Every now and then a story comes along that is just so off the wall that you cannot believe that it is true, and today we have such an one. Our Beloved Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, has likened himself to Heathcliff. Yes, that’s right folks, Heathcliff. Now that you have stopped laughing and picked yourself up off the floor, prepare for more hilarity as this comment was seized upon by opposition politicians and literary experts with predictable results.
LibDem MP, Vince Cable said "Heathcliff may be dark and brooding, but he is also ruthless and vindictive. He ended his life a broken and tormented man haunted by a ghost. Tony Blair perhaps?"
Director of the Bronte Parsonage Museum "Heathcliff is a man prone to domestic violence, kidnapping, possible murder and digging up his dead lover. He is moody and unkind to animals. Is this really a good role model for the Prime Minister".
Here are some of the comments on the Guardian blog in which readers were asked to give their opinion and also to come up with other literary figures Gordon could be compared with. A few of the replies:
- Quasimodo
- Marquis de Sade
- Mr Brocklehurst from Jane Eyre ("after all both of them share a taste for punitive rules and starving the poor"). Ouch!
- Mr Micawber – not only for his famous theory on finances but for the following passage quoted by the writer of the comment "Welcome Poverty! Welcome misery, welcome homelessness, welcome hunger, rags, tempest and beggary! Mutual confidence will sustain us to the end".
- Mr Collins from Pride and Prejudice
- "Oh, not Heathcliff the cartoon cat then? There was me thinking he was more like Garfield"
I would be intrigued to see what other suggestions any readers of this post might come up with. I have to say that if I had to carry out this exercise in the case of Our Fallen Leader, aka Tony Blair, the name that would have immediately come to mind would have been Uriah Heep. In Gordon’s case, another Dickens character from me, Quilp from the Old Curiosity Shop or Mr Gradgrind from Hard Times.
Final word on the subject, from a Tory MP "If Gordon is Heathcliff then I am a sex god"
Enough said I think….
Leave a Reply to Margaret PowlingCancel reply