Who knows best?

Goodness, how attitudes to authority have changed in my lifetime. If my ten-year-old self had been told how dramatic-ally respect for "authority" would drain away in the next few decades, he would have been gob-smacked.

When I was young, we habitually deferred to authority figures of whatever kind. Be they government ministers, civil servants, police officers, teachers or parents, we invariably did what they told us to do because "they knew best" and "they were in charge". The idea of seriously rebelling against them, of routinely challenging their wisdom, was pretty unthinkable.

That all changed in the sixties when young people everywhere finally decided authority figures didn't necessarily know best and started questioning just about everything they said. They railed against the rigid ideas of "the establishment" and "the system" and demanded wholesale changes.

The authority figures didn't know what had hit them. They had to adjust rapidly as their ideas and assumptions were torn to bits by bolshy teenagers and uppity undergrads attacking homophobia, sexism, racism, apartheid and any number of other isms and entrenched beliefs.

The rebellious trend continued apace until now hardly any authority figure can open their mouth without someone shouting "bollocks" or doubting their expertise and credibility. They struggle to convince people they actually have something worthwhile to say.

The Brexit campaigners took this trend to its ultimate extreme, declaring that "experts" weren't to be trusted and that the opinion of the person in the street was as valid as so-called expert opinion. If Joanna Somebody thought Brexit would be a fantastic success, wasn't that good enough?

And then suddenly the coronavirus epidemic arrived, and all at once people were listening to the experts again - even the Prime Minister. Only the medical specialists knew all about the virus and what measures were needed to combat it. A dramatic about-turn by the know-it-all politicians and pundits.

After the epidemic is over, will experts once again be trusted? Only time will tell.

Count me out

When it comes to wild partying, I was always old before my time. I never quite saw the attraction, even as a rebellious teenager who was pretty wild in other ways.

I had a friend who would drag me along to these all-night parties in trendy Notting Hill. We would be there till the small hours, he enjoying himself immensely, me getting more and more bored and longing for my warm, cosy bed.

Everyone else would be getting sky-high on drugs or booze and raving about the latest fashionable gurus (R D Laing, Tim Leary, Abbie Hoffman, Huey Newton, Germaine Greer, Valerie Solanas). I wasn't keen on either mind-bending substances or personality cults so I felt a bit out of the loop. I would have preferred a searching one-to-one conversation to a roomful of lazy name-droppers so I was forever frustrated. I felt like a 70-year-old grandad who'd somehow stumbled into a kids' party.

Funny, because the rest of the time I was an instinctive rebel, disputing anything and everything from news values and dress codes at the local newspaper I worked for, to prejudice about gays, women, socialists and modern art, to parking restrictions and speed limits. There was virtually nothing I would happily accept, nothing I wouldn't promptly question and challenge and argue with. I drove my parents crazy with my endless scepticism and disagreement.

So you'd think wild parties would be right up my alley. But I suppose the truth is I found them distinctly unrebellious and predictable. Getting stoned? Getting drunk? Idolising a few alternative celebs? It was pretty tame stuff as far as boundary-breaking and tradition-smashing went. Hangovers never changed the world. Drugged stupors never put an end to poverty. Celebs get attention but seldom change the world either.

So if you fondly imagined I spent my teenage years in an addled stupor of non-stop partying - then think again.

R D Laing: radical psychiatrist who questioned definitions of madness
Tim Leary: psychologist and advocate of psychedelic drugs
Abbie Hoffman: one of the founders of the libertarian Yippies movement
Huey Newton: one of the founders of the Black Panthers
Germaine Greer: author of The Female Eunuch
Valerie Solanas: author of the SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto