"Graham Chapman is a doctor and writer." "His parents hoped for a serious jewish heterosexual son." "They were disappointed." "Tonight on Opinions he argues that we should all stop worrying about what the neighbours will say." "A chat about what will the neighbours say could become a dissertation, a pompous word, on peer pressure, which is both glib, and pompous." "To help me stop this, a little box in the bottom left of your screen will show the number of times the phrase peer pressure is used." "An important ethical, or sociological statement of global significance will be indicated by a letter of the alphabet in the bottom right hand corner of the screen." "Now that we've established these guidelines," "I hope you'll all sit back and really enjoy this stunning chat." "Incidentally, towards the end, there will be quite a lot of filthy talk." "Stories about sex, smutty revelations about big names, and what they get up to between the sheets." "Yes, the low down on the high life of the high fliers, rock, superstars, film, mega, and giga stars." "And not just towards the end either." "Then there will be some quite lavatorial bits in a few minutes." "There." "Well, what will the neighbours say?" "Now, as the son of a country copper, a parish PC, an urban district dickhead," "I was made aware of this phrase at a very early age." "If any of my family were the subject of gossip that would put the mockers on dad's promotional prospects." "Perhaps it was being so aware of this that made me ignore it totally." "I looked at my neighbours, and didn't care what they thought, if they did." "Scandalising and mocking nice decent ordinary folk became the mission of a lifetime." "Now, one thing that neighbours say almost universally, is that everyone should settle down, and get married, and have a family." "What a load of donkey do's!" "Why in grantham should anyone commit themself to a path of such mindstunting mediocrity?" "It's not as if the one thing the world really needs is more children." "There's nothing clever or difficult about the act of procreation." "There are four and a half thousand million of us on this crowded blue planet already." "And this will rise to twelve thousand million in forty years time, if people continue to settle down, get married, and have families." "Think of that." "Three times more people then there are now." "Try and find a job then, you family lovers." "Think of that you in the rush hour, or while you're on a crowded beach in Ibiza." "Now I know my voice gets louder and rises in pitch as I warm to my theme, but I'll try and change that." "Of course, the population of this country will not rise as quickly as that of the less educated part of the world." "But then, we're overpopulated already, you dumb clucks!" "I'm sorry." "Halve the population of Britain, and there might be hope of it being self sufficient." "With those who want to work in interesting jobs working, and those who don't, just reading books and playing snooker." "Recreating, but not reproducing ourselves, while robots, quite rightly, do all the messy, boring, and dangerous jobs we would have such fun creating them to do, like mucking out the anaconda." "I mean, swell me, two thirds of the world is starving now," "Our limited natural resources are rapidly being used up." "Oil, minerals, forestry, entire species of animals wiped out by humanity's unthinking expansion." "Think of this." "And think how, in the name of god, if there is such an entity, can people adopt an attitude of high morality when advising you to get married and have a family." "They are of course using an outdated morality, one of an age of primitive tribalism." "This is perpetuated by many modern religions and political beliefs." "In a tribal era, if you were going to survive primitive hand to hand combat with other tribes, you needed more tribespersons." "Tribespersons, through ignorance, were malnourished, ate lumps of dirt, swapped plagues with each other, and were generally infected and infested, living short lives in verminous clutches." "In those days, if they were going to survive at all, they had to reproduce like rabbits to make up the deficit." "It is precisely against such a background that many religions began." "The trouble is, they haven't changed their act since." "Silly people, silly pope." "And for those of you in Northern Ireland:" "You have noticed how I fell of my chair just then?" "Of course you did." "I commend your attention spans." "And for those of you who have short attention spans, and maybe are already staring blankly at the screens, going back to your knitting or just chasing crabs, wake up and pay attention!" "I don't intend to go over all this again." "If you are that stupid, or have just come into the room," "I am talking about what will the neighbours say, a little chat about peer pressure." "The way the weak and feeble amongst us allow others to determine the course of our lives." "Now, where was I?" "You know, even before a child is born, parents begin to worry about what the neighbours will say about it." "Do you want a boy or a girl?" "Now if it happens to be a boy, there's often extra celebration, presumably because of the tender thought that a boy may well earn more money later on, and not shame his family by not getting married and or getting pregnant." "Also it's thought boys are more likely