Questions to Which the Answer is No!

by John Rentoul

  Nile Gardiner, Daily Telegraph, 1 March 2011. The Prime Minister, along with President Sarkozy of France, had said some muscular things about the uprising of the Libyan people, while the US President emphasised how different he was from George W. Bush by hanging around at the back.

  Daily Mail, 2 March 2011. This is known in the trade as Keeping Your Options Open. The headline ran on: ‘Pentagon report reveals financial terrorists may have triggered economic crash.’ Which deploys another gambit known as Hedging Your Bets, ‘may have’ being the historical equivalent of ‘set to’.

  Salem News, 7 March 2011. After the democratic revolt in Egypt turned bloody, Salem News (‘Serving Oregon & The Pacific Northwest’) asked the important question. Complete with picture of Howard Carter looking at Tutankhamen’s sarcophagus, taken from an internet article headlined ‘Was there really a curse on King Tutankhamen’s tomb?’ which is another Question to Which the Answer is No.

  Sophie Van Brugen, BBC News report, 10 March 2011. Sophie Van Brugen interviewed World Champion whistler David Morris, who thought his skill was a dying art and blamed the ‘personal music player’.

  Daily Mail, 11 March 2011. Asked by the Daily Mail on the day of the most powerful earthquake to have hit Japan in modern times. ‘Supermoon’, the Mail admitted, was a word made up by Richard Nolle, an astrologer, to describe a lunar perigee, when the Moon comes closest to the Earth. This was not due until 19 March, nor was it explained how it might trigger earthquakes.

  Anthony Tucker-Jones, Channel 4 News, 19 March 2011. There were a lot of similar questions asked, with similar answers, about Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, there was a book published in 2006 by Robert Brigham entitled, Is Iraq Another Vietnam? The questions asked about Afghanistan were more along the lines of, ‘Is Afghanistan Britain’s Afghanistan 1842’, or ‘Is Afghanistan America’s Russian Afghanistan 1979–89’?

  Daily Mail, 21 March 2011. He was a wild animal kept in a cage in the wrong climate.

  Daily Mail, 23 March 2011. It was at this point that I thought someone at the Daily Mail had finally twigged. They knew what I was up to and had started doing it on purpose. With this, they managed to ask two Questions to Which the Answer is No in one, winning the Double Idiocy Special Effort Merit Star. And, no, the use of the word ‘could’ doesn’t make a difference.

  Daniel Hannan, Telegraph blog, 24 March 2011. Asked by Daniel Hannan, the Conservative Euro-MP, on his Telegraph blog. I had better not dwell on why he asked that particular question, but he presumably needed a Question to Which the Answer was No as a headline for a post in which he kindly said that the series was ‘brilliant’. He was especially taken by the ‘white dwarf supernova’ Question to Which the Answer is No (see above).

  Daily Mail, 24 March 2011. As I said, someone at Northcliffe House had rumbled me. But was that going to stop me? That was another Question to Which the Answer is No.

  Daily Mail, 24 March 2011. Another hardy staple of the genre. The Loch Ness monster. A yeti. Aliens. A grainy photograph. Or, in this case, a ‘new video’, of an ‘ape man’. And a question. Only two months later, on 28 May, the Mail asked of some different footage, ‘Is this Bigfoot caught on video?’ Surely it should have been ‘Is this Bigfoot caught on video?’ Or, ‘No, really, is it really Bigfoot this time?’ But the answer is always the same.

  Craig, 26 March 2011. Another picture special. That is Craig, with John Woodcock MP on the TUC ‘March for the Alternative’ in London. The next question in my series was asked by Ruth Barnett, a reporter for Sky News: ‘Will the march worry ministers?’ As she concluded: ‘On the whole, probably not.’

  Independent, 29 March 2011. With a month to go to the royal wedding, I am afraid that the Independent asked this on its front page. So the Home Secretary had a meeting with the Metropolitan Police Commissioner and the Queen’s private secretary and said, ‘Now, we need to put some of these Trot hotheads in jail because, er, let us come back to that. Anyway, Sir Robin, do you think it would be possible to arrange for one of those Princes to get married so that the scraggies in Che T-shirts are tempted out onto the streets and the police would have an excuse to thump a few of them?’

