Dame Vivienne
Although this doesn’t apply to everyone, I’m sure that many of you have experienced ‘difficult’ board members, trustees or colleagues whose heart might be in the right place, but who have their own ‘unique’ approach to ’selling’ your organisation.
Well, spare a thought for Liberty, this countries main defender of British human rights. As a dutiful member, I went off to the 75th Anniversary conference last Saturday for a day largely devoted to intelligent and thought provoking discussion and debate about civil liberties and the governments usurping of them. Speakers as diverse as Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Tony Benn, Nick Clegg and er, Jon Gaunt spoke eloquently about the impact of id cards, anti-terrorism laws, police powers, freedom of speech and constitutional reform (if only we had a constitution to reform).
Then Liberty Trustee Dame Vivienne Westwood came to the platform. Did she arouse the audience with inspired rhetoric about protecting human rights in these challenging times? Or even share some amusing anecdotes about her life in fashion? No. Instead she treated us to a spectacularly random rant which encompassed everything from climate change and The Times’ book review section not taking it seriously to the BBC failing to commission her idea for a TV show about 7 year old painters who are very talented you know, and how she doesn’t like TV anyway, or the internet either because the only good thing about the internet is that it tells the truth about things like 9/11 which was a clearly an inside job and everyone knows this but won’t admit to it and what is wrong with the world today and what is wrong with Any Questions?, that show just doesn’t make any sense does it because no one ever asks any proper questions and where do they get those stupid people from anyway?
By the end the audience were openly snickering and the panel she was sitting on (including MP Diane Abbott and journalist Kate Adie) were shifting nervously in their seats.
You could argue that this is exactly the sort of presentation you would expect from an eccentric known for bringing bondage trousers, razor blades and safety pins to the world of fashion or that the audience response was pure snobbishness from a typical liberal lefty audience. Both are probably right, but either way, Dame Vivienne’s performance made me feel pathetically grateful for my work’s motley bunch of trustees.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
did they get the right booking she’s not trustee of Liberties ?and just got flustered and did an off the cuff political speech? :)
I once went to a trustees speech were he called education in the space of 5 minutes , a torch to pass on but also a corner and a key stone and a pillar and yes the foundation of our work. It was then that the leaden albatross of mixed metaphor crashed though the window and put him out of his misery.
June 12th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
If only Vivienne had had some metaphors to mix BLTP… I’m sure she is very committed to human rights though – she designed a t-shirt about them.
June 12th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
As much as I love her designs and influence, I don’t think she would be what she is without Malcom Mclaren’s influence. He’s always had form, thought and substance to his rhetoric and style – whether you liked what he was doing or not.
June 12th, 2009 at 3:03 pm
She confuses ‘being a character” with ‘being a terrible old bore’.
Did you ever listen to/see Alan Partridge’s send up of her? The radio version was even better than the TV one (’Vivienne’ flashes him, prompting the horrified comment “Oh my god! I can still SEE it!”), but both are wonderful.
June 12th, 2009 at 4:44 pm
PM, I’m going to trust your judgement on this one. I don’t know nearly enough about Vivienne Westwood to judge whether she has any form, thought or substance – although if her freeflowing thoughts the other day were any indication, she certainly relied on Mclaren to give her structure, coherence and boundaries.
ISBW, no I haven’t! Actually, it’s not the episode where he interviews the ‘artistic’ fashion designer is it? It’s the same one with French clown troop who do the simulated sex acts I think. I wish my memory was better…
June 12th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
Think Mondo has a point… Malc was always the brains. Funny enough, I remember seeing ‘our Viv’ on Jonathan Ross a couple of years back, and remember thinking then… “hmmm, you’re a bit bonkers aren’t you”!! I guess when you’re young, people thing thats “cooool”, when you’re old, it’s “bonkers”!! Malc on the other hand, always does seem to cover over as fairly shrewd.
P
June 12th, 2009 at 9:41 pm
Haha Piley – yes! I think it would be fair to say that most of the Liberty audience were older i.e. (35 – 60) and definitely thought that she fell into the “bonkers” category. I was more stunned that they even risked having her as a speaker. They must have known surely. McLaren would have been a better option as a speaker what with his ‘political side’ – didn’t he and Alan McGee plan to run for London Mayor a few years back?