Listening to the outburst of the man who might be Christian Bale, intense actor par excellence, News Hour is struck by his accent – which seesaws wildly from flat English to flat American (the latter especially on the vowels) before occasionally daring brutal stabs of no-nonsense Cockney. This seemed to emphasise the hard man parts of the speech, give it a bit of extra ‘oomph’ that no swearing in the world can muster. If felt like: ‘Don’t doubt me, punk. I mean it.’ That sort of thing.
No doubt this word-swivelling has something to do with this actor (who, for legal reasons, may or may not be the Welsh-born Bale) living a transatlantic lifestyle; plus, presumably the character of John Connor in Terminator: Salvation has not magically become a Brit. Imagine if this outburst had occurred during a particularly intense scene on the set of Pink Panther 2, with Steve Martin exploding at the errant wanderings of some terrified underling:
‘You and I, we will have le relations professionel no more – rien! Rien! Ri – ****in’ – en!’
There are broad parallels between the experiences of possibly-Bale and Carol Thatcher. Both suffered leaks that exposed their behaviour, both occurred on the sets of a filmed work designed for public consumption but not actually ‘on air’. Both are, of course, work environments – which tend to forgive the ‘flair’ of individual money-makers at the top end – but work environments nonetheless. Such flair lends a bit of colour to the world (old school newspapers were never short on this – see MacKenzie, Kelvin), and on balance News Hour would rather it existed than it didn’t, but that doesn’t make it any less unpleasant.
UPDATE: The man on the recording is indeed Mr Bale, and he has issued a fulsome apology – claiming that he acted ‘like a punk‘. One can only imagine how he’s spent the days since the recording broke cover.
News hour, with Jerry Caesar 