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The angry
brigade Ian Paisley Anger will
never be the same after the Reverend Ian Paisley retires his shouty mouth and
bangy fist from the frontline of Northern Irish politics in May, when he will
step down as First Minster and DUP leader. Gosh, he's had an angry career. The
Pope made him angry, gays made him angry, Jerry Springer: The Opera made him
angry, nationalists made him really angry. Once renowned for yelling
"Never! Never! Never!" when discussing engagement with the peace
process, Dr Paisley later modified his views to something like "Oh,
alright then, if you insist". In recent years, however, he's mellowed like
a softening old fruit, sharing hearty – and previously unthinkable – laughs
with his Sinn Fein counterpart Martin McGuinness. What has come over him?
Perhaps it's the title on his office door: "First Minister." And on
McGuinness's door? "Deputy First Minister." TW Heather Mills Yes, Heather
Mills is angry, and she wants us all to know it. After all, if you'd just been
awarded close to £25m by the divorce courts, wouldn't you be angry? She seemed
such a nice girl when she first came to public attention, as the victim of an
accident that saw her lose a leg and inspired her to get involved in the
charity work she so likes to remind us of. Then she married Paul McCartney. The
press painted her as a gold-digger and she simmered quietly until the marriage
hit the rocks, the soft-porn pictures hit the pages of The Sun, and Heather's
frustration boiled over in one great pouty-mouthed paroxysm of rage. She gets
two points for fighting for throwing a jug of water over her ex-husband's
lawyer – a highbrow version of hitting a photographer. TW Grace Jones How anyone as
innocuous as poor old Russell Harty could merit a slap across the face is a
question only the supremely angry Grace Jones can answer. In 1981, she struck
Harty live on air as he turned to speak to his other chat show guests. Harty
was just doing his job, but that was enough to make Jones snap. Later, as the
fiery May Day, in the James Bond film A View to a Kill, Jones' hard-edged
hairdo and flared nostrils made her a formidable sparring partner for Roger
Moore. In 2005, she verbally abused a member of staff on Eurostar – she must
have missed the signs reminding her that attacks on railway staff do not go
down well with the management. She was ejected from the train, though later
claimed that she alighted of her own volition. TW Richard Littlejohn The angry man
at the heart of one of our great nation's angriest newspaper operations,
Richard Littlejohn has forged a career from righteous indignation. His column
in the Daily Mail has given him a pulpit from which to pour scorn on political
correctness, the EU, the Royal Family, compensation culture and the nanny
state. He's no great fan of asylum-seekers, nor prostitutes. While the Suffolk
strangler was on the rampage, Littlejohn described Steve Wright's victims as
"no great loss". Littlejohn also has an ongoing spat with Johann
Hari, of this parish, who takes issue with his column's frequent unflattering
mentions of homosexual practices. Often accused of being a right-wing
propagandist, he can, at least, argue that the BNP makes him just as angry as
everything else. TW Harold Pinter Harold Pinter
is the quintessential radical intellectual. The socialist, millionaire
playwright would portray himself as a lover, not a fighter – but he's the most
combative pacifist in British cultural life, with an angry opinion to declare
in his spare, crackling prose on everything from the war in Iraq to... well,
mostly the war in Iraq. In the past, he has been angered by other incidents
resembling the war in Iraq, such as the war in Kosovo, the war in Afghanistan
and the Gulf War. His ire is nothing if not predictable. Even when accepting
one of his many, many awards – among them the Nobel Prize for literature –
Pinter can't resist having a pop at US foreign policy. Many of his plays
revolve around thinly veiled accusations directed at Western governments.
