DRUG SHAME OF SQUEAKY-CLEAN BOY BAND seemed a very dramatic headline for a story about two members of One Direction passing a roll-up around a car.
First, there’s no proof that the boys were smoking dope. Audio footage of them saying: “Joint lit. Happy days!” and speculating that a passing policeman could “smell an illegal substance” might just mean they were messing around and role-playing while smoking an ordinary cigarette.
Or, given that they were obviously aware of being filmed, maybe they were making a joky Spinal Tap style sequence for some future purpose; I would love that to be the case.
But even if they were smoking marijuana, I don’t think that qualifies as “drug shame”. Dope is far too respectable these days. Consider the list of people who have discussed their own use of it: Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Alastair Darling, Harriet Harman, David Willetts, Francis Maude… George Bush and Sarah Palin have smoked dope, for heavens’ sake! Norman Lamont’s had space cake!
(I appreciate that last line sounded like a joke. It isn’t. Lamont has openly talked about gobbling space cake. One wonders how Vic Reeves or Viz could really continue after that.)
The moral is: nothing that happened in that car is any barrier to Zayn Malik becoming chancellor of the exchequer. And frankly, given the state of the economy, he might as well give it a go.
Cannabis seems so popular among MPs that the headline DRUG SHAME OF SQUEAKY-CLEAN BOY BAND may actually have been intended to imply the embarrassment of One Direction (a cool bunch of youngsters with 19m Twitter followers) being caught doing something so ineffably square. Given that it appeared in the Daily Mail I suppose it probably wasn’t, but you’d have to try a lot harder if you wanted to find a link between Francis Maude and Sid Vicious.
I was quite charmed by the possibility that today’s young pop stars might smoke pot, what with their Vans, Snapchats, Instagrams and 8s instead of letters. Beneath it all, the spirit of Woody Guthrie lives on!
Certainly, the whiff of weed does not prevent One Direction from being “squeaky-clean” or, indeed, downright nerdy. Yes: I’m thinking about my own years of DRUG SHAME. Feel free to scan the following list of my marijuana memories, and judge for yourself how rock’n'roll it is …
1987
I am keen to kiss a boy. No boy in particular; anyone will do. Everyone at school is “getting off with people” and I feel like a weirdo because I never have. I go to a party and smoke a joint to get my courage up. A boy asks if I’d like to go for a walk. Suddenly gripped by paranoia, certain that an attempted rape is on the cards, I run to an upstairs bedroom, lock the door and do not come out until morning.
1988
I am determined to be accepted by the cool crowd at school. This is a challenge, as I am fat, good at maths and have a column in the Daily Telegraph. But I relish a challenge. I acquire “a quarter of black”, take it to a party and pretend to be a drug dealer. I smoke copious amounts to demonstrate my expertise. Soon, I find I am hallucinating. I remember that, as a birthday present for my father, I have sponsored an animal at London Zoo: a pelican. I start wondering if the pelican will one day discover it’s adopted and turn against me. I become terrified. I lie on the floor screaming: “The beak! The beak!” This is not as cool as I’d hoped to be. For years afterwards, whenever I tell this story, I claim I had dropped acid. The truth is just too lame.
1991
I am at the Edinburgh Fringe, performing in a comedy show. It’s an eye-opening month. These people have the decadence of ancient Rome, if not the noses. One night, a fellow fringe performer invites me to help make “hash brownies”. We improvise the recipe and it comes out as a liquid that we eat with a spoon, like soup. I become hysterical with laughter, although a few of his jokes soon put a stop to that. I snooze for a while and wake up to discover he’s put on a porn film. The plot involves a robot trying to control the world by means of sex. Despite this, my host is aroused. I immediately vomit and leave. Sometimes I wonder if the poor man has ever been aroused since.
2001
I am in Amsterdam with my friend Charlie (not a euphemism). We go to a coffee shop and smoke fully legal spliffs. Then we go absolutely crazy, by which I mean: we play cribbage for seven hours.
2004
I’ve been in Amsterdam again, this time for the Master Classics of Poker. Walking through customs at Waterloo International, I notice a little group of spaniels on the forecourt. How sweet, I think. Suddenly, all five spaniels hurl themselves against my suitcase. The policemen on the other end of the spaniels ask me to accompany them into a side room. In my suitcase, they discover two cannabis joints forgotten in a pocket. The policemen confiscate the joints and tell me to go home. I say: “Are you going to keep those for your Christmas party?”, and one of the policemen says: “Probably.”
2014
I read that two members of One Direction have been seen sharing a roll-up that may or may not have contained marijuana and I think: the nation’s youth are probably still safe in their hands.
victoriacoren.com
One Direction have nothing on my experiments with pot
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