Now then, now then, it takes guts to be tasteless

Death of a legend: Jimmy Savile
12 April 2012

It's usually seen as a pejorative term, but this week we surely saw vulgarity revealed as a force for good. Jimmy Savile was buried at 2pm today in Scarborough, reportedly at a 45-degree angle so he could look out over the bay. But before that he lay in state in the Queens Hotel in Leeds, in a garish tracksuit and a gold-lacquered coffin, his two books from This Is Your Life and a half-smoked cigar displayed alongside a typically pop-eyed, gurning photograph.

Thus did the late DJ, charity fundraiser and full-time weirdo display in death the same forehead-smacking levels of bad taste that he showed in life. In so doing, he both confronted and demystified the end of life in a far more effective manner than, say, Joan Didion's elegant new memoir of grieving, Blue Nights. 'Ow's about that, then?

The funeral at Leeds' Catholic cathedral was planned as a staid affair, but I can't help feeling it would have been immeasurably enhanced if guests Norman Tebbit and DJ Mike Read had turned up in Day-glo sportswear, esoteric sunglasses and a ton of bling apiece in honour of Savile. And if the flowers sent by the Bee Gees actually spelled out the words "Now then, now then". And if the entire congregation sent the coffin off with a mass rendition of the Jim'll Fix It theme tune.

We should embrace vulgarity. It is a riposte to all that is formal, suppressed, small-c conservative and sombre. Vulgarity is exuberant, joyful, life-affirming. As a test, ask yourself who you would rather spend time with: the cast of The Only Way is Essex with their vajazzles, giggly orange faces and primary-coloured clothes, or the dead-eyed, sober-suited egomaniacs of The Apprentice? No contest, is there?

For years, the likes of Savile - and Timmy Mallett and Su Pollard - were eccentric exceptions. Today, vulgarity is ascendant across every social class, from Katie Price to the giggling pinheads of Made in Chelsea.

This takes guts. Good taste, like tragedy, is easy. It largely consists of dressing and decorating in shades of beige and reading the books and eating the foodstuffs that are deemed to be the right ones. Bad taste, like comedy, is hard. It takes effort and imagination, and the will to go against the general consensus. Good taste is safe: vulgarity takes bravery. Or at the very least, boldness.

Many of the great artistic revolutions have been rebellions against good taste, from Stravinsky's Rite of Spring to Cubism. The British Government's attempts to ban James Joyce's Ulysses and DH Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover, although couched as issues of morality, were purely inspired by their perceived vulgarity. Fashion, too, could be described as a series of outrages against good taste, from the top hat to the entire output of Versace to Lady Gaga's meat dress.

Jimmy Savile was part of a long and honourable tradition that keeps our culture fresh and alive. His great feat was to sustain a look that he first crafted in the Fifties across six decades. Vulgarity is often the province of the young, but Savile embodied the spirit of Jenny Joseph's poem Growing Old Disgracefully:

"I shall wear purple - with a red hat which doesn't go, and doesn't suit me." Far from a figure of fun, he was - goodness gracious - an example, boys and girls.

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