"There has been so much rubbish written up in the papers over the years"
About this Quote
Biggs plays dumb here the way only a practiced self-mythologist can. “So much rubbish” is a small phrase that does heavy work: it dismisses scrutiny without having to rebut a single fact. The target isn’t just inaccurate reporting; it’s the entire idea that the press gets to define him. By framing coverage as accumulated trash “over the years,” he turns journalism into noise and time into his alibi: if everything has been said for so long, why treat any of it as authoritative now?
Coming from Ronald Biggs, the Great Train Robbery fugitive who spent decades as both criminal and tabloid character, the line reads like a sly negotiation with fame. Biggs didn’t merely endure media attention; he lived off the afterimage of notoriety, selling interviews, cultivating a wink-wink persona, and treating the public like an audience. Calling it “rubbish” lets him keep the benefits of celebrity while shrugging off its costs. It’s reputational jiu-jitsu: the more lurid the stories, the easier it is to imply the whole narrative is contaminated.
The subtext is also a rebuke to moral clarity. Biggs suggests that public memory is built from clippings and exaggerations, not consequences. If the papers are rubbish, then outrage is just another headline cycle. The line’s power is its banality: no grand confession, no outrage, just a weary brush-off that positions him as the long-suffering subject of other people’s stories, rather than the author of his own.
Coming from Ronald Biggs, the Great Train Robbery fugitive who spent decades as both criminal and tabloid character, the line reads like a sly negotiation with fame. Biggs didn’t merely endure media attention; he lived off the afterimage of notoriety, selling interviews, cultivating a wink-wink persona, and treating the public like an audience. Calling it “rubbish” lets him keep the benefits of celebrity while shrugging off its costs. It’s reputational jiu-jitsu: the more lurid the stories, the easier it is to imply the whole narrative is contaminated.
The subtext is also a rebuke to moral clarity. Biggs suggests that public memory is built from clippings and exaggerations, not consequences. If the papers are rubbish, then outrage is just another headline cycle. The line’s power is its banality: no grand confession, no outrage, just a weary brush-off that positions him as the long-suffering subject of other people’s stories, rather than the author of his own.
Quote Details
| Topic | Writing |
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