JAN MOIR: Imagine bombed-out families in Ukraine reading Holly Willoughby and James Corden's fears


At moments of great peril, when lives are at stake and the safety of nations hangs in the balance, we need our celebrities more than ever.

We need our stars, our dedicated do-gooders in the game of fame, our celestial representatives here on Earth to light the lamps of compassion and show us the way forward through the darkness.

Actually, we don’t. That’s absolutely the last thing we need. But clearly, the slebs themselves think we do. Perhaps they even need to think we do?

Anyway, just try to stop them from sailing into any international crisis with hearts on sleeves and souls on fire, determined to stamp their brand on the smouldering hide of international strife.

Hello Ukraine, Hollywood calling! Are you receiving our platitudes loud and clear?

In no particular order. Robert De Niro took the opportunity to speak out about the Ukraine situation at Cambridge University this week. ‘We have to do something to stop this kind of aggression,’ he said.

¿How do I explain this to my children?¿ tweeted This Morning presenter Holly Willoughby, embellishing her post with a broken heart emoji to show how much she cares about Ukraine

‘How do I explain this to my children?’ tweeted This Morning presenter Holly Willoughby, embellishing her post with a broken heart emoji to show how much she cares about Ukraine

Pop singer Miley Cyrus recalled making a video in Kyiv and expressed her solidarity with those facing the ‘heart-breaking’ consequences of war.

Meanwhile, Putin supporter and useful idiot Steven Seagal suggested that hey, chillax, it was not Russia’s fault because ‘an outside entity spending huge sums of money on propaganda to provoke the two countries’ was behind everything.

Poor Sean Penn ‘walked miles’ to the border after abandoning his car while filming a war documentary in Ukraine.

Horror author Stephen King posted a rare photo of himself and called Putin ‘stupid’, while former boyband star Louis Tomlinson described the conflict as ‘a needless war.’

Any word from Sooty, Sweep and SpongeBob SquarePants on the current situation? Keep me informed of their thoughts.

Pause for a moment to imagine the snowballing fear of Ukrainian mothers, desperately trying to get their children on the last train out of this war zone; or struggling to soothe little ones in makeshift bomb shelters beneath cities that tremble under mortar fire.

In America, James Corden opened his chat show by saying he ¿did not know how to process¿ the conflict in Ukraine and found it hard to talk about the escalating violence to his children

In America, James Corden opened his chat show by saying he ‘did not know how to process’ the conflict in Ukraine and found it hard to talk about the escalating violence to his children

Imagine the feelings of fathers and husbands left to fight a military superpower, armed with little more than Molotov cocktails.

Then imagine how they must feel when Holly Willoughby and James Corden express their fears about the effect this war is having, not on the poor souls on the frontline but on their own families.

‘How do I explain this to my children? I was asked questions last night I didn’t have the answers for,’ tweeted This Morning presenter Holly, embellishing her post with a broken heart emoji to show how much she cares.

Meanwhile in America, Corden opened his chat show by saying he ‘did not know how to process’ the conflict in Ukraine and found it hard to talk about the escalating violence to his children.

Poor James and Holly. Poor James and Holly’s kiddies! How they must be suffering.

You don’t need me to tell you that their children’s distress does not compare to the misery of the traumatised children living through the horror in Ukraine.

But like a triple dose of vacuous vaccine, repeatedly plunged into the celebrity vain vein, they have just got to inject themselves into the narrative.

On the red carpet at the SAG awards, Michael Douglas wore a pocket handkerchief in the blue and yellow Ukrainian colours

On the red carpet at the SAG awards, Michael Douglas wore a pocket handkerchief in the blue and yellow Ukrainian colours

They and others like them may mean well, but that doesn’t stop it being insulting.

There is nothing wrong with celebrities conveying their sympathy to innocents caught up in the bloody side of geopolitics.

Messages of support from someone with millions of followers can be valuable, as President Zelensky himself well knows.

His own use of social media to rally support, deploy information and reassure citizens has been brave and inspiring this week.

What I can’t stand are those using those same channels unwittingly to prove that they can see the world and its troubles only through the prism of themselves. It’s not the issue; it is being seen to care about the issue that is important to them.

Even the most serious global events can bring out the worst in the self-interested, and watching some of them out on manoeuvres this week was a queasy experience. You know where this is going . . .

Enter the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, private citizens who issue ‘statements’ as if they were grandiose tyrants ruling over their own kingdom of flimflam, which perhaps is not too far from the truth.

‘We stand with the people of Ukraine against this breach of international and humanitarian law, and encourage the global community and its leaders to do the same,’ they thundered from Mount Rescue Chicken.

That’s the world told. Yet if Harry and Meghan really meant it, surely they would — for example — immediately and publicly distance themselves from their lawyers, Schillings, one of the leading UK law firms who have been criticised by MPs for acting on behalf of Russian oligarchs determined to silence any criticism in the media. Yet some do lead from the front. 

