DONALD CLARKEon the genius of subversive constructs
YOU’VE GOT to love Danny Dyer. Actually, you don’t. What you really have to do is cross the road if he passes your way. You shouldn’t have any trouble spotting him. Just look for the pearly-king suit and listen for the cheerful saloon bar trilling. “Any old iron? Any old iron? Any, any, any old iron?” the Londoner doesn’t really sing. “Any old iron will do to smash your girlfriend in her two-timing boat race.”
Dyer is in the news following objections to a piece of advice he is alleged to have offered a reader in the hallowed pages of Zoomagazine. Alex Woolliscroft, the heartbroken mammary- gland enthusiast, wrote in to explain how distraught he was by his girlfriend's recent decision to dump him. Uncle Danny, star of such beloved films as The Football Factoryand The Business, appeared to suggest that the reader go on a booze-up, kick hell out of every stationary object and secure himself another young lady. Alternately, he could "cut his ex's face, so no one will want her". What a gent.
We cautiously say "appeared to suggest" because Dyer has argued that, while dictating the column over the phone, he used no such offensive phrase. "I have been completely misquoted," the presenter of Danny Dyer's Deadliest Meninformed an enraged press pack.
Zoo and Dyer must work out their own differences. But if Danny wanted an airtight excuse, he should, perhaps, have argued that the “Danny Dyer” who acts as agony (in more ways than one) uncle in Zoo magazine is merely a subversive construct. The character is, perhaps, a heightened pastiche of the boozy, punchy person Dyer plays in his lager-drenched films.
After all, that argument has worked for hundreds of rappers. “No, no, no. I am commenting on the bitch-slapping of dirty- assed hos, not advocating such an appalling crime,” the fictional MC Fybber famously claimed.
Certainly, when Zoohired Danny, they hoped for a regular supply of cheery yob-speak. How awful it would be if the real Dyer had turned out to be a tofu-eating Guardianreader.
Which construct should replace Dyer now that his column has (predictably enough) been axed?
Maybe “Hugh Grant” might like the job. “Well, erm, Alex. Gosh, how bloody awful. Well, golly, I suggest you slope about for a few weeks, then propose to somebody else. All going well, your old gal will pluck you from the altar just in time.”
What about “Rob Schneider”? “Hey, Alex, dude. What say you drink some kind of potion that turns you into a woman or a dog or something. Then you’ll, like, gain wisdom and she’ll, like, love you.”
Maybe “Bergman-issue Max Von Sydow” would be good? “Stare into the void, Alex. The void is all that you now have.”
Who else? What about . . .
Pip, pip, pip. ( Oh no, I'm running out of change for the payphone. You and the subs can make up the rest yourselves.)
