Tomorrow, UK Gold is set to begin screening the first of its recreations of three episodes of the classic comedy, Dad’s Army. As you’ve probably seen from the adverts and the splash page about it in the Radio Times, as well as a piece about it on The One Show, the actual episodes were lost years ago. They were recorded on videotape, which was then re-used for another show. The scripts, however, has survived, and so they’ve decided to re-shoot them using other actors to replace the original cast. Along with other, younger actors, whose names I don’t recognise, is veteran thesp Timothy West, playing Sergeant Godfrey. It looks great, the actors look and sound like their brilliant predecessors, more or less, and have the right attitude. They say they can’t replace the original team, and are just being their understudies.
But there’s one thing that stops me from watching it. They’ve cast Tracey Ann Oberman as Pike’s mother.
Tracey Ann Oberman is Rachel Riley’s best mate in her persecution of bloggers, who support Jeremy Corbyn. Like Riley, she also likes to throw accusations of anti-Semitism around willy-nilly, insulting and smearing decent people simply because they’re Socialists, left-wing Labour party members and/or simply critics of Israel. And if anyone makes a few acute observations about her, she threatens them with a libel suit.
She’s been a firm supporter of Riley in her prosecution of the 17 people, who blogged about Riley’s bullying of a 16-year old girl with anxiety issues. Riley, amongst other things, declared that she wanted to ‘re-educate’ the poor girl, a term I’ve only used in the context of totalitarian brainwashing. When the child refused, Riley smeared her as an anti-Semite and managed to whip up a troll army into bullying and harassing the girl online. When Mike and 16 others blogged about this, Riley claimed that it was libel and initiated legal proceedings.
But when Mike challenged Riley to state what was libelous when she initially complained, neither she nor Oberman could explain why or how. They also haven’t challenged the facts of the case. This seems to me to be another SLAPP suit, in which the forces of the right attempt to shut down criticism through vexatious legal action. Action they know their opponents won’t be able to afford to defend themselves against.
Oberman herself was threatening to do something similar to Ash Sarkar, the head of Novara Media a few weeks ago. She was accusing Sarkar of being anti-Semitic, again based on no evidence or reason whatsoever, except that Sarkar and Novara have supported Corbyn and criticise Israel and the Israel lobby for the country’s maltreatment of the Palestinians. When Sarkar made a few pointed remarks about Oberman’s privileged background, Oberman whined that she was a ‘jobbing actor’, and that these remarks put her career at risk. She also claimed that she was ‘as White’ as Sarkar is. Sarkar is very definitely a dark complexioned Asian, while Oberman is definitely White. Of course, Oberman meant that she couldn’t be White, because Nazis and racists don’t regard Jews as White. Sarkar saw through that subtext, and said that she was not disputing that Jews didn’t suffer victimisation. They do, and horrendously, it’s growing. But as Tony Greenstein, Buddy Hell and many others have pointed out, Blacks, Asians and Travellers suffer far greater levels of racism. And some of this is perpetrated by the right-wing individuals, who are making so much fuss about the supposed anti-Semitism in the Labour party. And Oberman, as an ardent right-wing Zionist, should herself be very much aware that the original Jewish settlers in Palestine were Whites from eastern Europe, who despised the Misrahim, the indigenous Arabicised Jews, or Jewish Arabs, of Palestine and the Middle East. And there is also massive prejudice in Israel against Blacks and Black African Jews, such as those from Ethiopia. And Nazi racism is utter, murderous rubbish, so no-one should believe the bilge about Jews not being proper Europeans. Including spurious racist sputterings that they can’t be as White as they’re European compatriots.
I also know drama graduates and real jobbing actors. They’re immensely talented people, who work hard trying just to get bit parts in TV and other shows, simply because of the intense competition and uncertainty of the profession. They are most definitely not like Oberman, who was boasting a few weeks ago that every time someone criticises her, she gets another job offer.
So the news that the wretched Oberman is going to be in it puts me in a bit of a quandary. I’d like to watch it, but I don’t want to give any support to Oberman. At the same time, I don’t want to deny the other actors their chance to shine. Perhaps one way round this is to put in the equivalence of a swear box. If I watch anything with Oberman in, then I have to give money to help Mike’s defence fund against Riley’s fake libel action. That might do the trick and salve my conscience.
Tags: Actors, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Ash Sarkar, Asians, Blacks, Bloggers, Bullying, Children, Dad's Army, Libel, Mike Sivier, Mizrahim, Novara Media, Palestine, Rachel Riley, racism, Timothy West, Tracey-Ann Oberman, Travellers, UK Gold
Beastrabban\'s Weblog 
August 24, 2019 at 7:27 pm |
We’re all doomed, DOOMED I tell ye…
August 24, 2019 at 7:31 pm |
Like it! 🙂
August 28, 2019 at 9:27 pm |
I think I spotted where the inspiration for the Private Frazer character might have originated. Saw an old film from the early 60s the other day entitled ‘Very Important Person’ set in a WW2 PoW camp starring James Robertson Justice, with a host of others including John le Mesurier and Stanley Baxter. Baxter plays two characters; a German Officer and a Scottish POW who says more than once that the escape plan is “doomed” and that they are all doomed. At the end of the film the character is shown several years later and has become an Undertaker after the war.
August 29, 2019 at 7:40 am |
That does indeed sound like where Perry and Croft got the idea for the character.