Saturday, May 29, 2010

Triumph and disaster

Still thinking about Malcolm McLaren’s ideas of heroic failure. Is the glory determined by the status of that which was attempted, but not attained? There’s still a faint patina of cool adhering to those (including Nick Hornby and Sebastian Faulks, if I remember correctly) who responded in vain to the NME’s “hip young gunslingers” ad; the jobs went, of course, to these two lovely creatures:


A decade and a half later, I responded to a superficially similar call-out, and auditioned to be a presenter on The Word. In this case, Katie Puckrik got the gig, while the also-rans included Davina McCall and that bloke from Teenage Health Freak. Oh yeah, and me. Somehow, I reckon McLaren would have perceived our failure to be a tad less heroic.

3 comments:

Billy said...

I can't see you in the company of Katie Puckrik & Davina McCall

GreatSheElephant said...

katie Puckrick has reinvented herself as a perfume blogger

Tim F said...

I recognised Puckrik because she'd been in iD a few months previously, Billy. I wouldn't have known McCall from Adam at the time, and only knew she was involved when I saw some footage from the auditions about a decade later.

I know, GSE. Is it possible to fall from the dizzy heights of The Word?