  Big Peace website, 30 March 2011. I cannot remember now what brought this on, if I ever knew. They had not even been burning (many) cars in the banlieus that week.

  Sun, 30 March 2011. Not strictly one for my series, as it may have been a rhetorical question, but a good Sun front page all the same.

  Sun, 30 March 2011. The same edition of the Sun included this question, posed (along with an invitation to call the news desk) at the end of an article, complete with pictures and (online) a video, headlined: ‘Poltergeist wrecks house in Coventry ... and kills the dog.’ Shame about the dog.

  Huffington Post, 31 March 2011. We enjoy the extra schadenfreude of hindsight with this one, but might feel a twinge of retrospective sympathy for journalists closing their eyes, spinning the globe and ... Guess again, HuffPo.

  Mail Online, 2 April 2011. Although the Mail was now doing it on purpose, it lacked the conviction to put this in the hard copy edition of the newspaper, although the print headline, ‘So what made four television hosts suddenly talk gibberish?’, was a minor masterpiece in its own right.

  Independent, 4 April 2011. What do you mean, it is not a question? Of course it is, thinly disguised. Allow me to translate: ‘Should ballet be subsidised if no one wants to go?’

  Mail Online, 6 April 2011. This series is all for celebrating equal rights for all lesbian, gay, transsexual and transgendered people, and indeed for people living in holes in the ground. But the people of the Corded Ware culture of 2900–2400 BC did not live in caves.

  Liberal Conspiracy, 12 April 2011. Asked by Liberal Conspiracy, a left-wing blog (no, I do not know why it is called that). You can see what they were getting at, but let us get rid of it and find out, shall we?

  Independent, 14 April 2011. This was the headline on an article by Charlotte Raven. The gist appeared to be that middle-aged women writing books about finding themselves had become big but rather predictable business.

  Andrew Lowry, Telegraph film blog, 15 April 2011. Something to do with religious themes in horror movies. The Telegraph seemed to have realised what the Daily Mail was up to, and was determined to manufacture its own Questions to Which the Answer is No solely for the purpose of getting them into my series. I refused to be put off.

  Hanh Nguyenm, TV Guide, 15 April 2011. Gabor’s daughter, aged 64, was quoted as saying, ‘That’s just weird.’ Which is what usurped children always say.

  Jonathan Jones, the Guardian, 16 April 2011. Another Who-related question, asked by Jonathan Jones in the Guardian. China’s government administrator of radio and television had warned that time travel drama was ‘frivolous’ in its approach to history, it had just been reported. Doctor Who? Frivolous? What planet is he or she on?

  Jeannie Vanasco, The New Yorker, 16 April 2011. Or it may have been, ‘Prozac, the old books?’

  Daily Mail, 16 April 2011. Now that the Daily Mail had professionalised its operation, this contribution was as fine an example of the genre as one could hope to see. A worthy winner in the Nazi History Reader category.

  New York Times, 18 April 2011. One of two fine examples in the New York Times on that day, the other being: ‘Is sitting a lethal activity?’ In both cases, we know what the newspaper is getting at, but the exaggeration is annoying. Anyway, sitting is not an activity.

  Daily Mail, 19 April 2011. Every time I was tempted to call a halt to the series, or at least a pause, the Daily Mail would come up with a corker that could not be ignored. In this case, it included the sub-headline: ‘Secret memo shows president demanded UFO files 10 days before death.’ A worthy winner of the Two-In-One Conspiracy Theory Award.

  Conservative Home blog, 20 April 2011. A Question to Which the Answer was, ‘Is Someone Getting Married?’ There had been a flurry after it was reported that the Prime Minister would wear a tailcoat, until a hasty decision
was taken by someone with a degree in the sign language of the British class system that it would be a lounge suit after all.

  Peterson Institute for International Economics, 20 April 2011. Despite the valiant attempt to liven up the question with the cliché ‘new improved’, it was given the accolade of the Dullest Question to Which the Answer is No of 2011.

  Matt Parker, the Guardian Science blog, 21 April 2011. Unfortunately, the Committee, sitting in emergency session, ruled this out of order as close inspection revealed that the author had answered his own question in the negative: apparently, claiming alien involvement ‘cheapens the genuine wonders of archaeology’.

