The headline in the Mail on Sunday just about summed it all up: ‘It’s Nut Nut not Nut Nuts!’ Eh? I’m sorry, just run that by me again.
Apparently, Boris Johnson’s girlfriend is known disparagingly as ‘Princess Nut Nut’ not ‘Princess Nut Nuts’, writes our political editor.
On social media, ‘allies of Dominic Cummings’ use emojis (nope, me neither) to portray Carrie Anne Symonds as a cartoon princess accompanied by peanuts.
Boris Johnson’s girlfriend is known disparagingly as ‘Princess Nut Nut’ by ‘allies of Dominic Cummings’
Hence, Princess Nut Nut. How old are these people — three? In terms of nursery school playground abuse, they might just as well have called her Princess Wee Wee.
And these are the alleged geniuses who until about five minutes ago were charged with communicating the Government’s message on everything from Brexit to Covid-19.
You couldn’t make it up.
Look, I have no special insight into the inner circles around Boris. New Labour was more my manor, in the days when I took a passing interest in this sort of nonsense.
In fact, over the weekend I was speaking to my old mate Charlie Whelan, who used to be Gordon Brown’s bagman. No, it wasn’t about politics. We were mourning the death of Liverpool, Spurs and England goalkeeper Ray Clemence, someone we admired when we sat together for years at the back of the West Stand at White Hart Lane.
They use emojis to portray Carrie Anne Symonds as a cartoon princess accompanied by peanuts in text messages
But I happened to mention the madness in Downing Street to Charlie, who I’ve known for 40-odd years. Those of you with a long memory may have a vague recollection of the infighting between the Brown and Blair camps in the late Nineties.
The Boys In The Bubble used to get terribly excited about the tensions between Charlie, on one side, and Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell on the other. In the end, none of it mattered. They all got the old Spanish Archer (El-Bow), even though the odious Mandelson was shamefully brought back into government by Gordon when he collapsed into his Fuhrerbunker Downfall final days episode.
Campbell went off to spend more time with his mental health issues (the only man I know who’s got a certificate to say he’s sane). Mandelson filled his boots ‘advising’ a bunch of dodgy dictators. And Charlie retired quietly to Scotland, where he works as a fishing guide — retaining a season ticket at the Lane for European nights and the North London derby.
But two decades ago, they were box office in the Bubble, even though most people outside of London SW1 hadn’t heard of any of them.
Cummings was an integral part of delivering Brexit and winning the Tories an 80-seat majority
And as I said to Charlie, compared to the playgroup pygmies currently occupying Downing Street, the Three Musketeers of New Labour look like world statesmen in retrospect. Here’s the other difference. Cherie Blair used to put in her oar, too, but apart from the yuman rites act, Tony took little notice.
I can remember being at a drinks reception where she decided to give me the benefit of her view of the world — starting with my nicknaming her The Wicked Witch, a moniker adopted by her kids.
As she was prodding me in the chest I caught the eye of the then Prime Minister, being led up the stairs by men in blue suits with spaghetti wires coming out of their ears. Sierra Oscar . . .
Blair just looked at me and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say: ‘Now you know what I have to put up with every day, pal.’
But whatever the deal, the WW didn’t get to run the country.
Which brings us to Carrie Anne Symonds. If you believe the Birds In The Bubble, she appears to be calling the shots in No 10.
Who voted for that?
Desperate Dominic Cummings and the bloke in the chicken suit have been shown the door.
Carrie and her Bananarama buddies are said to be making the weather, while Boris is reduced to self-isolating in the spare room, again.
Bring on the wind farms and wokery. That should go down a bomb with the Red Wall.
Call me old-fashioned, but I’m never impressed with a 56-year-old man who runs off with a girl not much older than his daughter — and looks even younger. Sitting alongside Carrie Anne, Boris is more like her dad than her fiance.
Did you see the video he released yesterday after being put back into coronavirus house arrest? If it’s possible to be both chubby and cadaverous at the same time, BoJo’s just pulled it off. He’s a hollowed-out husk.
