[mattomac]

Regardless this isn't about what his political persuasion was, it is about that he committed vile acts on children, using it as a political point scoring exercise is a disgrace in my view.

[Big Rob]

Something similar is mildly true for Thatch and Savile. Tit for tat.

The only problem is when people cannot look past the conflation.

[AOB]

I've noticed, bang on cue, the good ol' general public are starting with their "I knew there was something about him" (or similar variation) comments. People are so tiresomely predictable. NO, YOU DIDN'T! Nobody who only knows Hall from tv or radio has ever thought there was anything dodgy about him.

Mind you, I've not read anything as bad as from this tosser in the Mail:

Absolutely no surprise at all. His lascivious-looking face says it all. Call me judgemental or lookism, but he has the face of a paedo. Disgusting.
- LiveWell, Dublin, Ireland, 2/5/2013 11:28

Mail readers judgemental? Noooooooooo! Anyway there's nowt to judge you fool. He's admitted it.

[lord_kobel]

Something similar is mildly true for Thatch and Savile. Tit for tat.

But he was more than likely protected by his close friendship with thatcher. Not true here...

[mojojojo]

I think when you discover that anyone has committed crimes like that it comes a surprise. Unless you knew all about it. Then you could you say it was 'no surprise at all'.

Eh, LiveWell?

[Big Rob]

Something similar is mildly true for Thatch and Savile. Tit for tat.

But he was more than likely protected by his close friendship with thatcher. Not true here...

Which is why I said mildly true.

What they have in common is links with political parties. Unless a political party specifies that child sexual molestation is okay, as part of its manifesto, then the fact that a paedophile has a political persuasion is entirely redundant.

Unless of course that party seeks to protect their friends who molest children.

[oboogie]

I think when you discover that anyone has committed crimes like that it comes a surprise. Unless you knew all about it. Then you could you say it was 'no surprise at all'.

Eh, LiveWell?

Everytime there's a high profile criminal case (rape, murder, serial killer, terrorist etc) there's always the relatives & friends interview where they say they had "no idea" and were taken completely by surprise.

D'you know what? I believe them.

It's a common feature of criminals that they are really rather keen on not getting caught and go to great lengths to cover up their activities. Surely your starting point in not getting caught has to be not shooting your mouth off to your family and friends about what you're up to?

[Big Rob]

Everytime there's a high profile criminal case (rape, murder, serial killer, terrorist etc) there's always the relatives & friends interview where they say they had "no idea" and where taken completely by surprise.

D'you know what? I believe them.

Usually yes. I cannot speak for all of them. However I agree that offenders of this type do go to great efforts to keep things hidden and threaten their victims into silence.

That's why it takes so long to catch these offenders on occasion.

[canus insanus]

The trouble is, we all know or have encountered fucknuggets like LiveWell. With their astonishing powers of deduction, maybe they should offer their services to HM Constabulary in the borough of Hindsight.

[ezinra]

The Mail is making hay out of something Hall said on a BBC programme ten years ago, but has overlooked this:

As it happens, the idea for an epitaph had just come to him.

'When I played (he was once offered terms by Crystal Palace), Joe Mercer called me a fanny merchant because all I wanted to do was beat people. I would not mind being known for that.'

— interview with "Radio 5 Live legend Stuart Hall" in the Daily Mail, 3 April 2010.

Thy will be done, liar.

[Silkyman]

The 'fanny merchant' expression probably comes from 'fannying around', but that's just a comment on his footballing ability to take the ball past an opponent, surely?

[oboogie]

The 'fanny merchant' expression probably comes from 'fannying around', but that's just a comment on his footballing ability to take the ball past an opponent, surely?

Correct. It's quite possible that a man of Hall's generation may be unaware of the alternative meaning of "fanny"*.

**Rambling O'Boogie etymology rumination alert!**

* In the 1940s, when Hall was young, "fannies" meant members of the FANY (First Aid Nursing Yeomanry) an all-female army unit who drove ambulances etc. I think we can be pretty sure that the army would have devised a different acronym if "Fanny" was slang for vagina. The alternative meaning had become popular by the 1970s enabling Dad's Army to get a laugh out of an officer remarking that he has a date with a Fanny.

[Fozzy]

I think oboogie's right. I have vague memories of a kid at school in the 60s called Fanny, I bet she banned that shortly afterwards.

[oboogie]

I have some cousins, the youngest of which are called Francis and Richard. When they were small (I'm a few years older than them) they were known as Fanny and Dicky (sometimes abbreviated to Dick). When I was about 11 (1975) and they were about 4 & 3 our two families were at the table for Christmas dinner. Richard was annoying his sister by nudging her causing some disturbance. To which my Aunt uttered the immortal admonishment, "Dick stop poking Fanny". In full Finbar Suanders mode, I collapsed in helpless guffawing and later, when I'd recovered sufficiently, had to deliver an excruciating explanation to the mystified adults as to what the hell was so funny.

[ezinra]

I thought a "fanny merchant" was a trickster, a deceiver, a liar. My copy of Partridge's unconventional English says "a glib talker". The "fanny" bit might be a freudian slip, but that's not what I was getting at.

Fanny is still a popular girls' name in France (eg, Fanny Ardant), thanks to Marcel Pagnol. The name first became fashionable in the 1920s, after the American singer and dancer Fanny Brice, a big star on the Paris stage.