Stephen Fry is no saint, so why let him preach at us?

Bad boy: George Michael at Highbury Corner magistrates’ court on Tuesday
12 April 2012

Whatever happened to good old-fashioned British manners and hospitality? The level of abuse heaped on the Pope by the celebocracy has made me feel almost sorry for Benedict XVI.

Richard Dawkins has called him "a leering old villain in a frock". Charming. Stephen Fry says there is something "seriously amiss with granting him a state visit" and adds, a tad imperiously, "you can't be part of an autocratic kingdom on Earth and claim to be a spiritual leader and expect the British taxpayer to foot the bill for your visit".

Who is Fry to preach to us about state visits and morality and values? He is beginning to resemble an autocratic king of Twitterland. Why shouldn't we foot the bill? We did for state visits by Saudi King Abdullah in 2007 and China's president in 2005, both of whose countries have appalling human rights records. Surely it is better to have a dialogue with autocrats and encourage them to change their ways rather than freeze them out?

Fry likes to hang out with Prince Charles (he even attended his wedding to Camilla Parker Bowles), which might explain why I have never heard him criticise the royal family for being funded by the taxpayer.

Whenever I have met Fry he is charming and urbane, and very good company. But I find his beatification as disturbing as the vilification of the Pope. A poll of more than 7,000 MySpace users last year said that they would prefer the comic to be the patron saint of England and he is now commonly hailed as a patron saint of intelligence. But it doesn't mean he is always right about everything. And it certainly doesn't give him the right to get on his moralistic soap box.

Yes, Pope Benedict may have been conscripted into the Hitler Youth at the age of 14 (so were the majority of people of his age) but Fry was a self-confessed shoplifter in his teens and served time in prison for credit card fraud. We all do things we regret in our youth.

Only months ago the comic announced his resignation from Twitter because there "was much aggression and unkindness around". It followed a tweet from one of his followers who said he found his tweets a bit boring.

The Pope is now on the receiving end of the same aggression and unkindness from celebrities. They should temper their language and their insults and not play into the hands of the baying mob.

All of us should learn to keep things in proportion. That applies equally to abuse — and acclaim.

George just wants his freedom

You've gotta have faith in the prison system, George. Nobody else does, including our very own Justice Secretary Ken Clarke. According to Clarke, prison has often proved a costly and ineffectual approach that fails to turn criminals into law-abiding citizens. Well, this will be the test.

The singer George Michael has been jailed for four weeks for crashing his car into a photo shop while under the influence of cannabis. It does seem pointless sending him to Pentonville when our prisons are already stuffed to the gills.

Isn't a driving ban of five years sufficient punishment? If he mends his ways (and stops smoking 25 joints a day), then perhaps prison will have served its purpose. But somehow I doubt he will emerge a reformed character. Who wants a reformed pop musician anyway?

Our place in the Third World

Cardinal Walter Kasper is in hot water for saying that when you land at Heathrow you think at times you have landed in a Third World country. Of course he is absolutely right. In many respects we are a Third World country.

As the Evening Standard's Dispossessed campaign has highlighted, we may be the richest capital in Europe but half our children live below the poverty line. And there is no more obvious sign of a Third World country than the disparity between the rich and the poor. The gap between the rich and poor in Britain is now greater after 13 years of Labour rule than at any time since the Second World War.

How ironic that this is largely the legacy of another well-known Catholic ... Tony Blair.

How Larsen confused us all

So farewell, Bent Larsen, who died this week. The Danish grandmaster pioneered the opening chess move 1b3, now known as Larsen's Opening. I have used this move for years without realising it was his invention. It is a high-risk strategy designed to wrongfoot your opponent.

The problem is you can end up wrongfooting yourself in the process. Larsen played it against Spassky in 1970 and lost in 17 moves. "To win," he said, "it is necessary to accept lost positions." Never mind about winning. If you want to lose in style, this is the way to do it.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in