Teaboy Tom’s Contemporaneous Trashing

The TV bookers keep on inviting him on, and the welter of severely adverse comment follows his appearance with the inevitability of night following day: Tom Harwood, replacement teaboy to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog, was presented to viewers on ITV Good Morning Britain today, to the great relief of all those who were watching, well, any other channel’s breakfast offering.

What time is it Eccles?

Teaboy Tom was offering his thoughts, such as they are, on the debate over artefacts celebrating slave owners, and other individuals from Britain’s past whose behaviour was of less than total probity. And he decided that the key word for his sermon was contemporaneous. Moreover, no-one mentioned his lockdown busting.

Mic Wright picked up on that Union Flag behind him. “Tom Harwood on GMB to attack the pulling down of statues of slavers, with his butcher's apron hung in the background”. As to his further pronouncements, Wright was equally unimpressed. “Tom Harwood, now on TV being asked about his opinions on Little Britain, was 6 years old when it was first broadcast and 8 years old when it went off the air. Why does this matter? Because he has zero life experience beyond appearing to defend the indefensible for a fee”. Indeed.

Nick Tolhurst noticed Harwood arguing both sides of the coin. “Tom Harwood: ‘We should judge history on the prevailing moral norms of the era.’ … ‘You think that the slaves thought their enslavement was moral at the time?’ Tom Harwood: ‘No, you misunderstand me. Not the morality of the slaves. The morality of the slave owners.’” Relativism, eh? Matt Lodder had something to say about that. “Someone ask the ‘judge them by the standards of their time and place’ people like Tom Harwood what they think about ISIS and Boko Haram. They seem to have all changed their tune on moral relativism all of a sudden”.

Alex Kealy spared a thought for Prof Kehinde Andrews. "Imagine being a University professor and having to do a tv debate with Tom Harwood”. Yael Shafritz added “I'm glad all these folks are trying themselves in knots to justify why we should preserve racist artefacts, because when a new show by a mediocre white man doesn't get commissioned and the claims of silencing start, we'll have the receipts!” Ho ho ho.

On a related note, Gary Spedding riffed “Main reason people like Tom Harwood and Darren Grimes are whinging at the moment is that they fear that the system currently in place - a system that allowed both of them to benefit massively from white privilege - will be dismantled and they won’t get to be on TV no more”. To which another Tweeter added “The Tories and the right wing press are very much itching for a new culture war after Brexit ended and it seems they've seized upon these latest protests to be just that, look at the likes of Darren Grimes and Tom Harwood who just want to talk about culture shit and nothing else”. After Brexit, there must be another enemy. Harwood is looking for one.

But he made few converts, with one observer noting “So many things wrong with Tom Harwood invited on [GMB] today including: Him speaking … Describing him as a 'journalist' … Every word he said - particularly ‘contemporaneous’”. Mike Williams added “Polite reminder that Tom Harwood is not, I repeat not, a journalist and Guido Fawkes is not, I repeat not, a legitimate news outlet. The sooner we acknowledge this, the better”.

Someone thinks that having Harwood on telly is a good thing. But it ain’t the viewers.

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