The latest tabloid attempt to paint 'preacher of hate' Abu Qatada as a bloater certainly puts his lesser sins in perspective
Lost in Showbiz is aware that politics is showbiz for ugly people, but is something similar true of terrorism? Or is terrorism showbiz for ugly politicians? Or politics for ugly celebrities? Once again we have the Daily Mail to thank for plunging us into this ontological crisis, as the paper criticises BBC directives on coverage of Abu Qatada, the radical preacher who is to be freed on bail.
"Whose side are they on? BBC tells journalists to stop calling Qatada 'an extremist' – and showing pics of him looking fat (but we can, so here he is!)" reads a lengthy headline that might have been written by Ben Bradlee. There follows a snap of a relatively corpulent Qatada – the sort of trick they might pull with a reality TV star – but we shall come to which preacher of hate would look hottest in a bikini later.
Meanwhile, the Mail is distressed the corporation should regard "extremist" as a value judgment best avoided in news reports, where "radical" would do. But more than that, it seems, they are incensed at the Beeb's guidance on Qatada's present dimensions, despite the fact it was clearly only given to ensure current rather than out-of-date stock pictures are used. "BBC staff have also been advised against using images of the preacher looking fat," the paper shrieks to its readers. "He is apparently now much slimmer than he used to be."
"Apparently"? Now come, come, Daily Mail. This disingenuity does not become you. I put it to you that you knew very well indeed that Qatada had slimmed down – just as you are aware of even minuscule cellular changes in the adipose layers of everyone from Cheryl Cole to third-tier government ministers to babies such as Harper Beckham, who are only one whitewashed inquiry into press standards away from being described as "pouring their curves" into romper-suits and the like.
In evidence, may I cite an article from – ah, yes – the Daily Mail, dated 10 July 2008. It accompanied some paparazzi shots of Qatada popping out to the corner shop shortly after his last release from jail, and right up near the very top of this major story was the crucial observation that "the fanatical preacher … was 20st but slimmed down on prison food".
At the time, I marvelled that there was now not a single figure in the news whose BMI was not regarded as of immense importance to the Mail, and its latest attempt to paint Qatada as a bloater certainly puts his lesser sins into perspective. The only sadness is that the paper declines to describe the weight loss or gain of preachers of hate in the same argot that it uses to gloss such developments in the celebrity world.
It is a matter of almost ineffable sadness to Lost in Showbiz that Qatada is not described as "showcasing his post-prison body" in the manner that Beyoncé would be "showcasing her post-pregnancy body". Why is his shalwar kameez not described as "struggling to contain his curves" – after all, he's still no Osama in the sylph stakes. (Having said that, the deceased al-Qaida CEO spent his final years crossing back and forth over the Daily Mail ideal weight line – a boundary so impossible to plot that the cartographers have ruled it more mythical than Atlantis. From the photos and homicidal video messages, it appears Bin Laden veered between "enviably svelte" and a weight division we might class as "Fears for Demi", while a Mail report shortly after his death describing him as "emaciated" suggested he never cracked the paper's unplayable body mass rules.)
Whichever way you slice it, then, some seem bent on importing the customs of showbiz reporting into the coverage of evildoers or eviltalkers. And so it was that Abu Hamza – the milky-eyed, hook-handed cleric who appears to have been created by central casting – became the subject of a Sun kiss-and-tell a few years ago. (I'm afraid I could never truly deplore the exposé, on account of the fact that it contained the observation "he certainly had an eye for the ladies".)
Furthermore, this type of attention seems to have led Hamza to develop the preacher-of-hate equivalent of a red-carpet shtick. Just as celebrities have a stock pose they feel shows them at their best angle, so Hamza had his. Photographers used to report that when he spotted one of them, he would immediately hold his hook up to his face, in order that both his evil™ features were in the same shot.
Hamza is currently working the Belmarsh red carpet, as you may know, but according to the Mail might be "free in time for the Olympics". (Which makes me picture him being picked up by the athletics stadium Love Cam, and projected on to the big screen, waving both his hook and a giant foam finger.)
So where now for the showbizification of terror? My feeling is that the Mail must float the idea that Qatada has had a gastric band on the NHS – or at the very least wants one. To get round the fact that it's a complete stab in the dark, perhaps television's Anne Diamond could be prevailed upon to reprise the recent open letter she penned in the Mail to Dawn French, the comedian having lost some weight.
"Dawn, how did you do it?" wrote Anne in the faux-chummy register of the open letter, a journalistic form once described by Andreas Whittam Smith as an act of madness. "Was it really just 'eating less and walking more' as you have said? The slimming world is abuzz … I spoke to an obesity surgeon who said that the easiest way to guarantee your sort of dramatic and consistent weight is to have a gastric band or a gastric bypass. Your spokesman insists that's not the case. What I do know is that I made the terrible mistake of keeping quiet after I had gastric-band surgery ..."
We'll leave it there. But it's certainly something for Qatada to consider – after all, look at the attention it gets you.