The strange death of The Warren

With Brighton Fringe now in full flow, now is good time to catch up on a big topic I’ve been meaning to go to in detail. This year, the big addition to Brighton Fringe has been Caravanseria, which I now understand is being heavily promoted as focal point of the whole fringe. But the appearance of this venue comes against a very ugly backdrop. Two years ago, there was a very similar venue known as The Warren, which for the best part of the decade was the de facto focus of the entire festival. Now, the venue is gone for good, and – based on the feedback I’ve heard from numerous participants and venue staff – not missed in the slightest.

And for those who’ve followed the story of The Warren from the start, there is only one question: how could this success story possibly go so wrong?

One reason I have been slow to write this up is that I have had difficulty getting conclusive information on the record. There were some very serious allegations levelled against The Warren, and I was reluctant to repeat some of the more serious allegations – even in the context of just allegations – in a way that could be damaging to the venue or the people in charge. However, The Warren is now in liquidation, and nothing I say now is going to make much difference. I am, nonetheless, taking care to distinguish between what is only alleged and what is verified. Should anybody with to state anything on the record – either in defence of The Warren or against it – I will revise this account accordingly.

After much thought, I’ve decided the best way to report this is to go through the saga in chronological order. And in order to appreciate the true magnitude of this saga, we must start by going back to the start. And I hope, by going through a blow by blow account, how sorry I am that it came to this.

2005 – 2014: From humble beginnings

Say what you like about what Otherplace Productions and The Warren had become, but their origin story was a phenomenal success. Whatever venue managers might say now about their ambitions, few wouldn’t snap up the chance to go on the trajectory The Warren did in the early days.

First of all, a fringe history lesson. The Brighton Fringe you see today is a very different fringe from the one that existed at the start of the last decade. For all but the most seasoned veterans, there hasn’t been an Edinburgh Fringe in history where you could turn up to the Scottish Capital without noticing there’s a fringe on. And yet in the early 2010s you could visit Brighton in May and completely fail to notice Brighton Fringe was on. In those days, it was little more than an offshoot of Brighton Festival, with the two festivals sharing a box office. The only place that looks remotely similar to an Edinburgh Fringe experience was Spiegeltent*. Other than that, it was a collection of ad-hoc spaces, almost all a single performance space.

*: Not the Spiegeltent we know today, a different Spiegeltent. But that’s another story.

Odds and sods: March 2023

It’s April, it’s getting on a bit, but at least it’s not late as last time. here’s my round-up of minor news stories from March.

Stuff that happened in March:

The big news from March was the mysterious closure of The Exchange, which North Tyneside Council insists isn’t a closure. I’ve given my full thoughts here, as this was covered at length during the launch of The Laurels’ new season. The short version is that The Exchange is it currently exists is coming to an end this month, as their lease has run out at it’s going to “Stonebanks investments”. North Tynesde Council, however, claims the Exchange isn’t closing, this scheme is part of a “cultural quarter”, and the new leaseholder is going to create something bigger and better.

Have to say, I am sceptical over North Tyneside’s version of events. One would have thought that a cultural scheme of this magnitude would have been planned and trailed months in advance, rather than left to the last moment. It also seems unusual that a property developer with no previous record of cultural activities is suddenly interested in being a part of the cultural scene. At best, this has been handled badly; at worst, The Exchange as a theatre is being set up to fail. I will keep a close eye on this.

Apart from that bis news, here’s what else has been happening.

Live Theatre playwriting competition

Since my last Odds and Sods was a proper gloom-fest, let’s open this one with something positive. Jack McNamara is still making his mark as Live Theatre’s new artistic director, and one of the new things that has come in is a playwriting competition. As many of you will know, my enthusiasm for opportunities through script submissions are limited; I’ve written a long piece about my issues with playwriting competitions and how to handle it (TLDR: if you can, produce your writing yourself rather than wait for a thumbs up that will probably never come). However, if you are going to do a playwriting competition, this one, I believe, is the way should should do it.

The launch of The Laurels’ 2023 season

Skip to The Exchange.

A month ago I was invited to the press launch of Live Theatre’s season. Now it’s the turn of The Laurels in Whitley Bay.