OK, so I’ve supported Boris over the years, even though I’d never claim to know him that well.
But he has been a means to an end. First to stop Red Ken Livingstone in London, and to secure Brexit and stop Corbyn.
Cummings was an integral part of delivering Brexit and winning the Tories an 80-seat majority. And this is how Boris repays him.
Sure, he’s difficult. A bit of a madman, by all accounts. But as my old Evening Standard editor John Leese once said, looking in the direction of me and my long-time friend Peter McKay, a stalwart of this parish: ‘If I didn’t employ madmen, I’d never get a paper out.’
I’ve never met Cummings, but he deserved better than being dumped unceremoniously on the whim of the Prime Minister’s unelected consort and the Witches of Westwick.
How did the architect of Brexit and a Tory landslide end up being screwed over by Boris’s girlfriend and, apparently, a woman who worked for the Guardian and BBC’s Newsnight and is now charged with speaking for nominally Conservative Britain?
The game’s up.
Sorry, but Boris has lost it. Big time. He’s forgotten who his friends are and caved in to a needy lover half his age.
And this country has ended up with a Prime Minister who’s relocated his brains where the squirrel sticks his Nut Nuts . . .
A few weeks ago, when Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner turned up taking the knee in a miniskirt and a pair of bovver boots, I observed that she looked as if she had just wandered off the dance floor at the Wigan Casino.
Now her boss, Max Headroom, has confessed to being a closet Northern Soul fan.
Who knew there was a Golden Torch scene in Surrey, where Starmer grew up?
If Keir Starmer is a fan of Dobie Gray and Frank Wilson, he has gone up in my estimations
When I was disc-jockeying at the Spinning Wheel club in Peterborough, we never got much further south than Stevenage.
But that was when Northern Soul was called, er, soul. It didn’t get properly Northern until the early Seventies.
Still, if Starmer’s a fan of Dobie Gray and Frank Wilson, he’s gone up in my estimation.
And one of these days, as Labour leader, he’s going to find those backflips come in handy!
Heaven in safe hands
Much sadness at the death of Ray Clemence (mentioned elsewhere). He was a brilliant professional footballer and an absolute gent.
I have fond memories of him at Tottenham and Barnet, my local club. I also recall one of the most bizarre lunchtimes of my broadcast career, a radio phone-in on TalkSport hosted by my old LBC colleague Tony Lockwood, featuring me, Ray and Mad Frankie Fraser, the well-known London gangster.
Much sadness at the death of Ray Clemence. He was a brilliant professional footballer and an absolute gent
Don’t ask.
Condolences to Ray’s family, friends and former team-mates. I can’t better the tribute paid to him by Ossie Ardiles:
‘Dearest Raymondo, what a legend, what a gentleman. How lucky we were to call you a friend.’
A man has been dragged before a court for ‘verbally abusing’ his dog. There but for the grace, etc.
There were times when I had to have a quiet word with our Labrador Ossie, named after the great Ardiles (see also elsewhere), especially when he ate his way through the skirting board, chewed my best socks and broke wind violently after an overdose of Chum, chicken and mushroom.
Joshua Ponsford has been prosecuted by the RSPCA for ‘verbally abusing’ his rottweiler Lulu (pictured)
Joshua Ponsford was prosecuted by the RSPCA when someone recorded him shouting at his Rottweiler, called, appropriately, Lulu.
Weee-llllllllll, you know you make me want to shout . . .
Prawn to run…
This year in particular, we’ve all ordered stuff off the internet we can’t remember. But my wife was puzzled when Amazon turned up on Saturday with a box labelled ‘King Prawns from Bangladesh’.
‘What the hell have you been ordering now?’ she demanded to know.
‘Not guilty, darling,’ I pleaded. Turned out to be four bottles of mouthwash. Amazon must be running out of suitable boxes.
Our garage looks like cardboard city and the council, naturally, won’t take it away.
As I wrote back in March, by the time this is over, we’re all going to end up living in a box.