Beardy Weirdy

It must be silly season - Jeremy Paxman's beard became a news story earlier this week.  The usual excuse for making mountains out of such molehills of trivia at this time of year is the lack of news in August.  Because, as we all know, the whole world packs up and goes on holiday during August, meaning that nothing at all happens all month long.  Well, that's the received wisdom, anyway.  In reality, you'd think that with the ongoing crisis in Egypt, rising tensions between the UK and Spain over Gibraltar, the Bradley Manning trial and the whole Prism business, you'd think that this August the media wouldn't have time to comment on the fact that a BBC 2 news anchor had grown a beard while he was on holiday.  But apparently they do.  At length.  To be honest, this preoccupation with the trivia of someone's personal appearance reminds me of an office I once worked in, where the fact someone had had a haircut would be the topic of conversation for weeks.  It was truly dire. I despaired of the fact that, with all the things we could have discussed, the topic of conversation was always forced back to this kind of meaningless trivia.

As a silly season story, Paxman's beard really is a non-starter.  I mean, it's just a bloody beard.  I could grow one too, if I wanted to - it's hardly an achievement or, indeed, especially unusual.  Silly season stories should involve aliens, crop circles, poltergeists or Nazi war criminals found living in a garden shed.  Or some combination of these elements.  Of course, the classic British silly season story would involve the Loch Ness Monster, (a phenomena which has, sadly, all but vanished from our media),  usually being spotted taking tea at a local vicarage or some such.  Now, if Nessie were to be found hiding in Paxo's face lace, or if crop circles suddenly appeared in his facial hair, that would be a true silly season story.  Or, if it turned out that the beard is to disguise the fact that he isn't Paxman any more - he's been replaced by a Nazi war criminal.  Or Nessie.  Whilst the real Paxman has been abducted by aliens.  But sadly, the days of great silly season stories of this ilk seem to be ever.  Reporters these days seem to prefer expending their creative energies on making up football transfer stories.