Headbangers

I enjoyed this piece in the Private Eye which  drew the curtain on the sorry saga of Gordon Brown, the Labour Party and Damian 'Mad Dog' McBride.

Literary Review

In an effort to wring the last desperate drops of publicity out of his memoir, Damian McBride featured in the 16 October edition of The Week picking his six favourite books. Of particular note was what he described as his "desert-island book": Thomas Pynchon's 1997 epic Mason & Dixon.

For those unfamiliar with the work, its two main characters comprise a joyless man prone to suffering from paranoia and sudden rages, and his loyal, if boozy, assistant. 

What could Mad Dog see in it?

In fact, Pynchon's Mason is virtually a template for McBride's Brown. Upon discovering he has been passed over for the top job of Astronomer Royal, Mason's response is thus:

"Ahrrhh! Ruin! He pulls his Hat over his Eyes, and begins to pound his Head slowly upon the Table."

Compare and contrast with Brown's reaction to Cherie Blair upstaging his latest conference speech:

"He suppressed a roar of anger, but slumped sideways into the makeshift wall with a force which made me worry it would collapse."

Either that, or a book about two men who draw a line chosen by a man who regularly crossed it was too tempting to resist.