THERE is something great about watching a celebrity have a temper tantrum, isn’t there?
You cannot help but feel a little bit of deliciously awkward glee when some puffed up TV host or overpaid actor throws a hissy fit and storms off in a huff.
It is just so - HUMAN of them.
There have been disappointingly few good on-air flounces in recent years.
Before Piers Morgan’s petulant departure from the Good Morning Britain studio this week after being challenged over his comments about the Duchess of Sussex, only the Bee Gees leaving Clive Anderson’s show in 1997, following his relentless insults about their music, or former defence secretary John Nott storming out of Robin Day’s interview in 1982 after the latter suggested he was a ‘here today, gone tomorrow’ politician, stick in the memory.
The Cambridge Dictionary defines to flounce as to ‘walk quickly with large, noticeable movements, especially to attract attention or show that you are angry.’
The art of flouncing with dignity is a difficult one to master.
Once you have started, you have to follow through, otherwise you’ll just look daft. In the olden days, when you could gather up your significant skirts and swoosh out of a room and into your carriage with a curt, ‘Good DAY to you’, it would have been much more dramatic.
(A flounce is also defined as a ‘wide strip of ornamental material gathered or sewn to a skirt or dress, so maybe that’s where it came from. I need to ask Susie Dent.)
Interestingly, the term exists in the virtual world now too, although social media flouncing sounds even less satisfying. The Urban Dictionary defines it as ‘to leave an internet group or thread with exaggerated drama; deleting posts, notifying mods and or group users, and cross-posting on other groups to draw attention to the drama.’
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Children, of course, have flouncing down to a tee. From furious toddlers to sulky tweens, they can turn leaving a room in a bad mood into an art form. It’s quite something to watch.
But for grown-ups, faced with staying and responding to criticism or poutily clomping off muttering insults at anyone who will listen, it is difficult to maintain the high ground when you choose the latter.
“You can trash me, mate, but not on my own show,” said Morgan, as he walked off the set, which is pretty much an adulthood version of “it’s my game and you’re not playing.”
A suitable response might therefore have been, “so you can dish it, but you just can’t take it?”
It was not just Beresford who took exception to Morgan’s comments - more than 41,000 people complained to Ofcom in the wake of them.
For a man not known for staying silent, his decision to flounce off rather than face the music is foolish, disappointing and ultimately, just a bit pathetic.
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