Search results for Monarchy:

King Charles was diagnosed with Cancer this week. The doctor told him it was the big C and the king looked very despondent before asking whether he'll also be brining that big C of a wife of his. Yes, Harry made a stop back to the UK in order to visit his father, before presumably also going to visit King Charles. Anyway, the royal household hasn't given any details as to what type of cancer it is although it was discovered during a fairly routine prostate operation and so that's one option, bow ......

More developments in the SNP money scandal, police apparently seized a number of items including a wheelbarrow, presumably the one used to move the piles of from the office, into Nicola Sturgeon's garden shed. From what I can gather speaking to folk, 50% of people in Scotland think the story is an important issue, 50% of people are bored hearing about it and 10% of people are unsure. Those numbers don't add up to 100% because the maths was done by Nicola's husband.

Plenty of destruction first at the local election ballot boxes, and there was also an assassination attempt against Vladimir Putin after a drone attacked the Kremlin. Russian authorities were quick to blame Ukraine whilst many in the west accused Russia of doing it themselves as an excuse to escalate the war and assassinate Zelensky. This of course makes a change from the BBC trying to blame the assassination attempt on climate change although the Ukraine situation is quite unsettling with the Russians openly threatening to use nuclear weapons. If Kyiv got a nuking it would be very different to London getting its new king.

And talking of which, this was the weekend that King Charles finally got a new hat. By which I mean a very very old hat. There's been months of waiting, it reminds me of when I was a kid and I saved up the tokens on the back of the breakfast cereal box and then posted them off and waited for the toy to arrive. I was vaguely hoping that the ceremony would have included a portion where Charles pointed at Prince Andrew singing I'm the king of the castle and you're the dirty wee rascal. But as such it all went off ass you'd expect, a bit like a wedding really, except Charles and Camilla's wedding had Steven Fry to give a speech, it seems a bit of a missed opportunity really. Afterwards they drove off and in a touching tribute to Diana, neither the king or queen were wearing a seat belt in the royal coach. As for now, the last stage to implement is the new coinage with Charles' face replacing that of the queen's. Some people probably won't like the new coins, but those are people who don't like change.

A space launch in cornwall went wrong after an anomoly caused it to land in the sea. A government spokespeson was reported to say that they should have gotten Harry Kane to launch it. Whilst a North Koreak government spokesman said that the kingdom would retaliate by firing *two* rockets into the sea. A number of smug neurosurgeons looked at the dejected rocket scientists and commented that it was hardly brain surgery.

Lisa Marie Presley passed away at the age of 54. The family are reported to be All Shook Up.

68 people died in the Himalayas after a a plane crashed near the city of Pokhara in Nepal. I say 68 people although the number could be more after there were sightings of very large paw prints heading up into the mountains

Yet more grumblings from Prince Harry, talking about emotional baggage, I always thought that was an odd expression, I'd go for "griefcase" To play devil's advocate though, people are complaining about him constantly going on talk shows and interviews but if it was a choice of fly to New York to chat with Jimmy Fallon, or spend 3 days stuck in the house with Meghan I'd already be orderring the taxi. As to his next career move, I'd recommend a gig with an insurance company. you could get a no claims bonus guaranteed with Prince Harry Insurance, where it's always the other driver's fault.

It's a new year although that may be confusing to those who are only now just starting to receive their Christmas cards.

The new year celebrations in London included a long sequence of blue and yellow fireworks as a nod to the war in Ukraine. And I'm sure that the Ukrainian refugees watching from the banks of the Thames found the sounds of explosions and gunpowder very comforting.

Pope Francis gave a talk in which he implied that members of the mafia should be excommunicated from the catholic church, and on a completely unrelated note, the former Pope Benedict died very shortly afterwards. The grim reapear was later reported to have said he was going to see the new year in with a Benedictine

Vivian Westwood also passed away. What's that expression? About Fashionably late?

Rishi Sunak unveiled plans to make kids study maths until the age of 18. Presumably so that they can understand their byzantine gas bill calculations

Prince Harry's book has been released, in Spain at least, but the newspapers have all employed some bilingual journalists to report on all the juicy stories. There's, for instance, a section about a physical fight he had with Prince William, which would frankly have made for far better television than that rubbish on Netflix. Harry, by the way, did two tours of afghanistan and killed 25 people, yet it seems he had his lights punched out by a former retired air ambulance pilot. The book is called "Spare" although I'm waiting to see if James Hewitt releases one called "Harry and the half-blood prince" Or maybe they'll make it into a film and they can call it "When Harry met Salty'

