I suppose I should say I am sorry. It s just that I find their music completely devoid of humour.
So says David Baddiel, one of the two least funny men in the world, the other being his partner in cringe, Frank Skinner.
Baddiel, inexplicably, was included among the experts asked to comment on the nominated albums during last month s televised Mercury Music Awards. As a matter of principle, however, he felt unable to comment on Asian Dub Foundation s Rafi s Revenge.
ADF s music, he explained, was very angry . What s more, one of the album s songs contained a death threat .
True enough, can t have angry music infiltrating the leery world of laddish football fantasists. But death threats ? On Rafi s Revenge?
Turns out that what the cloth-eared one had in mind was the story of Udham Singh, the great Punjabi fighter against communalism who brought Hindu and Sikh together in 1919 through the assassination of the British Governor who had masterminded the Amritsar massacre.
That wasn t a death threat, dorko. That was a death.
Forced to re-think, Baddiel sought to salvage a shred of cred with the plaintive claim that the real reason he d reacted so strongly against ADF s nomination was that their music had no humour.
Now, music doesn t have to have humour to be good. Not a lot of laughs on Tom Joad, as I recall. The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll was hardly a hoot. And Beethoven wasn t always a bundle of fun. The more apt point is, though, that ADF are one of the wittiest bands around, not just in their lyrics but in the deft and playful way they ruffle and rumple from ragga to chant.
Baddiel obviously knows as little about music as he does about football twin towering truths which have been roared out by all Twee Lions for almost three seasons now but which are yet to be heard by the commissioning editors of British television networks.