The news, I’m sure you will agree, is a funny bloody thing. Take yesterday for instance. As the world collectively decided to blame almost all events, or lack of them, on coronavirus Britain was busy glowing in the distraction of a budget. This was Rishi Sunak’s first big erection and he wasn’t going to let us down now, was he? Of course he didn’t. He stood up, told the country he was willing to splash stuff all over the place and then sat down again and let Dominic Cummings slowly slide his hand out of his arse. This wasn’t Sunak’s budget at all: this was Cummings and Johnson playing light sabres with their tiny todgers on the top bunk bed but, at least for a few minutes, it distracted us from the fact we have bigger things to worry about.
If it weren’t for coronavirus then the #MeToo movement would have finally had their moment in the sun. It’s been coming for two years but wouldn’t you just know that on the day justice finally arrived it would be out-shadowed by the twin thunder stealers of a 12 year old holding a red briefcase and a virus apparently caused by people far, far away being fond of bat soufflé and wild monkey vol au vants. And so poor old used-to be-fatter bastard Harvey Weinstein never got his day in court, or at least not the one he wanted. That rubber necked, sticky fingered shit barrel will instead spend 23 years being an unwanted sex doll in jail.
The man looks like little more than an overweight skeleton these days – he’s probably what you’d get if you exhumed Henry VIII’s corpse. He’s had heart surgery and a walking frame and yesterday he even appeared in a wheel chair. If the trial had gone on any longer he would have had to have been sent into an induced coma in the hope that it would sway the jury. On the news they showed a photo of him with his fantasy ex-wife, the one that left him the moment the potato got too hot. You can say all you want about #MeToo, truly good work, but please don’t tell me that she didn’t know what she was getting when she married a bobbing turd like him; it certainly wasn’t her preference for doughy cheeks and hairy, clammy hands. There’s something tragic about the end of Harvey Weinstein; this once pretend proud rooster of man all broken down because he used all his energy being a sex offender. I hope his sentence isn’t cut by one moment and that he dies either tomorrow or in 22 years and 364 days from now. But it isn’t my decision because, in fairness, he didn’t lay a finger on me.
And then when we’ve cut through corona and Sunak and Weinstein we come full circle and the most pressing news of the day: this being that Mr and Mrs Tom Hanks have both tested positive for Covid-19 and are in isolation in Australia. I like Tom Hanks but please don’t tell me that’s news or that anyone should give a shit. I think it was the third item on Radio 4 this morning and that surely suggests that whatever perspective there might be out there then we aren’t using a scrap of it. You see what will happen now is we’ll be given regular updates on their medical progress and then we’ll start being let into the loop of every other famous person with aches and pains.
Soon enough there’ll be a daily celebrity ailment update to include all the crucial details that you SIMPLY HAVE TO KNOW!!!!: Angelina Jolie has cholera, Sir Kenneth Branagh has dengue fever, Claudia Winkleman has split ends, June Sarpong gets IBS every other weekend, Rory McElroy has developed a lazy eye, Idris Elba has a third nipple, Greta Thunberg has rickets, James Corden has a club foot and Gwyneth Paltrow has temporarily and massively prolapsed following a failed attempt to irrigate herself using a bath tub full of chai latte and a power hose. And then one day we’ll get told that Toby Anstis has tennis elbow and we’ll all realise that we’ve been wasting far too much time not really caring about famous people and things will get back to normal and we can just focus on the killer pandemic sweeping the only habitable planet in the solar system. On stupidity. Read all about it.
G B Hewitt. 12.03.2020
On stupidity......and other causes for concern. 