Rachel Johnson

Why I feel sorry for Damian Green

I have to admit, I feel a bit sorry for Damian Green about the porn found on his work computer. What if someone else had downloaded it? What if it had been planted as kompromat via some Russian malware? Especially as what’s on telly can be far more alarming. I was sofa-side on Monday night, crying through Gabriel Gatehouse’s Newsnight package on the massacre of Rohingya Muslims, which showed dead babies and interviewed their mothers and widowed fathers. I was so distressed that my husband changed to Channel 4 for relief. On our wide HD flatscreen were close-ups of no fewer than six hairless adult female pudenda. It was his turn to scream, and he bolted from the room. Later I found him lying motionless on the bed, staring at the ceiling. ‘You can’t have a lady garden if you pull up all the plants,’ he said, dully. ‘It’s like shaving cats or dogs.’ Producers of Naked Attraction, take note. Gentlemen of a certain age who grew up before the age of porn passim still prefer ladies au naturel and are traumatised by what they see on screen. Plus we need a new warning for when something is so explicit that it’s not merely NSFW — ‘not safe for work’, even Damian probably knows this by now — but ‘not safe for home’, either.

This is an extract from Rachel Johnson’s Diary, from this week’s Spectator

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