to become sport stars, pop singers, union leaders, airline pilots, Harley Street proctologists etcetera." "But then aren't they also more likely to become second hand car salesmen, football hooligans, and or psychopathic mass murderers?" "As soon as a new infant arrives in the world, it is entered for a competition with the neighbours." "Will she be called Sarah Maude, or Charlene Chirrel?" "Will he be called Simon Bend, or Dwayne, or Darrell?" "How painful of painless was the delivery?" "How heavy was the baby?" "How long was it?" "Did it have hair, and were all its bits there?" "Does it even remotely resemble its father?" "Was its name put down for private school, and if so, how long before birth?" "Or is it so special that it should have no special privileges and be sent to one of the best local educational authority schools that the parents could just happen to live near?" "Fortunately, the neighbours have at long last admitted that they boobed over bottle feeding and now sensibly recommend the breast." "Look, we've run out of letters for the right hand corner already, and it's a bit confusing with that peer pressure thing going on in the other corner," "I think it'd be better if you'd just assumed that everything I say is stageringly important." "You won't go far wrong." "The next neighbourly competition is called milestones." "How much more quickly did your child learn to grin, walk, crawl, take that up, and deduct, teeth?" "All useful signs for the paediatrician looking for abnormalities, but even better for gossip." "Neighbours love to count their blessings as they label others as weirdos." "Simply being left handed once evoked prejudice." "How many left handed corkscrews or pianos have you seen," "I mean, real left handed pianos with notes the other way round, as a left handed person should have the right to expect." "Not fair, is it?" "Having decided the child's gender identity for it, the parents, motivated by fear of the neighbours, set about instilling in the creature how essentially all male or all female it must be." "Little boys don't cry." "And little girls don't play with piston engines." "What mindboggingly pathetic and emotionally stunting little rules they make up." "Dressed totally in pink, little girls are forced to play with cerebrum shatteringly tedious dolls and little model houses, so that later on, they'll not only merge in with their dull neighbours, but also play an important role in promotimg conservatism," "without even knowing where they got their ideas from." "Similarly, little boys, kitted out in blue, are given tiny motor cars, cricket bats, toy handgrenades, and excer sets." "And most importantly, even three and four year old lads are given frequent coy propaganda about girlfriends and plentiful reminders along the lines of, when you're all grown up and have children of your own, you'll understand." "What, what, what, what will that make anyone understand that they couldn't safely have read about with no risk to their personal freedom?" "What are they all so wound up about?" "Because of the family name?" "Because they need someone to look after them in their old age, selfish gits?" "Or is it because it would be a bad thing before one's neighbours if one's nice little girl turned into a bull dyke?" "Or such a tough little boy became a raving queen?" "Is homosexuality the common cause of parental death, as parents imagine, or is it really fear of what the neighbours will say?" "If someone has the sense to do what they want, and go to bed with someone of their own sex and not force replicas of themselves on the rest of this overcrowded world, good luck to them!" "They should be given medals, not demoted or importuned and locked up." "In this dreadful world of enforced sexual conformity, little girls are tutored to pure aspartame sweetness, and to raise their voices an octave, sounding more innocent and plaintive when asking for something, in a shop for instance." "The cute little mite lisps, Mummy, could I have some of those nice sweeties, when what she really needs is a smack in the teeth." "Welcome to the real world." "Little boys on the other hands are indulged to be conservatively naughty, cheecky, and non-effeminately grimy." "What they actually need for their education, is one day a month compulsory clad in a pink skirt." "Would Boy George be as he is, if he had been made to wear a pink skirt once a month from the age of six?" "You may have noticed just now a gentleman walk behind me, carrying a cardboard penguin." "If you didn't, then you're not paying attention." "I'm not saying all this for my own benefit you know." "I've gone to great lengths to research this talk so that the whole of mankind might benefit." "It's inattention to education that causes wars you know." "If the Germans had been wiser and cared less." "about what the neighbours had said, there would have been no world war two." "But no, you don't want to know, and all peace protesters are weirdoes, so the neighbours say, and the Americans have got no history and therefore can't think, and the Russians are all very very very very evil though I'm not quite sure how" "except that it involves the KGB and red something other..." "Oh, you globe full of ninnies, pull yourselves together!" "Don't you realise we're all the same underneath?" "At first, a baby is a greedy, selfish