From all I have read about the luminous-sounding Martyn Hett since he was murdered at the Manchester Arena on Monday night, he sounds like he would have relished his brother’s jaw-droppingly brave stewardship of his memory in the days since. When Martyn’s name began trending on Twitter, Dan Hett’s response was a masterclass in sombre seemliness: “He would, I think it’s safe to say, be fucking loving this.”
The next day, Mariah Carey had posted a picture of Martyn in a Mariah Carey T-shirt, accompanied by a devastated quote about the death of a member of her fandom. His brother’s response was one of those jokes that makes you gasp and laugh at the same time: “I was a little dubious about Martyn’s recent bold social media move,” he deadpanned. “But it worked.”
God, the sheer balls of that. How on earth can he manage to be properly funny at such an unimaginably awful time? Properly, involuntary laugh-inducingly, heartbreakingly, inspiringly, tragically hilarious? Their mother, Figen Murray – previously the beneficiary of one of Martyn’s genuine social media moves, when he managed to sell out her under-appreciated knitting craft stall – clearly raised some extraordinarily spirited children. “Martyn’s life was not wasted,” she said in the most noble and dignified of interviews, as she held a clutch of knitted teddies.
I must say I kept thinking of them as our old friend Abu Hopkins continued to preach hate on Twitter all week. Occasionally there are cultural moments where it seems right to pick a direction – to turn towards those who offer an ideal of who we as people might wish to be, and turn away from those who offer nothing, and do even that artlessly. The horror of Manchester is one of those moments.
Whatever our idealised “British values” are – and codifying them would obviously be appallingly against British values – they feel to me better embodied in the heroically black humour of Dan Hett in the days after his brother’s murder than in anything Katie Hopkins has said or written, ever.
Marina Hyde being amazing once again on the Manchester bombing, the brilliant Martyn Hett and how Katie Hopkins is really just another Roderick Spode. I don’t know what Britishness is - the whole point of it it’s that it’s impossible to tie down, to define. We’re not American. We don’t wave flags. There’s a reason my tag is “my patriotism is awkward and intermittent”. But Hyde gets it spot on here - people like Katie Hopkins and Spode, who go on about “British values”... don’t have any.
