JAN MOIR: Stacey Dooley's Comic relief photo sums

JAN MOIR: Stacey Dooley's Comic relief photo sums up an Instagram generation that cares most about me, me, me!

David Lammy is not happy about Stacey Dooley’s Comic Relief trip to Africa. Bad enough, his argument goes, that she swanned out there in the first place, trying to make a charity documentary and put some good in the world. Who does she think she is? A worthy person? Bah.

The Labour politician is enraged about something he calls ‘white saviour’ complex and has accused Dooley of using her Instagram account to make herself look like a ‘heroine’ trying to save ‘victim’ black children. While I don’t agree with his bigger argument about celebrities propounding what he calls hateful colonial imagery — privileged whites indulging themselves by tossing a crumb to oppressed blacks — hasn’t he got a point about her social media posts?

Dooley’s Instagram photographs from the Ugandan village where she was reporting on neonatal clinics and malaria have a queasy air about them.

I’m sorry, but they do.

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Here is the 31-year-old television reporter and Strictly Come Dancing star clutching a cute black baby, who looks none too pleased with the encounter

Here is the 31-year-old television reporter and Strictly Come Dancing star clutching a cute black baby, who looks none too pleased with the encounter.

Here she is again with the same toddler, head thrown back, laughing: hers, not his. He still looks a bit fed-up.

And has she applied a post-production vanity filter to make her eyes so blue, her skin so clear and her teeth so bright?

Since that would be so ghastly and inappropriate, such a glutinous splotch of first-world narcissism in the middle of this dusty safari of poverty, I’m going to give her the benefit of the doubt and presume she hasn’t.Next to the photograph of the random child — whom she never gives the dignity of a name — Dooley herself has written ‘OB.SESSSSSSSSSSED.’

Isn’t that peculiar? It suggests that this poor unfortunate boy, born into grinding hardship in one of the poorest countries in the world, is something desirable to obsess over, like a puppy or a new handbag or covetable pair of shoes.

That is before she sets him back down in the sub-Saharan dust and returns home to her glamorous life in the UK, of course. To make matters worse, Dooley’s African images were sandwiched between the cheery clatter of her usual Instagram feed.

Stacey posing for magazine photoshoots, Stacey drinking pink cocktails with her friends, Stacey pausing by a mirror to admire her matching accessories.

It insinuated that her Ugandan trip had been just one more pit stop on the carousel of her lovely life.

A heroine? Well as anyone on Instagram will tell you, it is all about me, me, me.

Anyone like Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeremy Clarkson and Nigella. To be honest, I regularly check into their Instagram to find out what they and everyone else are doing — and am never disappointed.

Gwyneth has just helped actress Drew Barrymore celebrate her birthday, and takes time to praises her ‘immense brain’.

Jeremy is on holiday with his girlfriend in Vietnam and spent the morning picking up litter from the beach. Nigella has just finished a trip to Australia, where she ate a lot of gingered tuna.

+5

Although she is not to blame for the social media self-obsession that currently engulfs society, perhaps she could have done more to encourage her 669,000 Instagram followers to understand and appreciate the gravity of her African trip

Meanwhile, are any of my enemies with Insta accounts in trouble or in pain? Let’s hope it is nothing trivial. These are the questions I ask myself while pouring a glass of rosé and happily scrolling through the not-so-secret lives of others, patrolling the very depths of their shallows.

I don’t post myself because I’m too busy wondering when and why everyone become so ‘OB.SESSED’ with putting the minutiae of their lives out there, for nosy parkers like me to consume as if they were episodes in a soap opera.

Even though a great number of celebrities are slyly marketing themselves rather than guilelessly sharing their lives, the concept of privacy and a real sense of self are beginning to be washed away in this ongoing sea of conceit.

And of course all this filters down into the ‘civilian’ population. Even children now film themselves doing many everyday things — for if you don’t record it and post about it, how can it possibly exist?

Of course, the weird culture of Instagram and other social media platforms is not unique to Stacey Dooley.

Millions use these sites to post the significant alongside the trivial, the profound together with the profane.

Perhaps she meant well, posing in the wretched village with the unknown little boy in her arms. Perhaps she thought there would be some benefit to posting the image online.

Yet it is hard to see what that benefit could be, except to burnish the halo and image of one Stacey Dooley.I hope I still live in a country where that will never be acceptable. Or excusable.

 

Horror. Ocado has ditched Waitrose in favour of M&S and for millions of middle-class shoppers, life will never be the same. Waitrose fans will have to use waitrose.com to have their olive breads delivered — or get used to the expensive treats at Marks. Not that it bothers me. I’m a Tesco girl all the way.

 

The BBC is losing viewers to streaming services such as Netflix and Amazon Prime.

Hardly surprising as the terrestrial channels are often so dull, with only the occasional nugget of joy —Killing Eve, The Night Manager — to distract us.

Making an appointment with yourself to sit down at an allocated time and stay there until you have watched the scheduled programme until the very end? Well, it all feels so last century, as old-fashioned as gathering around the steam radio to listen to the King’s Abdication speech, or enjoying music with an ear trumpet.

Now the BBC is preparing, along with ITV, to launch is own streaming service called Britbox. The Beeb plans to keep shows on its free iPlayer service for a year before they move onto the paying service.

This means those of us who have already paid £150 for a licence fee are going to have to pay again to watch something we have already seen. Fantastic! Where do I not sign up?

 

Oh so very disappointed with the Beeb’s new This Time With Alan Partridge. Yes, it was a clever idea to have Alan filling in on a One Show-style programme, it just wasn’t very funny. In a world where big beasts such as Richard Madeley and Piers Morgan roam free over the schedules, there is just no room for an Alan. Our eyeballs have been so scorched by the reality, we have nothing left for the parody.

Steve Coogan’s comic creation is a joy, but semi-successful Alan is just not as amusing as aspirational Alan. There was nothing as funny as the big plate he kept in his briefcase for the Travelodge buffet, or the bottomless desperation of his graveyard Radio Norfolk show. Back of the net? Not yet.