How to make an absolute ass of oneself. Please step forward Scarlett Curtis.
Richard Curtis revealed this week how his daughter had convinced him that he was ‘stupid and wrong’ for how he joked about people’s sizes in his films.
He should have told the tedious cow that no one is obliging her to watch if she doesn’t like them.
The Four Weddings and a Funeral and Blackadder writer told an audience at the Cheltenham Literature Festival how he has now promised 28-year-old Scarlett, who was interviewing him, that he will never make ‘fat’ jokes again.
Really? FFS!
But it is not the first time that feminist writer Scarlett has hit the headlines, having previously called her great-great grandfather Sigmund Freud ‘sexist and horrible’ and saying she comes from a ‘long line of dodgy men’.
Oh my. Revisionist bullshit. Sigmund lived in a time where attitudes were different. The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there. What a stupid, ignorant and silly young woman. Mind you, she has a point, they managed to produce dodgy progeny.
During her conversation with the filmmaker this weekend, she got him to say that he regrets much of his work and to promise never to use the words ‘fat’ and ‘chubby’ again.
These are perfectly acceptable words in the English language. This stupid bint wants to wipe our language of words that upset her.
And in Love Actually, which Curtis directed and wrote, Martine McCutcheon’s character Natalie – the PA to the Prime Minister – was famously depicted as the ‘chubby one’ and having a ‘sizeable a**e’.
Curtis admitted that, two decades on, these jokes are no longer funny.
Oh, I dunno. Personally, I have managed to avoid the film as it is something that leaves me cold. Indeed, since Blackadder, I’ve not taken much to his stuff, but the descriptions used here? Not laugh out loud, but certainly words people might use, so they have a flavour of authenticity, which is what writing is about.
According to The Times, he told the audience: ‘I remember how shocked I was five years ago when Scarlett said to me, “You can never use the word ‘fat’ again”,’ he said.
The correct response would have been – ‘I will use whatever words I choose and you can use ones that you choose.’ But, then, unlike Curtis, I’m not in the habit of taking orders from a jumped-up over privileged, talentless, precocious little bint like his daughter.
*It has to be said, that on the dodgy men front, she may have a point about Clement, although as he was dead at the time of the allegations, they are just that, allegations.
Straight out of ‘Daft Bints R Us’ Central Casting – as patronised by the Guardian!
Some of us like girls who are a bit chubby with a sizeable arse. Not fat but what I refer to as pleasingly plump.
It seems that Curtis’s daughter has written for an Amazon TV series. With her attitude towards men, I think that’s one TV series to avoid.
If you can’t use the word ‘fat’ how should one describe sonmeone who is fat?
That question reminded me of a conversation with a checkout girl, who was a little on the plump side, when my total came to £39.56. I said it reminded me of A Whole Lotta Rosie which is a song about a cuddly girl.
COG: You mean fat?
ME: Well yeah but cuddly is a nicer word.
COG: It means fat though doesn’t it?
Regarding the film, if I recall correctly, the Hugh Grant character was quite put out when the other staff member described the girl as chubby. She wasn’t mocking her anyway, just stating her opinion. Her response to his objection to that was “Hell of an arse on her.”
“Horizontally challenged”
Bonny.
So skinny, lanky, short-arsed, thick, hairy, bald, wall-eyed, cross-eyed, on and on, are verboten? Even verboten has dodgy connotions.
Just cast uniform PoCs for all characters, speaking some polyglot USAese and you laughter is guaranteed. Thanks to Laughter Machine.
No more clowns then.
You can’t call them “clowns” – they are “humouristically challenged”
She should keep quiet about great great grandad: he was, like Marx, an overquoted charlatan. (Karl, not Groucho!)
I’ve just Googled (using Duckduckgo of course) Scarlett Curtis. I would describe her as thin, skinny even. If “fat” and “chubby” are verboten, are “thin” and “skinny” likewise verboten?
But does she identify as fat?
… and that’s that.