I am not the world’s most cheerful or optimistic man. Nor am I its most dour or pessimistic man, perhaps, but the latter claim has less comic understatement. Catch me at an average moment and I doubt I will be smiling. Ask me how I’m feeling and I doubt my “good” will totally convince you.
So, I struggle to identify with Tom Skinner — businessman and social media sensation. Mr Skinner, who first achieved public recognition by appearing on The Apprentice, seethes with a very English joie de vivre.
Skinner began working as a market trader at the age of 16. With maximal hard work and enthusiasm, he built his business up until he secured a place on The Apprentice. Alan Sugar fired him in the later stages of the series, but still paid tribute to his primal Englishness by saying that if he had had to choose a candidate to join him in the trenches he would have selected him.
On his Twitter account, where he has almost 350,000 followers, Skinner explodes with positivity. “Good Morning and HAPPY MONDAY you lovely people,” declares an average post. “Thank you for following my journey you legends.”
Skinner likes big portions and cold beer. He loves hanging out with his wife and children. He exhorts people to seize the day and not to go home “until yer proud”. He films videos of himself dining in his beloved Dino’s Cafe, enjoying monumental breakfasts, encouraging his viewers and ending every video with a buoyant exclamation of “BOSH”.
As a far more cynical and moody person, I wonder if Skinner is really so ebullient. Perhaps when his phone is in his pocket he hangs out in graveyards and broods? Perhaps he lies in bed and stares at the ceiling? The alternative is downright exhausting.
Skinner’s fans on the right appreciate his sunnily instinctual conservatism
Well, Skinner is a salesman, and I’m sure that there is some extent to which he has adopted a persona, but that need not mean that his persona is not largely true to life. Besides, it is not as if the world is lacking cynicism — or, for that matter, over-earnestness, resentment or self-pity. Skinner’s sheer exuberance is quite refreshing.
Skinner’s fans on the right appreciate his sunnily instinctual conservatism. He waves the English flag in front of an outraged left-wing grifter on Good Morning Britain. He celebrates his “bloody brilliant” countrymen with their “world class pubs” and their “proper sense of community”. He is properly furious about knife crime and the price of beer.
Skinner has alluded to a political future. I’m not going to wish a life in politics on him — just as I wouldn’t wish for someone to go to jail or spend a week in Luton. Is power worth the risk of losing your soul and your weekday breakfasts in Dino’s Cafe?
Still, British politics — and right-leaning British politics in particular — need a bit of the Skinnerian spirit — the good-humouredness, the love of family and home, and the commitment to working and playing hard. A lot of right-leaning commentators are aggressively shrill, miserably spiteful or (at least to some extent this author included) painfully jaded. Above all, we are obsessed with politics: Westminster politics, international politics and, above all, the culture wars. Reconnecting with the things we love as well as the things we love is essential to being truly serious. Nothing positive comes from mere negativity.
Clarkson’s Farm, as Kara Kennedy wrote for The Critic, was far more compelling than a thousand dour op-eds because it was imbued with love as well as disaffection. Nigel Farage has been popular, as Simone Hanna wrote in these pages, because people would like to share a pint with him as well as because people would like to hear him condemn the government.
I’m not going to be an optimistic soul any time soon. You won’t find me yelling “BOSH” over a morning curry in Dino’s Cafe. But I still appreciate what Tom Skinner is doing to cheer and motivate people — without the diarrheal talking points of right-wing grifters or the boorish exhibitionism of masculinity gurus.
We’ve created, Skinner says, an environment where we “don’t talk to each other”. Even those of us who spend more time brooding than bantering can hardly deny the validity of this. Good-natured advocacy for the small business and the local meeting place is a valuable corrective to the atomising spirit of modern technological and institutional life.
Britain has to smile, even amid such a mudslide of bad news, if it is going to return to a better path.
Okay, I’ll say it: bosh.
