Stick to buying perfume and forget about kids, Sir Elton

Rod Liddle says that celebrity adoption has become an unsavoury game of Top Trumps, and that the Ukraine would be right to turn down Elton John’s bid for a baby

The world may indeed be shrinking and its people becoming an undifferentiated morass, but east of the Oder-Neisse line they are not quite the same as us just yet. There is a certain infelicity when dealing with sensitive social issues, the sort of thing you hear over here only when no one is listening. Take the response from a senior Ukrainian politician to Elton John’s request to adopt a 14-month-old Ukrainian baby called Lev. ‘You won’t be allowed because you’re too old and you’re a poof,’ is what Sir Elton was told, pretty much in those words. ‘Gay marriages,’ the Ukrainian said, ‘don’t count.’ No messing around. I suspect if you’d asked the Ukrainian about Jews, Gypsies and Soviet collaborators he’d have responded in similarly vigorous fashion. As I say, things are different east of Szczecin; that veneer of western civility has not yet been imposed, which is why David Cameron has had so much trouble with his new allies in the European parliament, such as the Latvian Fatherland and Freedom party, whose views would make Heydrich wince.

Sir Elton had been doing a spot of shopping in the Ukraine after a gig. When international slebs these days wish to acquire the sort of finely crafted accessory which might fulfil their emotional and spiritual needs, they head not to Prada and Gucci, but to the local orphanage. Sir Elton and his missus, David Furnish, were touring a Ukrainian orphanage when they chanced upon little Lev. They fell in love and simply had to have him — come on, you know how it is.