I’ve just received what must be one of the most bizarre requests that I’ve ever received. I’ve been contacted by a journalist working on what he described as “a cultural quiz show for Spanish Television”.

I quote from his e-mail:

My work consists in writing the questions and checking if they are correct and well formulated, in order to be as precise as possible and make sure we don’t spread wrong information to our contestants and our audience. Sometimes, to do this work, I need to contact to some experts, such as you, in this case.

The question I am now verifying is: 

Who admitted in public wearing women’s underwear?

A) Oscar Wilde

B) Adolf Hitler

C) Cary Grant

D) Francois Miterrand

E) Isaac Newton

F) Napoleon Bonaparte

G) Julius Caesar

We think the true answer is C) Cary Grant and the others are false.

I would be interested in confirm that A) Oscar Wilde is a false answer.

I would appreciate your help very much to check this information, please.

Best Regards,

I replied that I was happy to confirm that Wilde never confessed to wearing women’s underwear in public or anywhere else! The sad thing is that this triteness and trivia, the dregs and dross of a decaying society, passes as “culture”. Wilde famously observed, via Lord Darlington in Lady Windermere’s Fan, that “we are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars”. The representatives of today’s so-called “culture” are happy to wallow in the gutter and the only “stars” they are interested in looking at are wallowing in the gutter with them.