Sorry, Risin’ Time with Maxi isn’t the only thing I listen to on the radio. I heard something else today. Not sure what station it was, 98FM maybe, and there was a phone-in about people who wear their pyjamas down the street.
There was one girl trying to convince the listeners that wearing pyjamas down the street was cool, and in doing so pointed out that posh people also wore pyjamas down the street. Another girl disagreed, saying, in effect, that only poor people wore pyjamas down the street. Some dick in the studio, called Jeremy, said people who wore pyjamas were, quite simply, ‘scum’ and that pyjamas down the street were disgusting, for lazy people.
All were more or less agreed: the pyjama-wearing poor are vile.
Have you ever seen a man wearing pyjamas down the street, or is it only women? I passed a couple of women wearing pyjamas the other day. Big deal. I don’t like pyjamas myself, and only wear them in hospitals, bho am I to tell people what to wear? If someone wants to take their child to school in a Big Bird outfit, then more power to their elbow.
What I can’t stick -it got said on the programme tonight- is when the likes of Jeremy start saying that people who wear pyjamas give off the impression of being lazy. I agree: they do. But the difference between me and the likes of he is that I don’t see anything wrong with laziness (though I think idleness is usually a more appropriate term), whereas the yoof on radio phone-in shows want people to wear clothes that demonstrate hard work and moral rectitude.
Well, up theirs.
The Punishment of Sloth 
It is a bit unfair of people on the wireless to criticize how others dress since we cannot tell what they themselves are wearing at the time. This can provide interesting speculation for the listener: for example, I have a colleague who has concluded that many studio presenters on BBC Radio 3 are completely naked when on air.
Unfair indeed. I tend to steer clear of Radio 3, generally, since debates on pyjama-wearing scumbags are few and far between. But I think there may be something to your colleague’s conclusions. A piece of advice given to people attending telephone interviews is that they should wear business attire even if no-one is going to see them, since it confers them a sense of the residual formality of the occasion. It wouldn’t be surprising, then, if Radio 3 presenters went the opposite direction, and dressed down for jazz sessions.
I don’t think wearing PJs in the street shows laziness at all. I once had a conversation with a lady from Sean MacDermot street who told me there’s actually a distinct fashion ‘code’ to wearing pyjamas in public…for instance; silky pyjamas are the ones to wear in the evening, normal cotton ones are daytime wear and apparently those who wear pyjamas that look like tracksuit bottoms are frowned upon. Not only that but the pyjamas that you wear on the street are not the ones you wear in bed. Because that would be manky, supposedly. See, not lazy at all -alot of thought goes into it.
All very interesting indeed, but I think people would be far better off paying attention to things that actually mattered!
I listen to Radio 1 quite a bit. Sad I know. I hope they are clothed. *ick*
Not lazy at all: that requires dedication. But it’s not the right type of dedication, see. You need to be dedicated to a useful activity like speculating on currency markets in order to earn respect from Radio DJs.
One of the spin offs of Armagh Gaelic football team doing well was the summer trips to Croke Park in Dublin. As I nervously parked my car on Ballybough Road I was seduced into a sense of safety with the numbers of females in pink cotton PJs on the steps of their houses. This neutralised the effects of their men folk with rolled newspapers directing me into vacant parking spaces and silently demanding money with outstretched palms. People who wear their night clothes with tiny teddy bears emblazoned must be safe and cuddly.
Hugh, as I gallop into through middle age I have bought PJs for hospital despite remaining pretty healthy. Comes from the mindset of a person who was encouraged to change their underpants by a mother who worried that I might be knocked down by a car and wouldn’t have clean Y fronts and to hell with the injuries.
Iam sick of the site of grown women and girls wearing pyjamas on the streets of Liverpool……Croxteth and Norris Green ,they just look like slobs! ,havent these slobs got any clobber?