Unfortunately for those governments, when a Nobel winner gets angry, people
don't just point and laugh. They listen. TW Sir Alex Ferguson The ruddy
Manchester United manager reserves much of his ire (and there is much) for the
BBC. Since 2000, Ferguson has refused to speak to the corporation in a rift
over critical remarks made by BBC man Pat Murphy and 5 Live commentator Alan
Green. Already-charred bridges were burnt to a crisp four years ago when a BBC
documentary accused Ferguson's agent son, Jason, of exploiting his father's
position. Last year, he accused the corporation of "arrogance beyond
belief". His reputation on the field is just as fearsome: players
including Paul Ince, Jaap Stam and Dwight Yorke have left the club after
bust-ups. In 2003, Ferguson's "poorly aimed" kick at a stray football
boot left David Beckham nursing stitches above his left eye. SU Cameron Diaz Cameron Diaz
doesn't just confront photographers, she takes them to court. Once, when snapped
by a pair of paparazzi while out with her then-beau Justin Timberlake, Diaz
snatched one of their cameras as "evidence". And when a photographer
tried to sell her back topless shots taken when she was a model, she saw him
sent to jail for forgery, perjury and attempted grand theft. Not someone to get
on the wrong side of, then, as Timberlake learned to his cost. He allegedly
found himself on the sharp end of more than one dressing down, including one
reported incident shortly after they split, in which Diaz took exception to him
talking to actress Jessica Biel after an awards ceremony. Timberlake is now in
a relationship with Biel, so either he's particularly spiteful, or Diaz was
right all along. TW Robert Mugabe Behind the
Hitler moustache (he counts the Nazi leader as a role model), and public fist
waving, the despotic Zimbabwean president could probably use a few sessions in
anger management. Indeed, he once boasted that, in addition to his seven academic
degrees (including in economics from the University of London – he presumably
bunked off during the lecture on rampant inflation), he had a "degree in
violence". As Mugabe fought to take the reigns of the former British
colony in the 1980s, rival leaders died mysteriously, one in a car crash. An
opposition newspaper saw its printing press blown up and journalists tortured,
while challengers of the regime have been beaten. More recently, he has said
homosexuality "degrades human dignity", calling on citizens to
"arrest" gays and hand them over to the police. SU Colin Montgomerie The dubious
distinction of being the best golfer never to win a major open (he has come
second five times) is enough to make any man angry. Add to that persistent
heckling from unimpressed American spectators (they coughed as he prepared to
swing and called him "Mrs Doubtfire" in the 1990s) and a £15m divorce
that nearly wrecked his career as well as his bank account, and it's no
surprise that the nearly man of British golf has, as his stateside doubters
might say, "issues" that make press conferences after his off-days
suitable only for the bravest of journalists. Golf is that sort of game,
though: during a clash with Geoff Ogilvy in Miami on Monday, Tiger Woods
announced: "Next time a fucking photographer shoots a picture [on my
backswing], I'm going to break his fucking neck." SU Tom Aikens What is it
about chefs that make them so livid? Gordon Ramsay made a career out of it (he
can cook a bit, granted), while the names Pierre White, Roux, Bourdain and
Locatelli have become synonymous with cooker-side clashes. Michelin-starred
chef Tom Aikens can stake a claim as one of catering's hottest heads. In 2004,
he humiliated himself when he wrongly accused a diner of pocketing a French
Ecuis spoon worth £25. Sarah Roe, a company director with a six-figure salary,
told reporters: "I'm standing there with my Celine dress and Cartier bag
and a receipt for more than £600 in my hand, and he's accusing me of stealing a
coffee spoon. It was unbelievable." In 1999, Aikens, who has said that
theft from restaurants is "out of control", lost his job at the
leading London restaurant Pied-à-terre after allegedly branding a sous-chef
with a palette knife. SU Naomi Campbell The south
London-born supermodel has a list of transgressions as long as one of her
perfectly sculpted legs. She has been accused of assaulting various
assistants/housekeepers with, variously, a telephone, a BlackBerry, a fist, and
a mobile phone. In 2006, she allegedly caused £30,000 worth of damage to her
lover Prince Badr Jafar's £1.5m yacht after an Italian chef's "romantic"
meal failed to float her boat. Quotes from victims and witnesses of her angry
outbursts include: "She punched me in the face. She was like Mike
Tyson"; "She's a violent super-bigot"; and "All hell seemed
to break loose. All you could hear was shouting and screaming." SU Russell Crowe The Antipodean
hard nut is as famed for his short fuse as he is for his Oscar-winning acting.
