Former Sex Pistols frontman John Lydon has lived up to his Johnny Rotten stage name, with a horror performance on an Australian TV show including misogynist comments and a Nazi salute.
What started as a perfectly ordinary TV interview between the ageing rocker and the gang from Ten’s nightly news and entertainment panel show, The Project, quickly turned ugly.
Lydon had agreed to an interview with the show, with the program crossing to the backstage area of his Brisbane gig.
The panel sailed through a series of routine questions about his tour, performing on stage and writing music but things went off the rails when one of The Project’s panellists, Carrie Bickmore, turned the conversation to the death of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
Lydon became agitated, not because of the question, but because he felt she had interrupted him.
“Hey, hey, hey Mrs,” he said. “Shut up. Whoever you are, shut up. Shut up. Shut up. Now listen, when a man is talking do not interrupt.”
His tone, and the apparent misogyny of his words, caused an audible reaction from The Project’s studio audience.
Bickmore graciously tried to go on, smiling, and saying: “There was a break, I thought you had finished, please go on.”
“Stop it, you sound like one of them [sic] dreadful loud birds I don’t like. You be polite,” Lydon continued.
“That’s really offensive,” replied Bickmore.
“So are you. You’ve got to learn more respect and manners,” he shot back.
Lydon then became agitated that Bickmore and the other panellists were speaking too loudly into his earpiece. “You’ve got to take it down a couple of thousand notches,” he said.
Rotten also made what appeared to be the Nazi salute, which also caused an audible reaction from the audience.
Lydon referred to himself as a “a proper master of the universe” when he made the gesture.
One of the panellists, comedian Dave Hughes, terminated the interview prematurely.
Afterwards, Bickmore was visibly containing her anger.
“I went with it at first because bad press is his thing, but his thing ain’t funny, and it’s damn rude,” Bickmore said.
“I know everyone will say that’s his thing, he loves being controversial and you’ve just given him airtime, but there’s a difference between being controversial and just being rude,” she finished.
Another panellist, Dr Andrew Rochford, described Lydon as “a flat out, sexist, misogynist pig”.
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– FFX Aus
