Living high off the Hog

It seems that prominent people that I regard with affection are dying with increasing regularity.  Maybe it is a sign of getting older and these people have formed a larger part of my cultural experience (than say Bobby Moore who died before I was really aware of him and thus is part of my cultural heritage).  Recently, it was Simon Hoggart's turn to perish, of cancer at just 67 years old (an age more generally associated with tinpot dictators such as Muammar Gaddafi and Kim Jong-Il).  Through his writings, he seemed imperishable, pontificating cogently and wittily for all ages but as George Harrison summed it up, all things must pass.
Son of Richard Hoggart, whose "The Uses of Literacy" was a set text for my A-Levels, Simon inherited his father's way with words and his most enduring fame in his own right will be as parliamentary sketchwriter for The Guardian.  I still remember his description of one Tory MP talking like "a modem", or lambasting Claire Short for histrionics over Gulf War II as she made it sound (according to Hoggart) like a missile of James Bond proportions was being fired from Downing Street at her constituency.  My abiding memory though is of Hoggart's excoriation of Stephen Byers (then Transport Secretary) in 2002 for brazenly lying and then welcoming "the opportunity to clarify matters." In brief, Byers was slammed for "admitting that he had stretched the truth to snapping point when he spoke on the Dimbleby programme last weekend. "That is obviously something I regret, and I welcome this opportunity to clarify matters," he said.  It's a useful line. "When I said I had no further territorial demands in Europe, I may have inadvertently given the impression that I would not invade Poland. I welcome this opportunity to clarify matters." "Father, I welcome the opportunity to clarify matters. I did chop down that tree."  It's Labour's new message: "Trust me. I admit I'm a liar!"" There was more gorgeous prose in this one column alone.  Of Theresa May (now Home Secretary), "She wasn't awful; just not good enough. Cliches dribbled down like sludge from a sump."  The infamous line from New Labour's Transport Department that 9/11 was a good day to bury bad news was turned on its head when it emerged that they planned to do the same trick on the death of Princess Margaret - "It got barely more coverage than any other such sad event at Slough crematorium. Could it be that Mr Byers actually wanted to come clean about the terrible train delays?  In short, had he not decided that Friday was a good day to bury Princess Margaret?"
Tam Dalyell, then Father of the House (and who celebrated his 50th wedding anniversary on Boxing Day 2013), gets a mention for his euphemism for more industrial language in that we're all... "stymied."  Hoggart quipped "It could catch on. "I suppose a quick stymie is out of the question?""  Unfortunately, such quick stymies became a way of life for Hoggart with high-class whore Kimberly Quinn.  I feel entitled to describe the former publisher of The Spectator so luridly for she was not just having an affair with the married Hoggart but also David Blunkett, then Home Secretary, at the same time, cuckolding her husband Stephen Quinn twice over (and Mr Quinn was the subject of the cuckolding of her first marriage).  Gems such as Kimberly Quinn on being asked by a crusty member of The Spectator why they were employing a communist as wine review, replying that he wouldn't sample just red wines, now comes across as pillow talk for Hoggart's other Guardian column on his thoughts.  Given how old he was when he died, this wasn't even a mid-life crisis but more an intelligent man being led astray by his loins when a beautiful younger woman makes herself available to him (and the world and its dog it seems too).  He often criticised the fidelity failings of others and that it was the job of newspapers to expose adulterers but he was found with a large sticky bar of hypocrisy in his hands and plenty of further evidence smeared all round his mouth, like a child caught in the proverbial tuck shop.  He was fallible.  We all are in one shape or form.
This though can only dim marginally my immense respect for the brilliance of his craft.  Another who died too young.