Professional Welsh person Keith Allen has always been like some kind of multifunctional entertainment device: actor, comedian, musician, singer-songwriter, artist, author and television presenter. Though this is usually just summed up as ‘Lily Allen’s dad’.
Now he’s going to be add ‘on-screen drug taker’ to the list, dropping some MDMA to monitor their effects on an MRI scan for an upcoming Channel 4 documentary. But he’s got in a spot of bother as people have been suggesting he’s glamorising drug use.
What do you do when people say you’re encouraging a generation of teens to take ecstasy and/or turn Welsh? Why, go on This Morning and debate the issue with Philip Schofield and the nation’s favourite personality vacuum Holly Willoughby of course.
On today’s programme, he argued:
“If you think that I’m glamorising the taking of drugs by spending an hour and 20 minutes for two consecutive Mondays in an MRI scanning machine then you’re insane.
“There were policemen taking part. There were definitely soldiers, people who’d never taken it before. It’s a very, very forensic analysis, a neurological analysis of the effects of MDMA. It’s a form of ecstasy.”
But that didn’t wash with Julia Manning, chief executive of independent think-tank 2020 Health:
“The first two words that come to mind are reckless and pointless. We are fully aware of the effects of class A drugs on the body.”
A reckless, pointless Channel 4 documentary that tells people absolutely nothing of use? SURELY NOT.
I don’t the hysteria that grips middle England which means that any time the issue of recreational drug use is brought up that hey have to begin screaming and wailing about ‘glamorisation’…professor David Nutt anyone?
People have always taken drugs and always will. The ‘war on drugs’ is even more pointless than the ‘war on terror’, or attempts to get people not to drink so much booze or eat vegetables. The human urge to block out reality is a bit too powerful.
Channel 4 have a long history of announcing these kinds of shows, letting the controversy build up and the excitement grow, and then delivering a really dull programme that doesn’t teach anyone anything and plays it completely safe.
I bet Kristen Guru Murphy is going to present it!