Out of all the venues in the north-east, there can be little doubt that The Laurels was the big winner of 2022. This is thanks in a large part to the success of Gerry and Sewell. Plays that have references to local football teams have a track record of selling well, and Jonathan Tulloch’s book The Season Ticket is an excellent story in its own right, but I don’t think even Jamie and Steve predicted just how successful this was going to be. I’ve spoken very highly of this play before (indeed it won 2022’s Best North-East Fringe Production and Best Individual Performance from me), but at the end of the day, it’s not what I or any other reviewer thinks that counts, but mass appeal to an audience. A sold out run and a hastily-programme encore run is as good as you get.

And, of course, they’ve now secured a run at Live Theatre. Before we get carried away, we should remember that no theatre succeeds in the long-run as a one-hit wonder. The worst mistake the Laurels could make right now would be – fittingly enough – to rest on their laurels. What it does mean in that they’re going into 2023 on a position of strength.

There were quite a lot of things covered in the launch. As usual, I’m not going to do a comprehensive write-up here – I’ll leave it to other publications to do that – and instead concentrate on things that got my attention.

Odds and sods: February 2023

A late one again – apologies, but with Live Theatre’s press event being on invitation, I had to get that out of the way first.

Right, what happened in February?

Stuff that happened in February

Well, what do you know. I went through listing notable events that need raising, guess what? It’s one of the most depressing odds and sods I’ve seen. Here we are:

No end in sight for Edinburgh’s accommodation crisis

This news isn’t so much specific to February, but February is arguably the month when things started to come to a head.

Edinburgh Fringe has been criticised for pricing performers out for decades, but until this decade it was the venues coming under fire for their costs. This changed last year, not because the venue were getting any cheaper, but because accommodation costs were spiralling out of control. Without being able to mind-read each and every landlord in Edinburgh we can’t know the reason for certain, but the popular theory is that landlords who bought properties for the purpose of renting to fringers lost a lot of income they were counting on in 2020 and 2021 and are desperate to recoup it. I’m not sure if anyone did some proper statistical tracking of this, but what I can say is that I heard endless complaints about high accommodation costs up to and during Edinburgh Fringe. It never use to be like this.

However, it appears most people grumbled but paid up. That, I think, was collectively a mistake, but it seems this gave landlord the message they can get away with anything, and are upping the rents from extortionate to piss-taking. I’ve seen one-month rental costs for flats higher than buying one in a normal city. Okay, these are probably being flagged because they’re the absolute worst examples, but it doesn’t bode well for typical offers. Also, I’m hearing of big-name comedians (who previously had no problem making a profit) questioning if it’s worth it.

The other side of the issue, though, is Edinburgh locals being priced out of living in their own city. Even the most avid fringe-lovers have their patience stretched when would-be homes are being snapped up for one month a year buy to let. So the Scottish Government is planning a ban on short-term lets; Edinburgh Fringe, in response, dropped a bit of a bombshell by forecasting that it will push registrations down by a third in 2024.

The immediate question, however, is what happens this year. Will fringe performers lump it again, or is this the year the bubble finally bursts. The first batch of registrations are now announced (190 as of Feb 16th), but without any easily comparable reference points from last year it’s hard to see where this is going. My forecast, however, is that things are going to get very messy and very nasty. The only question is when.

Latest from Brighton Fringe

Whilst it’s still up in the air what size Edinburgh Fringe will be this year, we have a pretty good idea with Brighton. At the time of writing, there’s 699 registrations. This would suggest it’s slightly down on last year, which wouldn’t be too surprising given the woes from cost-of-living jitters last year, and being down one major venue (Rialto). However, it’s difficult to make an exact comparison, because this year Brighton Fringe is doing without any sort of printed programme at all – as such, the registration deadline doesn’t really mean anything. So we may have more events registering at the last moment, now that missing the printed programme doesn’t apply.

What we can be sure about, however, is that there’s no prospect of getting back to the 900-1000 high water mark of the late 2010s this year. Maybe achievable in future years if new pop-up venue Caravanserai want to grow as big as The Warren did, but let’s face it, enthusiasm for another dominant megavenue is currently zero.

I was going to express concerns about the usability of Brighton Fringe’s new website, but Brighton Fringe has been quick and fixed the problems I flagged already. The only thing I’m still keeping an eye out for is whether this works as a substitute for the Daily Diary which has been discontinued. One way or the other, we need an easy way of seeing what’s on today and when – but if they carry on fixing problems at their current pace, we should be okay.