Actors Blake Lively and her husband Ryan Reynolds have pledged to match a million-dollar donation for refugees, while lingerie model Caprice Bourret may have burbled ‘let’s pray for peace’, but at least she is packing aid packages for refugees.

Meanwhile, in Hollywood, the important business of giving each other awards continued.

On the red carpet at the SAG awards, Michael Douglas wore a pocket handkerchief in the blue and yellow Ukrainian colours, while Lady Gaga wasted no time in nailing her colours to the mast: ‘There’s so much going on in the world and my heart goes out to Ukraine. I think tonight we should all really sit in the gratitude of this.’

I can translate that into Ukrainian for you: ‘We’re all right, Jack.’ Holly and James will no doubt agree.

Hide that under an umbrella, Rihanna 

Rihanna, 34, is seen outside the Dior show, during Paris Fashion Week

Rihanna, 34, is seen outside the Dior show, during Paris Fashion Week

I suppose to approve of look-at-me maternity wear and think of it as an empowering statement for pregnant women everywhere? I’m sorry, but I just can’t. Don’t make me. 

Pregnant women are beautiful, yes, but there is a time and a place for body exhibitionism and it’s not when you are six months up the duff with a belly button like a wine cork or a fried egg. 

Rihanna was out and proud in her racy maternity wear recently — and it’s terrifying, not glorifying. 

The 34-year-old pop singer announced her first pregnancy by stepping out in low-slung jeans and a string vest. Then at Paris Fashion Week she wore revealing black mesh lingerie that looked like a plus-size onion net (right). 

I’m not saying young ladies in the family way should go back to the days of confinement and a nice smock, but if they did, would that be such a bad thing? Hyacinth Bucket et moi think not.

Posh gin peak of poor taste

My favourite store Fortnum & Mason has released Spirit of George Gin — a £45 tipple launched tocommemorate explorer George Mallory — ‘crafted to combine classic London Dry botanicals with flavours of the Himalayas’. 

What? Have they taken leave of their senses? 

Mallory was one of the last of the great British heroes. He died in 1924 attempting to climb Everest — and his body lay there, lost on the mountain, for more than 75 years. 

I don’t have to sample it to know this gin is in rather bad taste. ­Flavours of the Himalayas? What rot.

Undeserved drubbing for Diana The Musical

Not only has Diana The Musical closed on Broadway, the doomed production is now up for the Razzies — the bad-taste booby prizes that mock unsuccessful productions. Is that really fair on poor D The M? 

I went to see it in New York and no, it was not the greatestmusical ever made. Some of the lyrics were less than sublime; a crime against rhyme for which someone should do time. 

‘Oh Harry, my ginger-haired son, you will be second to none,’ the Diana character sang at one point. Later, she trilled that she wanted to tell ‘the truth about Charles and his mistress, Camilla — he’s a third-rate Henry VIII and she’s Godzilla’. 

Yikes! It was meant to be fun, although in the end, it was rather sad and reductive. If only they had taken it slightly less seriously, it might have been a hit. Surely a riotous drag-queen version would have been a smash? 

Too late! Now that dressing up as a woman with the specific intention of mocking women has become a crime called ‘womanface’, perhaps not.

What is it with powerful, rich men and the Prime Minister’s wife? First Lord Ashcroft absolutely trashed Carrie in his biography First Lady: Intrigue At The Court Of Carrie And Boris Johnson. 

Boris Johnson and wife Carrie Johnson after delivering his keynote speech during the Conservative Party conference last year

Boris Johnson and wife Carrie Johnson after delivering his keynote speech during the Conservative Party conference last year

Now Sir Rocco Forte has suggested that Boris needs ‘to keep his wife under control’ — as though she were an untrained puppy. 

Speaking at a dinner in London, the hotelier added: ‘Unfortunately, when we elected him he didn’t have a wife, and now he’s got a wife who had a child, then a second child, and actually tells him what to do.’ 

Ashcroft and Forte sound like a pair of sexist old codgers who rather regret that women ever got the vote. 

And if it is true that Boris is some hen-pecked booby who is terrified of his missus and is going to ban beef cattle and nuclear power stations and travel by hot-air balloon in the future on Carrie’s say-so, then that is on him, not her.

Kanye West is facing criticism after disturbing scenes in his latest music video. It features an effigy of his ex-wife Kim Kardashian’s new boyfriend Pete Davidson being enthusiastically buried alive. 

In a cartoon sequence, Kanye buries Pete as the rapper sings: ‘God saved me from that crash, just so I can beat Pete Davidson’s ass.’ He’s taking the split well, isn’t he?

We’re not ALL stupid

Doomsday Covid models that predicted Omicron deaths would hit a high of 6,000 a day were wildly wrong.

Even at the peak of the variant there were only — only! Forgive me — 300 deaths a day.

Sage’s Covid experts now claim the figures were wildly wrong because they failed to predict that Britons would modify their behaviour to deal with the pandemic.

That has been the problem since day one — they think we are ALL STUPID. Typical boffin-brained scientists, failing to grasp the reserves of common sense in ordinary citizens.

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