James Blunt has responded to Shadow culture minister Chris Bryant – who namechecked him as one of the performers from a “privileged background” dominating the arts – by calling the MP a “classist gimp” and a “prejudiced wazzock”.
In a letter for the Guardian, Blunt argued that his private education and background worked against him when he was trying to make it in the British music industry, where he was thought of as “too posh” and was once asked to change his accent. The singer added that he bought his first guitar after saving money from holiday jobs and accused Bryant of being a “prejudiced wazzock”.
“Dear Chris Bryant MP, You classist gimp,” Blunt wrote. “I happened to go to a boarding school… No one at school had ANY knowledge or contacts in the music business, and I was expected to become a soldier or a lawyer or perhaps a stockbroker… In the army, again, people thought it was a mad idea. None of them knew anyone in the business either… Every step of the way, my background has been AGAINST me succeeding in the music business. And when I have managed to break through, I was STILL scoffed at for being too posh for the industry.”
Chris Bryant said this month that he believed the arts should provide more opportunities for people from a diverse range of backgrounds. “I am delighted that Eddie Redmayne won [a Golden Globe for Best Actor], but we can’t just have a culture dominated by Eddie Redmayne and James Blunt and their ilk,” the MP said.
Blunt called this “populist, envy-based, vote-hunting” that “makes our country crap, far more than me and my shit songs, and my plummy accent”. He accused Bryant of teaching “the politics of jealousy” and signed off “James Cucking Funt”.
James Blunt’s latest album ‘Moon Landing’ was released in 2013. The singer recently revealed that his record label initially asked him to abstain from Twitter after he posted a series of sarcastic retorts to online trolls.