  GigaOM, 24 April 2011. A question asked by GigaOM, whatever that is, five days before the big day, which combined all the elements of idiocy for which this series is renowned.

  HM Government referendum, 5 May 2011. Number 605, asked, as part of the deal that made the coalition, by David Cameron and Nick Clegg, and answered in the negative by 68 per cent of British voters.

  Fox 26 News in Houston, Texas, 5 May 2011. Fox TV was concerned about the appearance of two gay high-school couples in the latest instalment of Glee.

  Daily Mail, 11 May 2011. By now, the Daily Mail seemed to be devoted to parodies designed to trick me into adding its headlines to my series. This, on the first anniversary of the coalition, was also written entirely in clichés. It opened with, ‘A year can be an incredibly long time in politics,’ and went on: ‘Eyelids would scarcely have batted.’ What kind of complexion did Nick Clegg now have? ‘Pasty.’ What kind of talk had he given his MPs the night before? ‘A pep talk.’ And its outstanding achievement was to quote not just ‘a body language expert’ but ‘a health and well-being expert’ as well. A fine day’s work.

  James Delingpole, Telegraph blog, 15 May 2011. This is not a proper Question to Which the Answer is No, obviously, but it is unusual, so the Committee allowed a dispensation. It is James Delingpole’s parody, on the Telegraph blog, of Peter Oborne’s column in the Sunday Telegraph the previous day. Always fun when right-wingers fall out.

  thescore.com, 18 May 2011. I do not normally do sport, apart from American football. I have a particular aversion to tennis, until they abolish the babyish second-service rule (‘Oh dear, you missed, why not have another go?’). And I have never heard of Novak Djokovic. But this, asked by Irish website The Score, is a fine Question to Which the Answer is No.

  Harold Camping, 21 May 2011. That was when the American doomsday cultist predicted the world would end. All right, he did not use those exact words. Those words were used by Peter Cook in a sketch called ‘The End of the World’, from Beyond the Fringe in 1962. The answer, however, was the same.

  Daily Mail, 31 May 2011. The Daily Mail did it again. Someone had left the autostorybot on overnight. The photograph might be of a Petri dish for all I know.

  Tim Karan, newser.com, 3 June 2011. The Smurfs were socialists and ‘the embodiment of a totalitarian utopia, steeped in Stalinism and Nazism,’ said Antoine Buéno, a French sociologist, in a new book, Le Petit Livre Bleu, prompting Tim Karan at the news website Newser to ask this question. Coincidentally, the BBC then asked on 27 June, possibly in relation to the film, The Smurfs, which was about to be released: ‘Do Smurfs provide a model for a good society?’ To which the answer was also no.

  Mail Online, 5 June 2011. I knew my lost key would turn up.

  Andrew Cryan, BBC News website, 5 June 2011. Another one who thinks he can avoid inclusion in the series by using the word ‘could’. No, London could not.

  Peter Oborne, the Sunday Telegraph, 5 June 2011. Oborne thought that Cameron was more pro-European than Harold Wilson, James Callaghan, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Right-oh.

  Guardian, 14 June 2011. This headline on Leo Hickman’s article in the Guardian was runner-up for the Guardian-Compass Wistful Non-Materialist Trophy. The trophy takes the form of a model yurt made of goat poo.

  Speakers Forum session, Glastonbury, 23 June 2011. The title of a talk, away from the music, at the 2011 Glastonbury Festival. The kind of tofu-based dottiness that almost makes one want to give it all up and live in a yurt made of goat poo.

  Guardian, 21 June 2011. The strange ideological alliance of the Guardian and the Daily Mail greeted the death of Brian Haw, the protester who camped in Parliament Square, with unjustified reverence on 21 June 2011.

  Daily Mail, 22 June 2011. Dramatis personae: Harry, a prince and younger brother to the heir to the throne; Pippa Middleton, younger sister to the wife of the heir to the throne. Synopsis: They had been photographed talking to and smiling at each other.

  Andrew Brown, Guardian, 23 June 2011. Good thing it does not arise, really.