What is going on in Oldham?

I’ve not really been paying attention to who gained and who lost with the National Portfolio funding rounds outside of the north-east. Whilst I thought the cuts in London were unfortunate, I still prefer this to perpetual top-heavy funding of the capital at the expense of the rest of the country. However, it’s been impossible to ignore what’s happening with Oldham Coliseum. For a start, this doesn’t seem to make sense with what Arts Council England were supposed to be achieving; Oldham is nowhere near London, and is in an area of Greater Manchester that doesn’t have much else in the way of cultural organisations. That’s strangely at odds with the pattern elsewhere of making sure every local area gets something.

Then the bombshell announcements came: firstly that Oldham Coliseum was suspending its programming after March 31st (when the NPO period runs out); and then that they were closing completely. Ignoring the rights and wrongs of this for a moment, this was seriously weird. The NPO funding model is supposed to have bridging support precisely to manage the transition away from NPO status (if not, it would be Armageddon every time there was a new funding round). And then, the really strange development: Arts Council England said it was committed to a cultural venue is Oldham. But not Oldham Coliseum. The closest it gave to a reason was “Oldham Coliseum Ltd has been facing financial and governance challenges for some time”.

For what it’s worth, I think Arts Council England has to be more specific. They argue they don’t make reasons public because of commercial sensitivity, but it’s concerning that they can apparently pass a death sentence on a big arts organisation with no scrutiny of their decisions. However horrible it may be to air dirty laundry in public, if an NPO organisation really has screwed up so badly that they have to be shut down, we deserve to know what it is. And we also need a serious debate on how something this catastrophic has been allowed to fester and escalate out of the public eye. And, of course, Oldham Coliseum Ltd. might be in the right – they must be allowed to argue their case so that ACE can’t make bad funding decisions and get away with it.

Someone has screwed up very badly here, it’s just not clear who. We will do no favours to the people of Oldham by hiding whatever the truth is.

Vault Festival crisis

And just when you think things can’t get any worse, shit is hitting the fan at the Vault Festival. All the festival fringes took a hit with Covid, but the Vault Festival took it the worst. They made a calculated decision to skip 2021 and aim for a relaunch in 2022, only for that to fall foul of Omicron. Cancellation just before a festival starts is the worst possible news financially, so I was wondering if there would be a Vault 2023. But there was, it’s underway – and now, out of the blue, their landlord wants them out.

At this point, it’s worth clarifying the difference between “The Vaults” and “Vault Festival”. The former is the actual physical space underneath Waterloo station. One space is permanently set up as a theatre; the rest, however, are pop-up spaces set up by Vault Festival who rent the space from The Vaults for eight weeks. Very little happens the rest of the year, so the two things were considered synonymous – but not any more. The reason, so we are led to believe, is that The Vaults wants to use the space for longer-term commercial projects.

At first, I’d put this news down to the usual Landlords are Cocks™, with someone valuing short-term profits over long-term cultural investment. But, like Oldham Coliseum, the more I think about it, the more I think there’s more to this than meets the eye. I can easily see selling a building lease to a chain pub or turning a function room into a dining room being a better money-earner if you’re that shallow, but what else is going to make you money underneath a station? If I was seeking to open yet another chain pub in Lambeth, that’s the last place I’d want to put it. Compared to the Vault Lates (effective a club night on Fridays and Saturdays), which sell out easily, I don’t understand where you’ll find a better offer.

The only thing I can see being workable is these immersive theatre experiences that seem to be getting popular in London – but one would that thought that if this was viable, that would already be doing decent business in April to December. No, I’m convinced somebody knows something we don’t. As for what the real reason is, that’s anyone’s guess. Maybe the landlords got greedy and the Vault Festival put their foot down. Or maybe Vault Festival weren’t good tenants and kept trashing the place. Or maybe it was a pointlessly stupid outcome of another pointless culture war. I’ll talk about Vault’s plans for the future when I do my roundup – but this is very odd.

1950s Beamish

Okay, now you’re all feeling depressed, let’s end with something positive. For a change, a bit of local cultural news that isn’t performing arts, which is Beamish. For my London readers, Beamish is an open-air museum that has numerous buildings made to look like buildings from the 1830s to 1940s – quite often real buildings that would otherwise have been demolished, moved and rebuilt brick by brick. For the last few years, however, they’ve been working on a big project of the 1950s – a period of history that’s always fascinated me where the hopes of a nation emerging victorious from a world war still mixed in quite conservative ideas of how to live your life.