"Its coming home, it's coming home", the plane with England's coming home, if that's what you mean. There's always talk about expectations and whether the bar was set to high, but from what I could tell, the crossbar would have had to be about 8 feet higher for that goal to have gone in. Although on the plus side, if you were one of the fans sat right at the back in seat ZZ99 then you might have stood a chance of catching the ball.
​​
​​Maybe some less time spent on activism and kneeling down and some more time spent on basic things like being able to kick the ball into the goal without missing. Perhaps when Gareth Southgate gets to chat to the king and visit the palace, Charles will apologise that the peerage is no longer on offer before pointing out that the tbag has stayed in Gareth's cup longer than the football team did. I think the other football highlight of the week was seeing Japan pulling off a remarkable victory by beating possible favourites Spain, I don't think anyone's seen the Japanese lit up like that before since perhaps those B39 piolets at the end of the 2nd World War.
​​
​​Former Jackass star Bam Margera caught covid and is no in a hospital on a ventilator. I'm wonderring how long it will take someone else in the Jackass cast to fart into the breathing tube
​​
​​Perhaps I should also mention the Harry & Meghan documentary whingeathon. Honestly, it's like a hangman talking to a condemned man on the way to the scaffold about how he has it worse because he has to to walk home in the rain afterwards and maybe occasionally bump into the king. Apparently Prince Harry thinks all British people are racist which is pretty rich considering that he has a black woman in his house to cook and do all his laundry.

Week 2 of the Queen's funeral with a 13 mile long queue in London to see the casket. Honestly, at this stage it might be quicker to just wheel the coffin past everyone along the South Bank but as things go it's sat on a plinth in Westminster surrounded by 4 large candles and it's therefore a shame that Ronnie Corbett is no longer alive to commentate on the proceedings. Talking about celebrities, it seems that Phillip Schofield was caught queue jumping leading for calls for him to be sacked, so I guess that's *two* old queens we won't be hearing from any time soon. Anyway, this week I thought we'd copy the Sunday newspapers and look at a timeline of her reign.


1926 - She was born and unlike you or I, the Queen had two birthdays, I'm guessing that's because she was born twice, an especially painful ordeal for her mother.
1947 - At the age of 21 She made her first overseas visit, to South Africa and to this day 21yo girls from England continue to go there on gap years and feel the needs to broadcast it to the world (via social media).
1948 - The following year she had a child, again something that seems to happen with some of those girls on gap years although to far less acclaim.
1952 - Princess Lizzy became Queen Elizabeth II and the partying led to the end of sweet rationing which had been in place since the war. Roger Bannister subsequently went on to eat a bar of chocolate and run a 4-minute mile on the sugar rush.
1960s - She had a few more children and she met the Beatles who were pop royalty. The Beatles didn't like paying tax in the UK so they actually had a lot more in common with the queen than many would imagine.
1970s - She celebrated her silver jubilee and one of the gifts was a London Underground line which on the map is grey, not silver, because the 1970s were difficult times and money for silver was hard to come by presumably.
1980s - Her children got married and longevity of those marriages was immortalised by the Government in a piece of performance art known as sinking the Belgrano. They don't call it the Royal Navy for nothing!
1992 - Windsor Castle Fire and it would be the worst example of a castle being destroyed by smoke until Roy Castle a couple of years later. The queen referred to 1992 as an 'annus horribilis' which was the same term that the coroner later used when Stuart Lubbock was fished out of Michael Barrymore's swimming pool.
1997 - Princess Diana died and a few years later the Queen Mother died, sending the Diageo share price through the floor. I remember seeing beefeaters at the Queen Mum's funeral, presumably a tribute from the gin company to a long time customer.
2005 - Prince Charles married Camilla and declined an offer by the tabloids to go on a honeymoon to Paris.
2012 - Possibly the highlight of her reign, she took part in the Olympic opening ceremony, in which she met James Bond and parachuted out of a helicopter.
2018 - This was the year she took a slight step back in her public duties, while grooming Charles to take over the role, which he now has. She therefore leaves us a world very changed and also one in which the new king is already in his latter years. Not many people get their first job in their 70s. I guess Charles will sleep soundly though that, what with the rules of homeopathy, the quality of his reign will only be greater the less of it there is. So let's raise a small tincture of wine to the new king.

The Queen is dead at the age of 96. Another one bites the dust, but wait, didn’t Freddie Mercury die years ago? Of course not, this is Elizabeth II (or Elizabeth I if you’re Nicola Sturgeon) and there must be a local florist in Balmoral rubbing his hands together at the moment. The news is reporting that she died peacefully in her sleep although there’s a rumour going around that she was actually busy cutting the brakes underneath Meghan Markle’s car when the jack slipped. Her last words were supposedly, “Lizz Truss Prime Minister? Over my dead body!”

