VIEWPOINT
After the reappearance of the vuvuzela at recent summer events, our columnist calls for this irksome plastic horn to be banned
Do you remember the vuvuzela, the tuneless horn that ruined the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa for so many? I regret to inform you that reports of its death are greatly exaggerated; first we heard it during the Soccer Aid charity match at Old Trafford in June and then again at the Notting Hill Carnival in August. At least we have been spared it so far at the Rugby World Cup.
Of course, rugby fans have their own travails with noise. We’ve got used to visiting French teams bringing along their supporters, with an entire band in tow, the bass drums of which are stuffed implausibly into the pantalons of an obligingly obscure local mayor. They then shuffle past dozy turnstile officials who reveal they know quite as much about the average Frenchman as the good people of 1800s Hartlepool who – or so the story goes – hanged a monkey under the impression it was a French spy, because the poor thing could not speak English. The turnstile officials are still none the wiser when the French band strikes up La Marseillaise, saluting the fact that the team happens to be leading by a point or two. I think I have even caught the skirl of illicit pipes during a recent Calcutta Cup match between Scotland and England. God only knows what the turnstile operative made of the man with what appeared to be six prominent nipples on his left shoulder.
But the point about both drums and bagpipes is that they are designed for the collaborative making of music, whereas the vuvuzela is sold as a solitary vice, intended to produce a noise that should only be heard in the bathroom. Or perhaps as an accompaniment to caricaturist James Gillray’s scathing attack on the future George IV, A Voluptuary under the Horrors of Digestion. In the picture, an indolent, corpulent Prince George sprawls in a chair, surrounded by pills and potions for ‘stinking breath’ and ‘the piles’, an overflowing chamber pot at his side.
A rather pathetic defence has been made for vuvuzelas, that they were at least authentically African – presumably after an unreported pandemi
