As Russia launched its invasion and women were fleeing with their children from the bombing, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announce from their Californian mansion that they ‘stand with the people of Ukraine’.
What comfort for the families huddled in terror in make-shift bunkers to learn that this pampered couple feel their pain and are ‘against any breach of international and humanitarian law’. How Putin must be quaking in his boots!
Lord alive, this pair have granted the word preposterous hidden depths; they’ve elevated grandeur and pomposity to a new art form.
What is so drearily predictable is their deluded belief that we linger on every one of their profound words.
Last August they told us the Taliban’s advance in Afghanistan left them ‘heartbroken’. They felt ‘the many layers of pain due to the situation’ — indeed, felt it so searingly that they were rendered ‘speechless’.
What comfort for the families huddled in terror in make-shift bunkers to learn that this pampered couple feel their pain and are ‘against any breach of international and humanitarian law’
If only they were truly speechless for once in their privileged lives. But they won’t put a sock in it, of course, because they are committed to ‘alleviate suffering among those we know and those we may never meet’.
This tin-eared duo are a universal laughing stock. And yet, today, they will be honoured by a U.S. civil rights group, joining other recipients including Rihanna, Jay-Z and Serena Williams.
But while they’ll jump on any bandwagon to brandish their oh-so-caring credentials, it seems outrageously callous that we’ve heard not a word from them about the Queen’s decision to grant Camilla the title of Queen Consort when Charles becomes King.
There was a time when Harry was gushing about his stepmother. Now there’s radio silence.
If only they were truly speechless for once in their privileged lives. But they won’t put a sock in it, of course, because they are committed to ‘alleviate suffering among those we know and those we may never meet’. Ukranian soldiers are pictured above in Kyiv next to a downed plane
Maybe he’s just keeping it all back for his autobiography to be released during the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations.
After all, he finds time in his frantic schedule to complain to his London lawyers Shillings (who cost squillions) about those who dare offend his and Megs’s dignity.
Meanwhile, the Queen soldiers on, carrying out light duties despite having Covid.
How sad for Her Majesty that her soldier grandson Harry signally failed to inherit her selfless spirit and sense of duty.
Enough fashion-shaming, thank you. Stylists are scolding us for having £200 worth of clothes in our wardrobe that we never wear. In my case it’s more like £2,000 in many wardrobes — and the only reason I don’t wear them is I can’t fit into them any more!
Football in slow lane
Not before time UEFA announces the Champions League final will not be held in St Petersburg in May as planned. The Grand Prix in Russia has also been cancelled after former F1 world champion Sebastian Vettel and current champion Max Verstappen refused to race. If only there had been a similar chorus of condemnation from footballers over St Petersburg — but perhaps they were too busy taking the knee.
We’ll all be missing you, Helen
Peaky Blinders returns for its sixth and final series tomorrow night without magnificent chain-smoking matriarch Polly Gray, played menacingly by Helen McCrory who died last year.
While her millions of fans wonder how the show can continue without Polly, let’s all spare a thought for her husband Damian Lewis and their two children for whom, painfully, life has to go on without their beloved Helen.
Famous for her long locks, Nicole Scherzinger posts on TikTok a video of her chopping them off for a short wavy bob. Or maybe she just took out her hair extensions.
Furious viewers of The One Show accused Mrs Brown’s Boys star Brendan O’Carroll of racism for joking that black actor Tyler Perry, who plays a batty grandma in the new film A Madea Homecoming, might not make it into his hit BBC TV show. Surely the woke warriors should be equally outraged that both men play old women — deemed so offensive that both Tootsie and Mrs Doubtfire have been burned on the fire of #womanface indignation.
End of the Piers show for Amol
Asking ITV contacts if rumours were true that the BBC’s Amol Rajan had been offered an eye-watering deal to replace Piers Morgan, they laughed and said the last thing they needed was a politically correct, metropolitan pipsqueak who wears a fake diamond earring. The only one putting that rumour about, they said, was Amol Nitrate (the ambitious one’s nickname at the Beeb).
In the immediate aftermath of Alec Baldwin accidentally shooting and killing Halyna Hutchins on the set of the Western film Rust, he was photographed consoling her husband Matt and nine-year-old son Andros. Now Mr Hutchins says he is appalled that Baldwin is playing the victim and is furious he refuses to take responsibility for the tragedy. Meanwhile, the star appears with his young children looking bereft and bedraggled. An Oscar nomination for that piece of acting, Mr Baldwin.
Camilla says her favourite book to read to her grandchildren is David Walliams’s Gangsta Granny, who plots to steal the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London. An odd choice given that her die-hard detractors, who blame her for Charles’s divorce, think that’s where she belongs — in the Tower.
Westminster Wars
The Prime Minister channelled his inner Churchill in response to the invasion of Ukraine — statesmanlike with magnificent speeches and leading the EU on economic sanctions which have tragically proved not tough enough, nor in time to save the Ukrainian people.
Unlike Churchill, the Western world chose not to fight the Russians on the Ukraine beaches, nor in the streets. Unlike Churchill, in Ukraine’s darkest hour, the Free World surrendered.
After MP David Amess was stabbed to death in his surgery, MPs promised a new, kinder politics, only for the bile and vitriol to continue. Tragically, it took the invasion of Ukraine for a semblance of civility finally to descend upon the Commons.
Former SNP leader Alex Salmond has suspended ‘until further notice’ — not quit — his lucrative TV show on the Russian state broadcaster RT. Too little too late for us not to see him as a money-grubbing Putin appeaser.
Zoe’s Batman boobs
As if the side-boob wasn’t hideous enough, now we have the Batman boob which the new movie’s star, Zoe Kravitz, disported on the red carpet for its launch
As if the side-boob wasn’t hideous enough, now we have the Batman boob which the new movie’s star, Zoe Kravitz, disported on the red carpet for its launch.
Apart from being plain silly, it also looks very painful.
Or maybe she just dressed in a hurry and put on her Catwoman mask upside down over her bosom.
M&S seems to be tying it itself in PC knots by fretting over the feelings of women unable to have children — or is it attempting to placate those in the trans lobby for whom ‘mother’ may be an offensive word?
Whatever, the email we loyal shoppers received asking us if we’d prefer not to be reminded of Mother’s Day was absurd — not least because it managed to remind us of Mother’s Day anyway.
A study found that dogs grieve when they lose a canine companion. Cats do, too.
When my ginger and white moggy Ted lost his best mate Rocky, who lived next door and was killed on the road, he was inconsolable, even refusing his Felix treats. Then, for months afterwards, every day at dusk Ted went out and sat on the wall where he and Rocky used to meet, pitifully crying out for him.
Abba’s Bjorn separates from Lena, his wife of 41 years, after spending time with his first wife Agnetha while working on Voyage, the band’s first album in 40 years. Is it a case of first love reignited, of Voulez-Vous’s, ‘we’ve done it all before and now we’re back to get some more, aha’. We Abba fans can live in hope.