Most famously, in 2005 he was charged with assault after he threw a telephone
at a concierge in a Manhattan hotel,. A conditional release and $100,000 fine
later, Crowe described it as "possibly the most shameful situation that
I've ever gotten myself in... and I've done some pretty dumb things".
Other incidents include a scuffle at a hotel, a row with a BAFTA producer and a
brawl at a London sushi joint broken up by Ross Kemp. SU How angry
are you? 1. Your next-door neighbour reverses his knackered Peugeot into your new Bentley Convertible and smashes a headlight before driving off. Do you: 1) Post a sternly worded letter through his front door, insisting he asks his insurance company to pay for the repair? 2) Send him a basket of fruit, with a note expressing regret about the accident but saying that "These Things Happen"? 3) Take a softball bat to all his ground-floor windows and leave a Post-it note on the last one saying, "Whoops! Sorry!" 2. You're in a ruinously posh restaurant. You're starving but, after 20 minutes, there's still no sign of your first course. Do you: 1) Chat calmly to your date and say, reassuringly, "Mmm, these salt granules are simply delicious"? 2) Summon a waiter and explain that you must leave by 9.30pm for a show and it's imperative you eat very soon? 3) Tell the waiter you suffer from acute hypoglycaemic disorder, characterised by sudden urges to ram the chrome pepper-grinder up his fundamental orifice? 3. At the end of a morning's intense work on your computer, the screen goes blank and the words, "An error of the type E890 has occurred" appear. Do you: 1) Roll your eyes, make an exasperated clicking noise with your tongue and start again? 2) Seize the keyboard, snap it in half over your knee and jump on the keys, while tearing at your hair and shouting, "You did that on purpose, you electronic shit!"? 3) Ring an IT expert and ask why errors, especially classified ones, are an essential part of computer software these days? 4. You're in a bar in Shoreditch, trying to impress a Russian supermodel. A local ruffian jogs your arm and spills red wine over the lady's dress. Do you: 1) Seize the lady's drink and hurl it in the ruffian's face, followed shortly by a bunch of fives in the kisser? 2) Say, "Goodness, how fortunate that Tatiana's frock is exactly the same scarlet hue as a Zinfandel 2003"? 3) Explain to the man that your friend's father is a Moscow mafia boss and you can have him killed unless he buys you a large Stolichnaya and takes care of the dry cleaning? 5. You see a white-van driver extend an arm and casually drop a McDonald's carton on the road. You hate litter. Do you: 1) Run after him, shouting, "Don't you realise that nonbiodegradable waste contributes to the despoliation of the planet?"? 2) Run after him and flick a used Tube ticket through his window, to teach him a lesson? 3) Run after him, vault on to his bonnet, stand up and pee all over his windscreen, shouting, "I'm sorry, it's just something I had to get rid of..."? 6. You are at the airport with hand luggage. You have forgotten the rule against carrying liquids. The security lady says she must confiscate your shampoo. Do you: 1) Shrug resignedly, smile weakly and say, "Don't worry, it was only Herbal Essences."? 2) Complain that, frankly, it would take a pretty formidable terrorist to hold up a plane with 200ml of elderflower and aloe vera? 3) Seize the bottle, drink the entire contents and proceed to the aircraft (hoping the queasy feeling will pass by the time the drinks trolley appears)? Your score:
1. 1-B; 2-A; 3-C Mostly As – My, but you're the composed one, aren't you – slow to anger, calm in the face of fury-making provocation, positively Zen-like in your restraint. But is it possible that you might just be a teensy bit of a wimp? Mostly Bs – You certainly have a tendency to crossness when exposed to the world's irritations, but you express yourself through legalism or sarcasm. Are you afraid of letting your potential for anger get the better of you? Mostly Cs – Blimey. You're not Harold Pinter, are you? http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/anger-why-wersquore-all-losing-our-cool-800514.html |
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