  Jeffrey Archer, Twitter, 23 June 2011. A question asked by Jeffrey Archer himself, or at least by his Twitter account.

  Daily Mail, 27 June 2011. The Automatic Question to Which the Answer is No Generator at the Daily Mail had been left on overnight again. The newspaper reported that a video ‘has emerged’ apparently depicting ‘a mother ship and its fleet’ in the sky ‘above a BBC building in West London.’ Extra marks for that wonderfully unspecific ‘has emerged’. From the bowels of the Earth, no doubt.

  Daily Mail, 30 June 2011. For some reason the same headline appeared in the Daily Mail twice two weeks apart, on 30 June and 15 July 2011. Paul Dacre, the editor, was obviously trying to put me off. Would he succeed? That was question number 675.

  Prospect magazine, July 2011. This question, asked on the cover of the July 2011 edition, shows that serious intellectual magazines can be just as hysterically catastrophist as any newspaper. It did not mean ‘Europe’, or even ‘the European Union’, but ‘the euro’, and, even then, the answer was still no, as it was the euro that was imposing economic hardship on Greece, rather than the other way round.

  Ruth Gledhill, The Times, 2 July 2011. Depending on whether or not one thinks He is saying, ‘Thou shalt not play cricket.’

  Daily Telegraph, 7 July 2011. Asked by the Daily Telegraph of McCain Potato Smiley Faces. Other candidates, all nominated by MPs (Smiley Faces are made in Gavin Williamson’s South Staffordshire constituency), included the Aga, custard creams and loo roll.

  The Economist, 7 July 2011. I had no idea what The Economist was on about. Something about the threat of a trade ban being lifted on Pororo, ‘one of South Korea’s most popular cultural exports’, which might have fallen foul of a US embargo on North Korean products, because animators from the communist North had worked on some episodes of the TV programme.

  Daily Mail, 17 July 2011. Unfortunately, the question was ruled out of order. As Omer Lev pointed out, the answer could be yes, if the dieters had been praying for a wristband.

  Francis Beckett, Dale & Co. blog, 27 July 2011. Asked by Francis Beckett, a great admirer of Attlee. But even if you are not an admirer of Attlee, the answer is still no.

  Le Monde, 16 August 2011. The series went international with this, in Le Monde (‘Will smartphones soon be equipped with airbags?’). Michael McCarthy, my colleague who saw this, asked, ‘Is there no end to the onward march of Franglais?’ Which was, of course, another one.

  The New Yorker, 16 August 2011. Asked by David Holmes after the previous weeks’ riots, complete with a list of Games that had been cancelled because of world wars. Typical American overreaction.

  Bloomberg, 17 August 2011. Bloomberg, the financial news service, asked this about the insurgent right-wing populist movement that destabilised the Republican Party. You know, if I were an evil mastermind in Beijing, bent on the destruction of the US, that is how I would go about it too.

  dailycensored.com, 27 August 2011. Asked by The Daily Censored, a website with the slogan, ‘Underreported News and Commentary’. News can be either censored or under-reported but not, I submit, both. Either way, however, the answer was no.

  Andrew Hawkins, Total Politics, 27 August 2011. Asked by Andrew Hawkins, chairman of ComRes, the opinion polling company, writing for Total Politics. The crisis of th
e eurozone had driven Eurosceptic opinions in Britain to new high levels.

  Michael K. Reynolds, 30 August 2011. Asked by Michael K. Reynolds, whose slogan is, ‘Real Life. Real God,’ on his own website. Unfortunately, this introduced a meditation on the metaphor of using loose clothing to conceal weight gain, rather than any interesting archaeological speculation about Judaean dress norms in the 1st century.

  Daily Mail, 1 September 2011. One of my correspondents, Graham, spotted this headline in the Daily Mail, which went on to say that the police had found a four-year-old girl, ‘left home alone by her holidaying mother after arresting 16-year-old brother in stolen car.’ He thought this sounded familiar, so he searched for the phrase, and found this, from the Daily Mail on 10 July 2008: ‘Is this Britain’s worst family? Head of clan with 250 convictions stole sister’s identity to net £85,000 in benefits.’ As he said, one of them has to be number 704 in the series.