managed to do 15 blogs in the first three weeks.

I need to get back to that spontaneity, if only because I am under increasing time pressure these days, and at my age good luck with trying to work faster. The trouble is that in order to maintain even my present modest lifestyle (“luxury” items include attending events such as conferences and workshops, buying books, subs to journals, etc., needed to keep well informed and think things through) I need to spend more time doing work I can get paid for, as a freelance editorial consultant. If there are one or two MAP-friendly millionaires reading this (or billionaires, who knows?), please note: bung me a few grand from time to time to keep me doing a proper, full-fat HTOC, instead of freelancing, and I’m your man.

Until that happens, I’ll just have to bash stuff out as and when I can, after earning my crust for the day – work that I enjoy, by the way, and it is reassuring to know my writing is still valued by non-MAP clients. Note that I have been publicly mulling over retirement from HTOC for the best part of four years now, so it’s not as though this will come as shock news to attentive heretics.

Check it out. In November 2022, I did a blog called “After ten years, time to take the chair”, meaning I should retire to become a sort non-executive chairman of the board, a mere figurehead rather than a hard-working CEO.

Noting the First World War song “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away”, I mused on retirement, saying “I feel in remarkably good nick for my age, both physically and mentally. So, who knows, I might go on fading so slowly you’d hardly notice for another decade, or even two.”

Happily, the “good nick” side of things is still true but time pressure is becoming, well, relentlessly more pressing, so something has to go – unless y’all heretics suddenly become inspired to submit more guest blogs: they are always welcome.

So, that’s it for today then. Finished! Just the above. Over and done with after a mere few hundred words, not thousands.

Bye, bye, then. We’re all done here.

You know, I can’t actually believe I’m saying this…

Oh, stop wittering, O’Carroll. Just STFU.

TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

I know, I know. I said only a moment ago I’d shut up but here I am again, breaking my promise, shameless as a politician. It’s just that with Huw Edwards back in the news with his new Substack, I thought I might just mention the Channel 5 drama about him earlier this year, Power: The Downfall of Huw Edwards.

Did any heretics here see it? Considered purely as drama, I found it compelling, both for Martin Clunes’ convincing portrayal of Edwards and for its depiction of his teenage so-called victim. Viewers are heavily steered to see the latter as a victim of Edwards’ abuse of power (the clue is in the title), but from the facts as presented, the young man seemed to have plenty of agency: he did topless videos for money (plenty of it, apparently). His choice; no one forced him. Nice work if you can get it, I’d say.

Andrew Billen’s review in The Times (25 March) was revealing. He wrote:

After the screening I told Clunes that I admired his performance and that he had caught many aspects of the Edwards I had met. But I also observed that the film did not show Edwards the amusing raconteur who lunched for Wales. Clunes looked astonished. He had talked to many people who had worked with Edwards, and none had mentioned that side of him at all.

Well, they wouldn’t, would they? There’s an all-too-common tendency to kick people when they’re down. It’s a herd mentality thing, a temptation to say you knew someone was a wrong ’un all along, because that’s what you think is the safest thing to say, even though the truth might be that got on very well with them.

Anyway, that really is it for now. Over, and out!