ORDINARILY, I struggle to see the point of "political correctness gone mad" stories. After all, it's not as if there aren't more pressing things for newspapers to report on at the moment: two dodgy wars on foreign soil; an economy about to go nuclear; John Sergeant dragging Russian women around by the hair on Strictly Come Dancing…
This one, though, is an absolute corker: Tommy Sheppard, director of the Stand Comedy Clubs in Edinburgh and Glasgow, calls to say that the people who publish the Virgin Trains magazine, Hotline, have just refused to carry an advert for his business
– on the grounds that the Stand logo promotes gun crime.
For those not acquainted with the image, it consists of a young boy in a cowboy suit standing in front of a microphone with a toy six-shooter pressed to his temple – a pretty apt representation of the terrifying life-and-death tightrope walk that stand-up comedians must complete every time they perform, if you ask anyone with half a brain.
But the official (ahem) line from Virgin Trains is as follows: "Hotline is a magazine that is available to all passengers. We are greatly concerned about carrying anything that portrays or illustrates knife or gun crime, and for that reason the advert was deemed unsuitable."
Noble sentiments, of course, but seriously: what are they worried about? That the image of a child cowboy wielding a toy gun in their mag will spark off a spate of High Noon-style shoot-outs across the rail network? Oh please.
I've been going to the Stand in Edinburgh for almost a decade now, and not once have I seen a gunfight take place in the club or on the street outside, in spite of the fact that the venue's logo is prominently displayed behind the stage. (That said, if there really were regular gunfights at the Stand, I'm sure that Sheppard, a man known for his shrewd business sense, would swiftly install saloon doors at both his venues and start charging the club's punters extra.)
Virgin's objection to the Stand advert would be easier to swallow if Sir Richard Branson ran a consistent "no guns" policy throughout his various operations – but that isn't the case. On Branson's airline, Virgin Atlantic, passengers can choose from some 60 movies on the in-flight entertainment system – a menu that currently includes Street Kings (cops 'n' robbers shooting at each other); Vantage Point (assassins and bodyguards shooting at each other) and The Dark Knight (pretty much everyone in Gotham City shooting at everyone else – oh, and a man getting a pencil slammed through his eyeball).
Meanwhile, in living rooms across the nation, viewers of the Virgin One TV station can take their pick from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (people and robots pretending to be people shooting at each other); The Unit (special forces soldiers shooting at anything that moves) and Star Trek (OK, they all use phasers in that but, still, people die.)
Which is more likely to glorify gun crime, Mr Branson: intense action films in which the good guys are portrayed as heroes for pumping hundreds of rounds into the bad guys? Or a picture of a kid dressed as a cowboy?
The full article contains 552 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
