"It's not what you say but how you say it."

A mantra much adopted by many people, including my mother.

Take two key examples this last week. First, the Vatican's sympathetic but at the same time considered words about the role of gays in the Catholic church, and then later, on a different topic, Tony Blair's latest polemic on teaching religious tolerance to potential extremists. Two messages which both espouse tolerance, but in rather different fashion; the latter statement hints at further echoes of Blair's holy crusade to liberate the Middle East, so misguidedly started by the second Iraq war.

The two statements and the way they read, are a fair indication of why Pope Francis is considered one of the most popular Popes for some while, and why Tony Blair is still considered - rightly or wrongly - to be one of the most unpopular of Prime Ministers.

"Sir" Donald Sinden dies at the age of 90. Ian Paisley dies at the age of 88, yet why does hardly anyone in the secular Media call him "Reverend Doctor" Ian Paisley?

Angel's Advocate: Rolf Harris

First Savile, then Stuart Hall, now Rolf Harris. The whole business is a revision (and a self destructive  inversion) of the whole celebrity culture, and also reflects the dark side not only of these famous personalities, but also the dark side of the permissive 1970s, where people, particularly famous people, felt they were free to do what they wanted.

Nevertheless, such activities were what was once considered to be people's private lives. The saddest thing in this case in particular, is that a lot of the victims are Rolf fans, and as great as their pain is from personal experience is also the prospect of their hero being brought down.

The baying public and Media are quick to condemn a person that until this week, they didn't believe was guilty. Sadly, all his monuments, some of his art and even possibly his honours, are being removed. It was once said that the deeds of a man outweigh his faults.

Many of these offences were also committed several years ago. I hope in decades to come, people will remember Rolf Harris as much for his entertainment as his personal history, once the public's indignation and horror has
a chance to cool down.

The Mandela myth

Schoolchildren are currently being taught - rightly - the legacy of Nelson Mandela and his message. What they are not being told is how Mandela and the African National Congress had campaigned for armed aggression against the tyrannical Apartheid regime, and how his widow Winnie was not beneath executing (in rather gruesome fashion) a few duplicitous blacks who spied for their White oppressors.

A legend is made up of many elements. The new film about Mandela, providentially released around the time of his death, may put these things into focus. His is just one name of many (such as Steve Biko, Oliver Tambo and Desmond Tutu) who fought for the freedom of a fair and just South Africa, but who ultimately has become the one talisman of the cuase.

Yalta and Syria....the big bear still growls

I'm currently reading the final volumes of Winston Churchill's History of the Second World War, and how he, Stalin and Roosevelt set up the tentative agreement that the United Nations would preside over future world safety - but that any initiative by the council to invade a country would have the power of veto by any one of "the big five": the US, the UK, France, and (later) China. And of course, Russia.

This uneasy agreement still has its ructions today, with Vladimir Putin vetoing any intervention by the UN into Syria. Where innocent Poles suffered under Stalin, so innocent Syrians are suffering under Putin's Russian-supplied chemical weapons.

The last Frost report

In Roman times it became the tendency to execute messengers of bad news. Such a thing would never have happened to David Frost, who became as valuable to the news as the news itself.

Not just the reporting of it, but also the observance, and the comment. The satire boom on television owes a huge debt to him. It is also testament to his career that films and dramas such as Frost/Nixon were made about him. But Sir David had his own cinema career too. In The V.I.P.s  in 1962 he cheerfully stalks Orson Welles's film director (vaguely based on Orson Welles himself.)

A King among men

Watching parts of Martin Luther King's famous speech at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington (50 years ago today), I was struck by the extraordinary inner calm and quiet authority of the man. Plenty of other great speakers have seized the chance to impose their personality and the ego on the occasion (Kennedy included), but King's very carefully well worked words transcend such things, for what is in a sense, one of the greatest sermons in history.

The words still resonate today, something which his spiritual successor Barack Obama, may try to emulate but could never imitate.