Well, the thing I hadn’t realise is just how big this project is. At the time of my visit, there is a 1950s village hall, shopping street, and a 1950s farm, but that’s only about half of it. We still have a 1950s council estate, cinema and bowling alley to go. And these aren’t just museum pieces either. Beamish has always had cafes and bars themed to their respective time period, but this goes further. The village hall was doing a traditional village panto, and I believe the cinema and bowling alley will be available for real cinema and bowling. This project isn’t just an extension of the time period covered by Beamish, it’s also an extension of what the open air museum does.

The thing that struck me the most, however, is that sometimes things look different today – and sometimes it feels exactly the same. The 1950s council houses currently being built now look very much the same as the modern houses being built today. The insides of houses don’t look too different from ours, except that there’s no modern appliances. The traditional panto I caught a glimpse of looks like any village hall panto today. Probably the most interesting one, however, is the 1950s farm from the Durham Dales. It looks reasonably similar to a modern home except … no electricity.

County Durham and Tyne & Wear folk: highly recommend this. Should be complete in a few months’ time. A favourite attraction of County Durham has just taken on a new dimension.

Stuff I wrote in February

Apart from that, here’s what else I’ve been covering:

What’s worth watching: winter/spring 2023: A shorter list of recommendations that usual, because a lot of the picks that grabbed my eye aren’t happening until spring/summer.

We need to talk about Roald Dahl and sensitivity readers: TLDR: it wasn’t censorship, but it was incredibly petty moralising. What this business did reveal, however, was the flaws in the sensitivity reading process, and just how much power publishers have to abuse.

16 films and plays I find objectionable (that no-one else seems to have a problem with): Intended to be mostly a light-hearted piece, but intended to answer a long-running question on whether there are limits to me easy-going attitude. Prepare to have your favourite nostalgia ruined. (The last two entries on the list, however, I really do have problems with).

Love It When We Beat Them: back to the future: I have finally been invited to Live Theatre’s press events. I give my verdict on a pleasing opening to the 50th anniversary season, and give my highlights of what’s coming up over the rest of the year.

Love It When We Beat Them: back to the future

Pictured: £1.50 for a pint. Damn you.

Skip to: Press launch

The play may be billed as politics, but the real story is the people behind the politics. It is this human story, not a soapbox, that makes Love If When We Beat Them a good start to Live’s anniversary programme.

Sometimes, the fortunes of a play come to luck. Even if you’ve penned the greatest play in the world, you can struggle to get an audience if the topic’s not in fashion. A play set in 1996 with both the runaway success of Newcastle United and runaway success of Labour as a government in waiting might have parallels now, but when it was first showcased at last year’s Elevator festival, it was far from certain. There was no guarantee the the new Labour lead fresh from Partygate would last – now, however a Labour victory next year is increasingly looking like a forgone conclusion (for anyone not certain of what changed in the last 12 months: where have you been)? And even if you could have predicted that, no-one could have predicted Newcastle United’s first Wembley appearance for years. But hey, no-one’s complaining.

With the stage set around a pool table, there’s a couple of of signs to show it’s the nineties: a payphone by the wall, and £1.50 for a pint of beer (I said as I stared longingly). Len (David Nellist) and Michael (Dean Bone) are playing pool taunting each other on their respective football affiliations of Newcastle and Sunderland and/or resolving confusion over what you now call the Second Division. Until Michael drops in a downer by mentioning that a mutual friend of theirs has unexpectedly died. However, whilst Michael is reflecting on their loss, Len is keeping his eye on the bigger picture. That unfortunate guy was the local MP, and Len’s convinced he’ll be a shoo-in as successor, much to the annoyance of Jean (Jessica Johnson), who’d rather have a husband there for her. Unluckily for Len, Victoria (Eve Tucker) from Manchester is also eyeing up the seat – and, worse for him, already seems to have the backing of Labour’s NEC.

