Shared Opinion

30 May 2009

If you think politicians are mad, wait till celebrities are running the country

I think it’s the guy at the front I like the most. The older one. Bald. Stocky. A look on his face like thunder. Would be genuinely quite scary, were it not for the fact that his upper body is clad only in a clingy, shiny (albeit nunnish) mini-dress, and his lower body isn’t clad in anything. ‘These foreigners are ridiculous!’ he’s obviously thinking. While dressed as a nun.

The latest suggestion is that they’re a football team, not a stag party. Not that it matters. This is the face of Britain abroad. Wherever there are pubs, wherever there are budget airlines, there are grown British men in women’s clothes, with their bottoms out. And to think some people say we have no coherent national identity.

Poor lads, anyway, 40 hours in the cells. According to the Daily Mail they were arrested for ‘causing offence to the Catholic Church’, but released eventually due to ‘lack of evidence’. That’s pretty fortunate, considering they’re still basically dressed as nuns. ‘Quick lads!’ somebody must have said, just in time. ‘It’s the cops! Ditch the wimples!’

Hugo Rifkind is a writer for the Times.

Previous page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

More articles from: Hugo Rifkind | this section

Print this article | Email to a friend | Permalink | Comments (1)

Post this entry to: del.icio.us | Digg | Newsvine | NowPublic | Reddit

Post comment

Russell

May 28th, 2009 4:10pm Report this comment

You're about "the public". When things went her way last week, Joanna Lumley claimed that she had "the whole country" on her side. No I bloody wasn't!

The problem with celebrities is that they seem to have acquired a strong sense of moral superiority, perhaps from being paid bucketloads of money to produce what is mostly crap. And they keep this superiority, despite the fact that most of them depend on the tabloids to maintain their profiles. Or eating bugs in the jungle.

But maybe SW1 is missing a trick: think of how full the benches would be the day that Abi Titmus is Speaker...

Post comment