Diary

20 January 2007

Why is anybody surprised that David Beckham has gone to Hollywood? He’s an ageing, waning, footballing clothes-horse who has always been more attracted to the glitz and glamour of celebrity than the hard graft of a rainy night in Wigan. Now he’s going to be paid £500,000 a week to be top dog in a league of useless one-footed mongrels, and spend the rest of his time on Malibu beach with his mate, Tom Cruise. Life can’t get much better than that for an inarticulate, ill-educated Essex boy. And there’s always the chance that Mrs Beckham might actually learn to smile. After all, as John Updike wrote: ‘America is a vast conspiracy to make you happy.’ I worked in Los Angeles all last summer as a judge on an NBC talent show (think Simon Cowell without the looks, brains or wit) and I loved it. The sun shines, the people are friendly, the food’s good, and they absolutely adore Brits. The Hollywood crowd are also a bunch of teetotal, vain, paranoid, bitchy, cosmetically enhanced health freaks. So one way or another Victoria should feel at home.

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One of the more interesting aspects of the unsavoury Ruth Kelly private-school scandal is the fact that so many kids these days are being diagnosed as having ‘special needs’. When I was a boy, this meant you were mentally subnormal, sported a body like John Merrick, and had to be kept in a steel cage for your own protection. But in modern Britain, one in ten schoolchildren is now officially deemed to have some form of dyslexia or vague ‘learning/reading difficulty.’ Including my nine-year-old middle son, Stanley. Being a positive kind of chap, Stanley has instantly turned this alleged affliction to his advantage. Every mistake he makes in any subject is now solemnly blamed on ‘my dyslexia’. And when asked to perform a menial chore, he declines, saying, ‘Sorry, Dad, but I’m feeling particularly dyslexic today.’ My favourite line, though, came this morning, when Stanley declared, ‘I’m going to be as rich as Richard Branson.’ When I asked what he based this theory on, he replied, ‘Because we’re both dyslexic.’

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Is it just me, or does the only person who doesn’t seem remotely bothered by paparazzi intrusion into Kate Middleton appear to be ...Kate Middleton? I’ve rarely seen anyone enjoy the attentions of a camera lens quite like Prince William’s current squeeze. There are many things young Kate will miss about life with her Prince if they ever split up, and among them, unlikely as it may sound, will be the photographers.