Another Fine Message

One of the more interesting revelations of BBC1’s recent Saturday night prime time text message extravaganza, The Joy Of Text, was Ian “Chicken Tonight” Wright’s confession that he sends text messages when his dander is up and the red mist has descended.

“When I’m angry, I write things like ‘What the bloody hell are you talking about?’,” announced the former Gunner, much to the surprise of those among us with no recollection of ever seeing him pull out a Nokia during the countless juvenile temper tantrums, ugly incidents of bone-jarring retribution and profanity-littered dissent that invariably ensued whenever the same fella decided to open a can of whup-ass during his days as a professional footballer with the Arsenal and England.

Wrighty the television presenter has obviously mellowed with age, as any referee who incurred the wrath of Wrighty the player was always more likely to see his dressing room door get kicked off its hinges than end up on the receiving end of a text message reading: “I say ref, one most certainly was not offside when one scored that goal in the second half!”

As you might expect, interesting revelations were few and far between in an evening devoted entirely to the myriad delights the ASCII-based SMS mobile communications system has to offer, although viewers were offered the opportunity to interact with Ulrika Jonsson via text message during the broadcast.

As someone who once interacted with Ulrika Jonsson for an hour over lunch in a Bond Street brasserie, I can safely say that the same encounter via text would have been rather dreary by comparison, as it wouldn’t have elicited half as many inquisitive stares, whispered asides and jealous glances in my direction from those around us; thereby bolstering my ego no end as I tried desperately hard to look as if we were on a date without actually going so far as to do anything illegal like touch her up.

Yes, The Joy Of Text was as shambolic a non-programme as you’re ever likely to see on BBC1, prompting one British broadsheet commentator to suggest that the station might as well have broadcast nothing but a caption reading “WE HAVE GIVEN UP!”. Well, that or simply toured the nation door-to-door, asking viewers to watch Stars In Their Eyes and An Audience With Cliff Richard on ITV instead.

Perhaps the single most interesting revelation of all in The Joy Of Text was the news that the best of the text messaged jokes and anecdotes submitted by viewers on the night would be collected and published in book form. You know, a book: one of those things with pages that people used to read back in the days before their every waking moment was spent reading sub-literate witticisms sent to them by friends with little better to do than painstakingly type frivolent correspondence letter-by-letter in the frenzied manner of a sex-starved housewife strumming herself off to Richard Madeley of a Monday morning. Needless to say, the irony was lost on all concerned.

For this reporter, few things are more annoying than having one’s every attempt to conduct a face-to-face conversation with somebody in a pub or restaurant thwarted at every turn by the sound of their ringing mobile phone and the subsequent bout of involuntary eavesdropping on one side of what is clearly a very pointless conversation: “Hello . . . I’m in the pub . . . I’m with Barry . . . he’s fine . . . where are you ? Outside? Hold on . . . yes, I can see you! How are things anyway? Who’s that with you?”

One thing that is definitely more annoying is attempting to have a conversation with somebody in a pub only to be thwarted at every turn by the shrill double-beep that heralds the arrival of a new text message on their mobile phone. It’s the same every time: the recipient’s eyes widen in delight and they apologise before snatching their handset from the table, reading their recently arrived missive and sniggering with glee. “What a bitch!” they’ll expound, as they begin to type a lengthy reply. Out of politeness, you enquire who the bitch is and what they’ve said, even though you couldn’t give a toss. Of course, sometimes, out of pig-iron, you don’t ask at all but invariably get told anyway: “It’s Tallulah from the office. She wants to know if I’m drunk yet.”

Chance would be a fine thing – it’s difficult to drink and text at the same time.

At this juncture, I should probably confess to being the one of very few people in Great Britain or Ireland who does not actually own a mobile phone. I used to have one but, amazingly, have managed to live a full and active life without carrying one since moving to London two years ago. And while the nature of my work dictates that getting another one sometime in the near future is fairly inevitable, I’ve been putting it off for as long as possible because I’ve got used to not having one and thoroughly enjoy witnessing the mixed look of puzzlement, sympathy and utter bewilderment that crosses the countenance of people who have just discovered my shocking secret. “Oh you poor thing . . . how do you manage?”

Fine, thank you very much. After all, if you think about it, the 10 minutes you save by not having to text people to let them know you’ll see them in 10 minutes invariably renders the need for such a message redundant.

In fact, being a luddite is easier than you’d imagine. As a creature of habit, my personal mobile phone philosophy is that if a close friend, relative or business contact needs to get in touch with me urgently they’ll know where to find me. Everyone else can send either me an e-mail, leave a message on my answering machine or fuck off and get some other sucker to do whatever it is they’re ringing up to pester me about. If this gung-ho attitude means I have to forego the thrills of receiving badly spelt text message quips every time my favourite team loses a football match or I make a drunken tit of myself on a Saturday night, then so be it. I’ll cope.

Text messages are more awkward and less interesting than telephone conversations, which are in turn more awkward and less interesting than face to face chats. Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to be able to see somebody’s face or, at the very least, hear their voice when I’m talking to them. And never mind that guff about text messaging being to blame for ever decreasing standards in literacy and education; the fact that it is responsible for declining standards in flirtation is a cause for much greater concern.

Yes, apparently text messaging is now the primary tool of communication used by young men and women in their attempts to woo members of the opposite sex and, consequently, a generation is emerging that is completely oblivious to the awesome effect of the well-timed sidelong glance, the “accidental” caress or the carefully loaded bit of verbal.

Indeed, I recently witnessed a friend of mine spend an entire evening embroiled in a bout of casual text with a much lusted after male by tip-tapping suggestive comments into her mobile and whizzing them off into the ether, before waiting anxiously and then giggling like a schoolgirl upon hearing the reassuring beep-beep of his astonishingly witless replies. The following night they met up for long enough to have sex, after which her hopes of embarking on a long-term relationship with her text god were cruelly scuppered when he announced that, as he’d got what he was after, he was dumping her. Via text.

I THINK UR A QT? BLLCKS! He who lives by the text, dies by the text.