Yes, one thing from 1996 that’s made a comeback is Labour in-fighting. Just like Newcastle and Sunderland are more interested in sniping at each other than focusing on beating the teams down south, with a Labour victory next year already in the bag, the Blairite right and Old Labour left are in an increasingly bitter struggle for control of the party. Victoria blames Len’s wing for the Labour’s most disastrous defeat, Len blames the defeat on the splitters. In fact, a good proportion of the play goes to raking over the old arguments of the two labour wings that aren’t too different from today’s arguments. What would have been a mistake here is to make one side into a straw man so that the other side wins the arguments. (Please don’t do that again, that ranks amongst one of the worst plays I’ve ever seen.) However, Rob Ward writes Len and Victoria as two soul believing passionately in what they say. Whether people call you a wild-eyed trot and a Red Tory sell-out, you can watch this play and think your points have been well made.

Odds and sods: January 2023

Yes, I know, it’s nearly March. The excuse I had is that for the last three weeks I was working solidly on two consecutive plays. I did think about rolling everything over to next month, but on reflection, I’ve decided to stick with a January catchup. Many of the events that started rearing their head in January have gone on to escalate into February. Those I won’t cover here, but I’ll have a lot more to say about them in February.

Stuff that happened in January

So the one thing I won’t be going over here is the business in Oldham Colosseum. Towards the end of January there were signs things might be coming to a head – now, the situation is much much more serious. As a result, I won’t be covering this here, as the small bit in information I had at the time is already wildly out of date. There were also the first signs of grumbling of accommodation for Edinburgh Fringe 2023, but again, things are moving quickly. I’ll cover those in next month’s odds and sods, where there will be a lot to talk about.

Apart from that, there’s only a couple of things left to mention:

Brighton Fringe venues

So the big news coming to a head in January is that it’s all change with the venues yet again. With no word from The Warren going into the New Year, everybody was increasingly working to the assumption that they wouldn’t be coming back to Brighton Fringe 2023, and then, on the 31st January, it was confirmed they’re not coming back ever. Otherplace Productions Ltd has gone into liquidation. I haven’t forgotten my promise to write about this and I will be doing so shortly (it’s easier to avoid writing damaging material about a venue when they’re already kaput). In the meantime, however, The Warren-shaped hole that Brighton Fringe needs to fill has become permanent.

But … we might have just the thing to step into the breach. On the Warren’s original site north of St. Peter’s Church, we have a complete newcomer to Brighton Fringe. Step forward Caravanserai. This, I gather, is something that until now has functioned as a pop-up area of music festival camp Bestival, and as far as I can tell, they will probably look similar to how The Warren did (just hopefully without the financial fuck-ups). What I don’t quite get is how they are planning to programme this at relatively short notice, but maybe they’ve got pre-existing contacts from Camp Bestival who are going to be coming on over. Whatever the plan, The Warren might be gone for good, but the kind up venue that The Warren pioneered in Brighton looks set to stay.

Odds and sods: November 2022

Sorry this is late. Was suddenly made busy with panto tech, long story. Let’s get to it.

Stuff that happened in November:

It’s been a slower news month than usual, but there were still a few things that I thought were worth reporting.

Boho Arts

The big news from the north-east is it looks like another venue is on the way in Newcastle – and this is a big deal. I’ve been saying for some time now that Newcastle needs another venue of a scale comparable to early-days Alphabetti theatre. Welcome though Alphabetti’s success is, the fact that it was so quick for its programming to be saturated showed just how much pent-up demand there was for somewhere to perform; something that one new fringe theatre alone couldn’t achieve. The recent arrival of The Laurels in Whitley Bay might relieve the squeeze a bit, but my hunch is that we need another space in Newcastle – preferably managed and programmed independently of the current venues. And now it looks like we’re going to get one. Step forward Boho Arts.

With small-scale venues in short supply, any new one would be newsworthy,, but it’s doubly newsworthy because this is being openly back by a lot of well-known Newcastle names. And, interestingly, the lion’s share of their Crowdfunder has come from the North of Tyne Combined Authority – notable in its own right as this is (I think) the first major intervention from the new regional mayoralty in the arts.

If you want to back this (and if you have any interests in grass-roots levels arts I think this is in your interests), the crowdfunder is still open here. Also (more low-key but still relevant) they are looking for volunteers here. Keep an eye on this, because it’s a big deal. In five years’ time we could easily be mentioning this in the same breath as Alphabetti Theatre.

Odds and Sods: October 2022

Time for another odds and sods. One thing I have still not mentioned is the Chris Goode shitshow that blew up this month. Rest assured, I am well aware of this – I will be talking about this separately, because there’s a lot to cover there.

