"How Dare You Resist!"

Something rapists probably say. But it's not just confined to them, is it?

Channel 4 is facing the wrath of female stars and staff...

Oh, what now? 

...for giving the actor Noel Clarke airtime to plead his innocence over groping claims by 20 women.

Employees at the network fear a Channel 4 documentary with the former Doctor Who star will allow him to seek sympathy and question why the public turned against him after the allegations.

You mean he should just lie there and take it, ladies? 

Women working across the entertainment industry are also incensed, with one well-known female star describing the planned show as 'an insult to every woman treated so appallingly by this man'.

Aren't you missing the word 'allegedly' there? He hasn't, after all, been convicted of anything. And he may never be...

Clarke, 46, is also believed to have sought the advice of an expert in reputational damage in an effort to navigate a successful comeback to the entertainment world.

Aha, that's the real issue for these malicious bitches - the idea that once they've cast their runes, he might escape his fate after all.  

Hint: It's Not The Americans Who Are Embarrassing Themselves Here...

I hadn’t even reached Ithaca, the tiny university town in upstate New York – my home for the next six years, as I studied for a PhD – when the confusion over my Blackness and British accent began. I was ill-prepared for Matt, the skinny white American in a cap sitting beside me on the plane.

“But you don’t seem like you’re from London,” he said (I’m from Hackney, and very proud). Matt had never been to the UK, let alone London.

Like a lot of Americans. I guess it's OK to sneer at them for that. Anyone sneering at young black British youth for their ignorance would no doubt draw ire so fast it'd make your head spin... 

This response emerges from the US’s own unique history of race and class. The British accent remains for some the epitome of white privilege, reviving memories of high-born English settlers and exuding an air of aristocracy. Blackness signifies the opposite. The property of those settlers. The lowest of the low. Slaves. And so I was violating the US’s time-worn prejudices. Matt was trying to put me back in my place.

Maybe he was trying to be friendly. Or chat you up? Raised, no doubt, on tv shows and films showing polite and friendly British folk, and not noticing the huge chip on both your shoulders... 

I think twice when crossing the road at night and hurry when I see a police car: a reflex that is as much response to the state violence that killed George Floyd as the realities of growing up Black in London.

I thought George Floyd's own violence played quite a big part in that. Funny how it never gets mentioned, isn't it?  

There’s also no shortage of Americans willing to embarrass themselves with stabs at “yes bruv” and “wagwan”. It’s music to my ears when I meet up with other Londoners (I’ve counted four so far) and we lay on an accent so thick some poor kid from Nebraska doesn’t know what language we speak.

Ah, yes. God forbid anyone treat you like that, eh?