Helen Mirren rant: If only we could all silence other people's noise like Queen Helen says MAX HASTINGS
One doubts whether even Prince Philip has ever heard the Queen resort to obscenities — even when one of her horses has lost.
But astonished passers-by outside London’s Gielgud Theatre had that privilege on Saturday night, when the monarch let fly a torrent of four-letter invective at a samba band.
Of course, this was not really our beloved monarch, but our beloved Dame Helen Mirren, who is playing the Queen in the hit play The Audience.
When the thunder of drumming outside threatened to drown out the cast’s voices, she stormed offstage and into the street clad in wig, green dress and pearls, to harangue the drummers, who were advertising a music festival.
‘Shut the **** up,’ she said. ‘People have paid a ****ing hundred pounds to go to the theatre and you are **** ing ruining it.’
Up and down Britain, not only other actors but millions of people responded by offering Dame Helen an ovation — for she was taking a brave stand against a threat to the health and happiness of us all.
We may not have frenzied samba bands outside our doors, but instead we endure almost ceaseless persecution by the noise of others: aircraft and helicopters, mobile phones and stereos, road drills and vehicles.
Mankind has created all these machines to do our bidding, but they generate noise, noise, noise.
By far the most common cause of warfare between neighbours is the din they make: Which? Legal Service claims this blight afflicts five million British people.
One of the worst fates that can befall a household is for next-door’s teenagers to be given a karaoke machine for Christmas.
Domestic rows and screams of passion are commonplace sources of distress.
More... 'They were very sweet and stopped the minute they knew I wasn’t just a batty old woman': Queen Helen on the moment she stormed off stage to confront a noisy drumming troupe Route to peace and quiet... roads made of old tyres: Recycled rubber could soon be used to resurface nation's busiest roads Navy sonar 'did cause mass dolphin deaths' say scientists who blame war games exercise off Cornish coast for strandingsAt Stoke-on-Trent magistrates’ court last December, 43-year-old Julie Griffiths was served with an anti-social behaviour order after she repeatedly kept her neighbours awake shouting at her husband.
And in 2010, Radio 2 presenter Vanessa Feltz was fined £3,000 after presiding over a weekend-long party in the garden of her North London home.
Such things may sound funny — unless you happen to live in the neighbourhood of the likes of Griffiths or Feltz.
Our convenience profits mightily from labour-saving machinery, but extractor fans, hairdryers, juicers, food- blenders and washing machines make a din that often echoes through the house. We bear this because it is self-inflicted, but other nuisances are not.
Helen Mirren, circled, pictured outside the theatre to remonstrate with revellers who were making noise 'Shut the **** up,' she said. 'People have paid a ****ing hundred pounds to go to the theatre and you are **** ing ruining it' Too loud: In 2010, Radio 2 presenter Vanessa Feltz was fined £3,000 after presiding over a weekend-long party in the garden of her North London homeOf 450,000 public complaints investigated each year by local authorities, two-thirds relate to neighbours’ noise complaints.
I have never forgotten the experience of our old daily help of 40 years’ standing — a Londoner through and through — who was eventually driven to emigrate to Australia in her late 70s because she could no longer endure the family next door playing reggae music through the night.
It is easy to laugh about noise, and fail to recognise the deep distress it causes.
Our homes are the only ones we have got. They should be havens of quiet.
Out in the street, a curse of summer is the plague of stereos playing full blast in cars with open windows or roofs.
There is sometimes a temptation to reproach a noisy driver at traffic lights. But unless you are Dame Helen Mirren — dressed up as the Queen or not — he or even she is quite likely to respond by jumping out and punching your nose.
A whole generation has been reared to believe in an absolute personal right to self-expression, which includes making as much noise as they feel like.
Street life: There is sometimes a temptation to reproach a noisy driver at traffic lights. But unless you are Dame Helen Mirren he or even she is quite likely to respond by jumping out and punching your noseChallenging this can be deemed as a lack of respect, an insult to their virility or citizenship.
Noise on trains and planes can get pretty bad, too. Airlines plant small babies wherever their parents happen to fancy, instead of corralling them as a group at the front or back.
A screaming infant on a short-haul flight is a mere irritant. But on a trip to the U.S. or, worse still, Australia, it can become a nightmare, as some of us know from experience. No cash compensation is offered for lost sleep or even reason.
By far the loudest noises on farms are made by the vehicle-reversing alarms imposed by health & safety gauleiters, which are often audible a quarter of a mile away.
Many urban households are likewise jolted awake before their time by the screeching alarms on rubbish trucks.
A whole generation has been reared to believe in an absolute personal right to self-expression, which includes making as much noise as they feel likeNo one can convince me that these warnings need to be so extravagant. As always with health & safety, the blight imposed by their precautions imposes a nuisance out of all proportion to the risk to public safety.
Silly sociologists praise the togetherness promoted by open-plan offices. But they can be a nightmare for workers trying to read or think near a colleague with a booming voice like my own, or who gossips down the phone to family and friends all day.
Some bosses think they show community spirit by working in a common space with their staff, but it seems crazy to buy shares in their companies.
It is hard to imagine how corporate movers and shakers can use their brains amid the clamour of a busy office.
There are the wails and screams of mobile phone ringtones, the clatter of the document-shredder, the choking and groaning of water dispensers, not to mention all those colleagues who cannot have a giggle with a mate without causing every window in the building to vibrate.
At home, many of us are hypocrites about garden machines. We are driven mad by the din they make — except when we use them ourselves. Chainsaws are the worst offenders, but hedge-trimmers run them pretty close, and ride-on lawnmowers are no joke.
Only sadists start up before say, 8am, but thereafter on summer weekends, it is hard to escape them save atop a mountain in the Lake District.
And even in the Lakes you are seldom safe from the high-pitched whine of power-boat engines. I know Donald Campbell used to boost British pride by driving his Bluebird there 50 years ago, but it was surely a huge mistake to allow any motorised boats on the water save the quiet old ferries.
We need places in this overcrowded island that are preserved as havens of tranquillity. These become increasingly precious because there are so few of them, even in the countryside, where helicopters create an even more intrusive din than planes.
Max doubts if the drummers on the pavement outside the Gielgud Theatre on Saturday night gave a moment's thought to the grief they were causing those inside, because insensitivity to others is also part of adolescenceIt is a natural part of being young that you like to make and listen to loud noise — I remember feeling that way, forty-something years ago.
I thought I was the coolest thing on the block in my open-top MGB with a state-of-the-art Motorola radio — and I am afraid plenty of people could hear me trying to make my point.
I doubt if the drummers on the pavement outside the Gielgud Theatre on Saturday night gave a moment’s thought to the grief they were causing those inside, because insensitivity to others is also part of adolescence.
But society as a whole must recognise the value of quiet, and the right of a neighbourhood not to be persecuted by the reckless noise-making of others.
It is always best to mitigate nuisance by persuasion, if possible. But chronic offenders take no heed, and legal sanctions are essential against the worst noisy neighbours.
The police should show more sympathy with complainants than they often do, and the courts must recognise the misery excessive noise causes to individuals and communities.
I am always instinctively on the side of villages fighting against rock festivals — and for that matter opera festivals.
Only Dame Helen Mirren could impose her special brand of protest on a public nuisance, but we should all be glad that she has struck a blow against the bane of our times: promiscuous din.