creature." "All it knows about are its own needs." "If monsieur Pasteur, mister Lister, doctor Fleming and miss Nightingale had been miss Dimm, most of us would have curled up our toes and died of infection long before reaching the ripe old age of twenty seven." "This is where education comes in." "But there are two types." "One is purely educational, in which society passes on its accumulated knowledge, artistic, historic, and scientific." "And is very very veryvery veryveryvery good." "The other is indoctrination, which poses as education, but is excrementally treacherous, deceitful, and prone to mythomania." "Who in the world would stoop so low as to indoctrinate?" "All religious leaders and politicians." "It's what their job's all about." "They say, here's a code of behaviour for you, now you won't have to do any of that difficult thinking." "Put these blinkers on and follow us." "Believe in god, and all that we say he says, or believe in the party, and all that we say you say." "Oh say can you see, rule Brittania, to keep the red flag flying here..." "I have seen the light!" "Ours is the true way!" "Yes, millions of people can be wrong." "They betray their ignorance and prejudice by their intolerance of other moralities, and their insistance that theirs is the only way." "I remember an ad, for volkswagen cars, which said that twenty five million people could not be wrong." "Remember world war two?" "Need I say more?" "So think, and don't blindly follow." "Choose the best bits of all philosophies you can find and build your own." "You don't have to be a christian, a muslim, a buddhist, a communist, a logical positivist or a vegan to use your brain." "In fact, to be committed to such a club is to sentence millions of brain cells to shameful inactivity." "Religion, nationalism, and political fervour are enemies of rational thought." "At best, dearest viewer, we should stroll a careful course, retaining our individualism and freedom and thought, while conforming only to social behaviour patterns which benefit and enlighten, rather than harm others." "Of course, the neighbours can be right." "Ultimately, it is the corporate consciousness of humanity against which our personal moralities are compared." "Thankfully, this corporate consciousness is not fixed." "It is growing and developing as it absorbs and accepts new ideas, ideas pioneered by individuals who it may once have persecuted, and who eventually become the heroes of man's search for truth." "Well, that's the end of a very long but well intentioned and important bit of chat." "Now, obviously, some of you may have allowed your minds to wander." "I know mine did." "So, here's a summary." "So, back to peer pressure." "During early childhood when" " I think I've just said peer pressure." "Oh dear." "During early childhood when selfishness predominates, fear of being the odd one out, ridiculed, jeered at, or thumped, creates a dangerous need to belong to the gang, the club, the social set." "Those excluded are punished by exclusion itself, not being talked to, or by not being played with, through various types of psychological torment to actual physical abuse." "Few of us leave this cruel, early phase of our lives unbruised." "Chapman's too thin." "Skinny!" "Long streak appears!" "G.C.'s a poof!" "Etcetera." "Gradually, we unlearn these unwise ways, and turn next to competition." "We must compete against each other, academically, and in sport, if we're not to be regarded as weird." "Competition can spur you on to great efforts, and seems to be essential to most otherwise innately lazy human beings, but you must beware of placing too much importance in competition, leading as it may to frustrations and feelings of failure," "or, just as bad, false impressions of superiority." "You remember Wilkinson, who was so brilliant in the sixth form, went straight on to get a first at Oxford, and then was never heard of again." "Although there was some talk of men in white coats." "Now of course, no-one would tolerate a brave new world mentality, where people are conditioned to accept permanent labels of superiority, or inferiority." "So isn't it surprising that's precisely what we do accept?" "The ignorants, the ignorant, convince themselves that their superiors are in fact inferior because they can't see that lounging around and being a selfish lout is a lot less effort and much more butch?" "Those who are educationally spoonfed believe it is only their own efforts that have brought about their superior status and others simply didn't work hard enough or are genetically inferior." "Everyone should be encouraged to progress to the full extent of their potential, not put in their place and forbidden further growth." "Later in life, fear of not belonging may even tempt us to be less than true to our inner convictions, leading us to denounce them and even paradoxically actively campaign against them, so convincingly hiding one's real thoughts." "What a pathetic way to live." "Whether you believe in an afterlife or not," "I think it's wiser to assume that there is none, and at least be true to yourself in life, as most likely this is your only shot at it." "So we pass through the selfishness of toddlerhood, the braggart cliqueishness of childhood, to come up against the obscenity of suddenly having a larger set of genitals clamped onto us." "Now, some