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THOUGHT FOR BA DUH
Dame Anita Roddick Hi. As all of you will know by now, I have Hepatitis C. It’s a bit of a bummer but in the end you groan and move on and on about it. My deeply genuine thanks for the teddies, the messages of support, the emailed hugs. I am humbled by the number of well-wishers. "You must be doing something right", said my partner. "Even if it IS contracting Hepatitis C!".
I am astounded that the Government has spent £40 million on telling the public about the switchover to digital TV - as if that will feed the soul, or bring down greenhouse gas - but only £3 million on raising awareness of my condition, Hepatitis C, which is a serious one. I've always been a bit of a whistle-blower and I'm not going to stop blowing the whistle now. I want to blow the whistle on Hep C. The establishment squares had better watch out when they next come to my house for supper. I read today in the latest issue of Glimpsed World magazine that cocaine is a vibrant agricultural industry reaping some $30 billion in profits every year. $30 billion - that’s half the price of the Trident Missile programme. Wouldn't we be better listening to the native cocaine communities of the developing world than to the capitalist warmongers of the Pentagon? I remember a t-shirt we used to sell in Body Shop around the time of the Falklands War and the rain forests. On the back it said 'Nature is the Science of the Jungle'. As true now as it was then. We sold thousands of them, and when you think about the thousands who saw the first thousands wearing them I think you'll agree I got my message across. I am sometimes referred to as legendary, but someone who deserves that accolade far more than me is God. Yet shouldn't we be asking - Is God real or is he imaginary? If he is real I am sure he won't mind people asking. If he is imaginary, why are we even asking if he is real? And suppose it isn't a 'he' at all? If God really created a world where millions of poor people have no access to grooming products, was this a mistake? If you are an intelligent human being, and if you want to understand the true nature of God, you owe it to yourself to ask "Why won't God reveal a cure for Hepatitis C?" I have never shied away from hard truths and I'm not about to start now. We need to decide once and for all whether God exists, in which case everyone has to follow his guidance word for word out of the Bible, or whether he doesn't, in which case all religions should be banned. We are living in the 21st Century, for God's sake. Let's have some understanding on both sides. I joined a Greenpeace protest at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston not so long ago, certainly within the last five years. It was brilliant. A puppet troupe staged this marvellous demo-within-a-demo. They did a version of the classic Pink Floyd track, the one about a Wall. The puppets - black, white, all the colours of the ethnic rainbow - sang "We don't need your fucking Trident…" It took me back. I was there at the start of demonstrations in the skiffle era, and it is gratifying to know they are still going. Nuclear weapons are irrelevant. They are immoral. They are obscene. They are illegal. They are a bummer. If at the end of the day we could concentrate less on nuclear weapons and more on puppet troupes, perhaps the imaginary world of God would make more sense in the imaginary world of puppets. Somebody has to say the unthinkable. Me.
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The
word ‘hepatitis’ literally means '60s jazz-inflammation of the
liver'. I could still have a good few years of life left but -
grrr! - let's just get on with this paragraph, Dame Anita! I may
be over 50 but I can still get so cross with myself!
Having Hep C means, though, that I live with a sharp sense of my
own mortality and brilliance - which in many ways makes life
more vivid and immediate both for me and for my loved ones and
colleagues. 