But sad times all round, unless you’re Elton John’s publisher or you’re in the commemorative plate industry. At this point people can now look forward to 2 weeks of round the clock news and tributes; a number of tv stations broke the story by showing a flag and playing the national anthem but I can’t help but feel playing God Save The Queen is a bit late now that she’s already snuffed it. Of course, being Scottish, I only bothered to learn the lyrics to the national anthem a couple of years ago, and yet now it seems they’re going to be changing them! I’m going to be honest, initially when I heard that “God Save The Queen” was going to be changing to “God Save The King” I thought it was yet another stunt from the transgender activists.

Joking aside though there are of course important matters of state to consider, like how are they going to fit Charles’ ears onto the new coinage. And I can’t help but feel that it all comes as a bit of a kick in the teeth to the Royal Mail who will presumably have to spent millions of pounds changing the ER signs on the postboxes, all of which could have been avoided if the Queen had called her first song Edward. Anyway, I’ll leave you with this one. Q: What’s the difference between the Queen and Price Phillip’s Land Rover? A: The land rover could reach 100.

Mariah Carey is being sued for $20m by someone who claims she stole the song “All I want for Christmas Is You” And in similar news I’ve investigated suing her for a similar amount after having to hear the song every year since 1994

Robbie Williams has said “Fame should come with a warning” and if you ask me, it should also come with an expiration date

The racing jockey Lester Piggott passed away at the age of 86, apparently the funeral is going to be on Wednesday, at 10-1. Finance Experts are also predicting the economy is set to sore after police and the taxman take a thorough look under his floor boards.

This week saw the UK celebrating the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, meaning she’s been doing the job for 70 years. The naming system also includes gold for 50, diamond for 60 and I think for 80 years it’s a gallon of petrol. Back in the 1970s for the Silver Jubilee the queen got given an London Underground line for it, and this time around she got the “Elizabeth Line” crossrail system in London. Meanwhile my kids have to put up with asking for a brio train set from Amazon. It does make you wonder whether America would have better rail transit if they didn’t keep changing presidents ever 4-8 years.

One of the questions in the past few weeks was whether Prince Andrew would be allowed to hog the limelight and overshadow the event, but as it turns out (just days before) the announcement came out that Prince Andrew had covid, would Jubilee’v it! He’ll have to stay at home and isolate until it’s all over. Perhaps he’s telling the truth mind, teenage girls are more likely to be asymptomatic carriers. I wonder if he’ll get night sweats. And on the subject of attention seeking people, Prince Harry flew in with Meghan and new child. I’m not saying they’re in it for themselves, but I wouldn’t put it past them to use the opportunity to scam a free christening service out of the taxpayer

For what it’s worth, I amn’t too bothered by the monarchy, it’s weird and dated but so is my record collection. It’s also no worse than having a presidential election where the choice would inevitably turn out to be Tony Blair, Russel Brand or Noel Edmonds, with the BBC attacking that shameful selection of candidates, not due to it being ridiculous but due to its lack of gender or racial diversity. On the other hand if a tragedy were to befalls that somehow put Prince Harry back in contention for being on the throne, then you’ll be first to see me on the television marching alongside the likes of Jeremy Corbyn, demanding that they depose him in favour of Claire Balding as head of state. She’s even young enough that she might last enough time to get a rail

Let's stop talking about the modern day Tzar in order to talk about two princes, both of whom made a spectacle of themselves this last week.

Fist of all, the Fresh Prince, Will Smith, decided to make the Oscars watchable for the first time in years after punching Chris Rock following a joke he told about Will's bald wife. I bet Will wishes he still had that memory erasing wand from the Men In Black film series. Anyway, it at least makes a change from the usual charade where several hundred attention seeking morons exchange platitudes and act like they hold the moral high ground when in truth they'd have to all run for political office to drag Hollywood's reputation any lower.

As to morals and ethics, Will Smith and Jada have an open marriage although most assumed that Jada was the slapper in that relationship but Will Smith too? I guess it shows that their marriage is open to anything, asides from jokes. The only disappointment was that Chris Rock decided to remain calm and get on with the award ceremony rather than coming back with a retort, something like "Come on Jada, keep your hair on" or possible a joke about how it was the worst thing Will Smith had done since Wild Wild West. Anyway, with expectations raised for next year it's hard to see how they'll up the ante. Perhaps one of the stars will agitate for a fight ahead of time, so that it's already trending on social media before the lights go dim. That's certainly something I'd tune in to watch, as compared to the current hypocrisy where some 2 hour long lecture in diverse wokery is proclaimed as one of history's most important pieces of cinema.