view this prospect with pride, and yet another valid area for competition." "Whisper whisper whisper." "Because the one thing the neighbours cannot talk about to each other openly is sex." "Even though privately it's their favourite topic of conversation." "Didn't you know that, one pubescent taunts another." "The would-be grown-up is afraid to ask through fear of ridicule." "Parents should tell their children more about sex." "Parents should be told more about sex." "Teachers should teach more about sex and friends and lavatory walls be more sexually literate." "There are fewer dark areas now, but it's not long since neighbours thought that the female orgasm was unnecessary, and rare." "Masturbation was thought to stunt growth and lead to blindness, and marriage was the only cure." "What bladderschitic bunk!" "It's a common misconception of the sexually literate, that sex consists of a male putting his penis into a vagina, and pumping away until orgasm and that is all." "There is no other valid form of sex." "Now this used to be regarded as the British missionary position, a form of sexual gratification indulged in by those weary of other entertaining possibilities." "I'm not just talking of a number of different sexual positions, which despite the acrobatics are still in essence penis up the vagina, fun though they may be." "Full sexual orgasm as everyone should really know can be achieved in mutual masturbation for instance." "Which is not only unwanted pregnancy free, but minimizes the risk of venerial disease and teaches us a great deal about how to truly arouse our partners to heights of pleasure and gratification." "If there is one single area in which you can rely on your neighbours ignorance and intolerance, it is sex." "It may be a good way of meeting friends and forming deep relationships, but unfortunately it can arouse very destructive feelings of guilt, envy, and jealousy, and it's for this reason that sensible discretion on sexual matters is still a necessity." "I think you can expect people to object if you thrust sex under their nostrils." "Peer pre..." "Fear of being himself and what his immediate neighbours say pushes the young adult to conform by smoking carcinogetic cigarettes drinking poisonous quantities of alcohol, sniffing glue, smoking dope, snorting coke, shooting heroine, to demonstrate his or her independence." "Friends won't easily let you say no." "Sheeplike you follow others." "You attempt, your attempt to dress differently sadly becomes a uniform as desperately you try to avoid the rut you will inevitably fall into." "Pathetic aren't we." "Old age, our neighbours say, will make you less active, less attractive, more stupid and asexual." "And it will." "Far sooner than it might, if you make the mistake of believing stupid neighbours yet again." "Take care of your body." "Eat and drink sensibly, excercise your body and mind, and old age will not be the trial it is for many." "Grow old gracefully, say those bleeding neighbours, damn them." "Well don't give up without a huge struggle, yes even with time." "At last scientists are learning how to turn back some of our body clocks, good luck to them." "It's theoretically possible for a human being to live to a hundred and fifty years of age, let's push ourselves beyond their limits." "Limits are set to be broken." "Let us begin to treat the ageing process as a group of diseases that can be treated and not as some inevitable doom to be whispered about." "People who think they've gracefully accepted the inevitable are fond of saying, oh I wouldn't want to live forever." "Oh yes they would if they thought they had a chance." "The alternative is after all, death, which is a bit final." "Even if you think you're going to casually ooze off into some eternal nirvana, you've got the whole of eternity to do that in." "Why are we in such a rush to find out?" "It could be a dreadful disappointment." "And there are no return tickets." "I strongly suspect that death is the dullest state we could fall into, and should never be looked upon favourably by the sane." "It's nothing to be afraid of, just something to avoid." "Well, that's enough about death, now some smutty revelations about big names." "Right." "I happen to know that John Travolta, Neil Diamond with Marlon Brando and every commissioner of the metropolitan police except one." "Now, Arabs." "You may not want to know what an Arab thinks, but maybe you should." "Arabs, it seems, do care about what we think." "While the rulers in Iran were happy to bring back dismemberment as fit punishment for certain crimes, because of education and perceived world opinion these anachronistic leaders had to really scrape the barrel to find enough unaware idiots to carry out the sentences." "Nobody wanted to cut anyone's arms or even hands off." "Now there's progress." "Fortunately, communications are breaking down political and national barriers, and we're able to see round, over, and through them to glimpse people everywhere as they really are, and not as world leaders would like them to be seen." "We don't have to be judged by our local neighbours anymore, there is a bigger, global neighbour, who is more tolerant and understanding." "It is you, as you struggle to understand, tolerate, or disapprove, the ways of others." "I think I haven't said peer pressure six times?"