Stuff that happened in October

Having started off mentioning the really depressing news, I’ll carry on doing this in order. I’ll move on to the next least cheery development, and finish with some good news.

Edinburgh Film Festival under threat?

I’m starting with the most concerning news this time, so read on for the cheerier stuff. This has only really been on the Edinburgh cultural radar, but in the worst case scenario the rest of us will be noticing the fall-out very soon.

So, the news that has rocked Edinburgh is that the Centre for the Moving Image has gone into administration, with trading ceasing immediately and all staff being made redundant. Truth be told, I’d never heard of this organisation until I saw it was in this much trouble. It runs two arthouse cinemas in Edinburgh and Aberdeen, both with strong local followings. However, there is a more significant part to this that runs wider: they also operate the Edinburgh International Film Festival. That has been running as long as the Edinburgh Fringe, and is one of the festivals under the Edinburgh Festival banner. There is a long-running theory that the powers that be in Edinburgh would never allow one of its flagship festivals to disappear – but that it about to be put to the test. And if we’re wrong, which other festivals would they allow to go bust? The tattoo? The international festival? The Edinburgh Fringe itself?

 

Odds and sods: September 2022

We’re back into autumn, so it’s time to get stuck in to odds and sods again: a round-up of various things that have been happening that don’t fit anywhere else on the blog.

Stuff that happened in September

I will mention at this point that this list doesn’t mention a couple of pretty major things that happened recently: Edinburgh International Film Festival under threat, and one of the worst scandals yet of abusive directors. I am still processing the information of these, and I will be commenting by October odds and sods by the latest.

Other than that, it’s been a slow news month overall, but a few things are worth mentioning.

Unboxed aka Brexit Festival

So the big news that broke in September – if you can call it that – was the festival on nobody’s radar. I raised by eyebrows when the idea of a “festival of Brexit” was first raise, but what with one thing and another happening in 2020 and 2021 I forgot about this. I vaguely remembered hearing about the festival happening in 2022, but to be brutally honest I had no idea the festival had come and gone until I read the news about it being a flop. Now, I’m not sure what sort of numbers it’s fair to expect for this festival, but it was pretty dire: 238 thousand visitors (whatever that means) against upper aspirations of 66 million. Ouch. Even more embarrassing, it allegedly cost four times the budget of the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations, which was enjoyed by most of the country.

Odds and sods: June 2022

Yes, I know, it’s closer to August than June now – for those of you who follow my projects, you’ll know what kept me busy. But there’s some bits of news that have happened since the end of Brighton Fringe that need some attention. Three of these things are probably some sort of good news, in either the sort term or the long term; however, the other one is a very sorry development of a once-respectable organisation who’ve committed the thing I hate more than anything else: hypocrisy.

Stuff that happened in June

But let’s leave that till last. Most of the news from last month and this month is about the Edinburgh Fringe; I will be leaving that for my Edinburgh Fringe coverage itself. But apart from that, this happened:

Quentin Letts strikes again

Apologies. I hear you all going “Oh no, not this one again.” Bear with me, there is a reason why I’m picking this one up.

As pretty much everyone has worked out by now, Quentin Letts is a theatre reviewer who makes a name for himself but being controversial and offensive for the sake of it. Until now, he’s been mostly active at the Daily Mail where he panders to an audience who like diatribes about the wokies who’ve taken over theatre, and the easy solution was to just not invite the Daily Mail to press nights – seriously, what are you missing? Unfortunately, for some reason he is now also reviewing for The Sunday Times. Anyway, the furore broke out all over again with the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre production of Legally Blonde, where the part of Elle Woods was played by a black woman.

Against my better judgement, I read the review (content warning: Quentin Letts). Now, if you think the story doesn’t work if the lead is played by someone who’s clearly not a natural blonde, I will defend you right to say so (although the obvious solution, as always: if you don’t like it, don’t watch it). This review, however, was just nasty, with far more thinly-veiled personal insults than anything about the show itself. That is different from what I’ve seen before. His infamous reviews of Salome and The Fantastic Follies of Mrs. Rich, attention-seeking drivel though they were, has a method: he chose his words have a bare minimum of objectionable content needed to cause widespread outrage. This one, I have to say, was bile from start to finish.