For my weekly writing spot on this site, see the One-Minute Mystic, with a new meditation posted every Monday. Also see The Village, the story of Misty Longings, England's most beautiful village, posted episode by episode earlier this year.       All fools are entertainers; but not all entertainers are fools. Entertainers are under the spotlight again. First Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand found themselves pilloried for crude jokes and revelations on their radio show. While more recently, whilst promoting himself in Australia, Jeremy Clarkson called Gordon Brown "a one-eyed Scottish idiot." All three have since apologised, but we should not equate this with remorse. An entertainer is first and foremost an attention seeker. It takes great energy to keep presenting yourself to people; an energy rooted in a deep craving for attention. So the bottom line for them is not "Did I offend?" But rather, "Did people notice me?" One of the glaring truths to emerge from the film "Frost/Nixon", currently on release, is that David Frost really didn't mind what he did in front of a camera; as long as he was getting a good audience. The appeal of an interview with the disgraced president, journalistic coup that it was, lay not in any great desire for political or personal revelation; but in the potential viewing figures of such an event. "Imagine the audience!" he enthuses. Similarly, for entertainers like Brand, Ross and Clarkson, the material is not in itself important; and they'll struggle to identify with others who feel offended. "It was just a joke!" they'll say, as indeed it was. They don't take their material seriously, so why should anyone else? They may apologise to maintain their business; but how can they be sad when they are even more famous now? The fool, on the other hand, takes their material very seriously. The Court Jester has traditionally thrived where freedom of speech is not recognised; and so the truth must masquerade as jest, the mad babblings of a fool. The vagrant Basil, who famously walked the streets of Moscow naked, was one of the few to make Ivan the Terrible feel uncomfortable; and live to tell the tale. Basil must have been rather entertaining to watch; but entertainment was not his vocation. The entertainer just wants a reaction; the fool wants a response. Basil sought Ivan the Nice. The fool is unconstrained by their particular times. The entertainer surfs the contemporary waves; but the fool is a wave-breaker. They reflect on the low-grade sanity around them, and adopt their own brand of madness in revolt. The execution of Charles 1st bought an end to the tradition of the Court jester in England, but they had made their mark. King James finally sacked his jester, Archibald Armstrong, for insulting just too many influential people. The fool's mantle is not comfortable cloth. They are those open to the contradictions both around them and within them; those who dare the space and leisure to make true and fierce connections. And so it was that in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Feste the jester is described as one "wise enough to be a fool." The bloody and insane French revolution ended the tradition of the court jester in France. They were all much too sensible for that nonsense now. More writings © Simon Parke