Most people have a soft spot for the first ‘X’ film they legitimately saw as an alleged ‘adult’; mine was Magic, the 1978 film by Richard Attenborough, starring Anthony Hopkins as a mild-mannered ventriloquist who becomes possessed by the spirit of his verbally vicious dummy, leading to awful consequences when a steaming hot and sex-starved Ann-Margret happens by. The creepy plot of Magic came to mind when I saw a clip of the actor David Tennant’s astonishing outburst of spite directed at the Tory MP Kemi Badenoch while he was picking up a prize at something called ‘the British LGBT Awards’:
What Tennant said was mind-bogglingly stupid
‘If I’m honest, I’m a little depressed by the fact that acknowledging that everyone has the right to be who they want to be and live their life how they want to live it – as long as they’re not hurting anyone else – should merit any kind of special award or special mention, because it’s common sense, isn’t it? However, until we wake up and we live in a world where Kemi Badenoch doesn’t exist anymore…I don’t wish ill of her, I just wish her to shut up…while we do live in this world, I am honoured to receive this.’
Perhaps Tennant should stick to the day job. Then again, maybe not: when he played Dr Who from 2005 to 2010, Tennant’s acting was so terrible that he often seemed to be mentally unbalanced.
As anyone who has ever hidden behind a sofa as a tot knows, Dr Who is full of fearsome monsters. Did he have a run-in with one of these on set? Has Tennant perchance been taken over by the spirit of the Abzorbaloff, who liked to eat people but leave them somehow alive as polyps on his skin, comparable perhaps to the way social media trends consume people? Or a Judoon, putting nothing before their desire to police wayward opinions and crush nay-sayers?
Then there are the more obvious tin-can tyrants Tennant may have been channeling when he bashed Badenoch; the Cybermen’s catchphrase ‘DELETE!’ could well apply to the way those brainwashed by the Magical Thinking of trans-substantiation seek to extirpate uppity women, or even that classic old Dalek answer-to-everything: ‘EXTERMINATE!’
Mrs Badenoch was, as ever, magnificent in her cold fury:
‘I will not shut up. I will not be silenced by men who prioritise applause from Stonewall over the safety of women and girls. A rich, lefty, white male celebrity so blinded by ideology he can’t see the optics of attacking the only black woman in government by calling publicly for my existence to end. Tennant is one of Labour’s celebrity supporters. This is an early example of what life will be like if they win. Keir Starmer stood by while Rosie Duffield was hounded. He and his supporters will do the same with the country. Do not let the bigots and bullies win.’
We’re used to opinions being called ‘hate speech’ these days; it’s generally used by the Cry-Bullies of Woke to censor those they oppose. Most adults shrug off such accusations, because they know that what they’re saying – women don’t have penises – isn’t hate at all, but Biology 101. As someone who’s never accused anyone of Hate Speech in their life, and never gone complaining to the law about any of the verbal aggression from misrepresentation (the columnist who accused me of writing a love letter to Osama bin Laden comes to mind) to the death threats I’ve received since I was a teenager (never cross a Bay City Rollers’ fan), Tennant’s rant sounds close to the bone.
No wonder Badenoch’s existence makes little men feel even smaller
What Tennant said is also profoundly, mind-bogglingly stupid. Someone could just about get away – the climate of misogyny now being as rabid as it has been since they stopped burning ‘witches’ – with wishing that JK Rowling didn’t exist. But one of the few black women in public life? Can we only imagine the squealing outrage that Owen Jones and his cronies would whip up on X if, say, Laurence Fox had said that he wished Diane Abbott didn’t exist? Yet if one identifies as a Good Guy – as Tennant so laughably does – it’s just another way of being inclusive and caring to wish that a black woman you disagree with could somehow be vaporised.
Like Hate Speech, ‘fascist’ – another word the trans-lobby like to lob at anyone who disagrees with them that testicles can be feminine – is a word I have no truck with beyond what happened in Europe in the twentieth century. It’s too serious a word to toss around like a frisbee in a park. But the road to fascism definitely begins with the desire that those who think differently from you should not exist. Tennant and his ilk might like to portray sex-realists like myself as people who wish to actively do away with transsexuals, but I don’t feel that way at all; as a child, I loved Danny La Rue.
All I want is for men who pretend to be women to keep away from actual women’s hard-won stuff, be they single-sex toilets or sporting trophies. Stop bullying us and telling us it can’t be bullying because you’re one of us: that’s called gaslighting, you gormless great navvies.
Actors often attempt to insert themselves into politics, usually making seven sorts of horse’s asses of themselves along the way. But there’s something particularly pathetic and pitiable about a performer – a person paid to preen and pretend – taking up the trans-cudgels.
Tennant prances around acting as something he’s not – a Scot playing a Cockney, a vicious little lickspittle playing a Nice Guy – just the way his imaginary friends do. We don’t hear the phrase ‘The Politics Of Envy’ much these days. But it doesn’t take a great leap of the imagination to feel the inadequacy of a white man who has spent his life being handsomely rewarded for capering around next to a black woman like Mrs Badenoch, who has made her way in life through sheer hard work: real work, not sitting in a make-up chair memorising lines written by someone with a brain.
Badenoch has made her way in life through sheer hard work
Kemi Badenoch returned to London by herself at the age of 16 – after doing her homework by candle-light in Nigeria – to realise her ambition of completing her education here, enrolling in a modest part-time A-Level course in Morden, south London, and working at McDonald’s; it’s likely that she will be the next leader of the Conservative party. No wonder her existence makes little men feel even smaller.
At the weekend, I was at the LET WOMEN SPEAK rally in Brighton where a crowd of masked, black-clad men – the trans-allies known as the ‘Black Pampers’ due to their extreme youth and their verbal incontinence – told us that we were Nazis for believing that women should be permitted to hold on to our rights, making so much racket with various noisy toys that the women’s voices were all but drowned.
I have no doubt that, could they make it so, they would arrange it so that we didn’t exist either. The Starmer government seems sensible and dull, but in the area of women’s rights, they sing from the same page as these strange, sick creatures; they too have been infected with the trans-madness, the strange danse macabre which sees common sense and women’s rights as the enemy of all good people.
Still, it’s good that – unlike the Black Pampers – David Tennant has shown his true colours. Maybe he’ll regenerate as a decent human being one day. We can but hope. Until then, shame on him, for this vile attack on this exceptional woman.
William Turner is a seasoned U.K. correspondent with a deep understanding of domestic affairs. With a passion for British politics and culture, he provides insightful analysis and comprehensive coverage of events within the United Kingdom.