The other prince who was on the telly this last week was Prince Andrew who decided to show up to take center stage at the memorial service to Prince Phillip. It's a memorial service to his father, nobody disagreed about him attending it and it's not like anyone trusts him to be left alone unattended these days. On the other hand he also went out of his way to walk with the queen and place himself in the limelight to the extent that you almost expected him to do the talk-show rounds afterwards. Possibly an appearance on the One Show, because it's about one, because he's royalty, geddit?. Anyway, the rest of the royals were apparently livid about it, Prince Charles especially so, he had presumably begged Harry & Meghan to show up for the sole purpose of diverting attention away from their uncle. Here's one to close, What's Meghan Markle's favourite computer operating system? Windows Me.

It’s been about two years but things might be getting back to normal after all because rather than covid the main news stories have been royal gossip and "the weather"

Let's look at the first of those stories, the Prince Andrew saga, which concluded by him agreeing to settle the matter out of court and thus changing the nursery rhyme: "The Grand Old Duke of York, he had 12 million quid, he gave it to someone he never met for something he never did" In America there is a far ruder version of that rhyme where it talks about 15 million bucks. All things considered it's a real shame for the public, in part because it would have been the trial of the century and it's America so it would have been televised. The Emily Maitlis interview was great but it was too short, imagine if those internet memes and quotes and bizarre stories kept going with new twists and revelations every day. Alas it will not be the case and in a further kick in the teeth the public will be stumping up £7m for him apparently as compensatory result of him being kicked out of his grace-and-favour home at Windsor. I guess the irony is that Virginia will be getting so much taxpayer money that she'd normally be the sort of person the royals got on well with.

In other news though, Storm Eunice has been hammering the country and its at times like this that I really wish Bruce Forsythe was still alive so he could introduce the weather, “Nice to see you, to see Eunice” The story has been presented with round the clock footage of badly shot iPhone videos that viewers have sent in, although this has been topped up by armies of camera crews driving around in large diesel burning trucks, urging members of the public to use less fossil fuels. My personal favourite shot was the wind turbine that had blown over #YouHadOneJob although there's also some scary footage posted on YouTube of pilots trying to large passenger aircrafts against an 80mph sidewind. Not to be mistaken with the story about the the pilots that are three sheets to the wind. Of all the single images shown on the news, one of the more shocking ones was of the Millennium Dome or O2 Area with several roof sections missing. Well what goes around comes around I guess, now at least the owners know what it feels like “to be ripped off” (geddit).

And in other news, apparently America is sending B52s to Europe. Not sure where exactly although I like that song they do about the Love Shack

2 main stories this week but first of all a quick sports news story after Novak Djokovic was barred from entering Australia due to not complying with their covid vaccination policy. In the process he became the first tennis player to be knocked out a on tennis tournament for just missing 1 shot. He's subsequently challenged the decision in court, lost the case and has now been banned from Australia for 3 years, which is pretty ironic because most of the Australian government officials are only there themselves because one of their ancestors *lost* a court case.

Anyway, the first big news story was the one that whilst the UK was locked down last spring the Prime Minister was really putting the "party" into "Conservative Party" and hosted a booze-up in his back garden. This was all of course at a time when many members of the public had visits from the police for having guests over, and the Beastie Boys famously 'had to fight for their right to party' There were initial denials, that it was a work event, and eventually it turned out that Boris was not handing out drinks but only due the technicality that it was BYOB and stories have since emerged about a booze-run to the Co-op on The Strand. As of yet it is unclear if they got value for money for the taxpayer by purchasing the wine as part of the dinner+wine meal deal. Another part of the story we're also still waiting on is when we eventually get to see the CCTV footage of a staffer dashing along Whitehall with half a dozen bags clicking away. The prime minister in response to all of this refused to resign and claimed that at the time he thought it was a work activity and therefore ok, and I actually even found myself agreeing with Kier Starmer for the first time, ever, when he described Boris' ignorance excuse as being so lazy as to be offensive, although in true Labour Party style he turned out to be a hypocrite after pictures emerged of him too having beers with friends at around the same time last year.

Someone else was also in the news though this week with stories about losing their job and that person was the Grand Old Duke Of York, also known as Randy Andy, also known as Prince Charles' idiot brother, also soon to possible be known as whatever number is on the piece of card he's asked to hold up when they take his picture. Earlier this week he was stripped of all his titles by the Queen, including HRH but also dozens of other things like "Colonel of the Grenadier Guards" "Commodore-in-Chief of the Fleet Air Arm" and "Royal colonel of the Royal Regiment of Scotland" Wowzers, the last time I saw someone lose that many titles they were managing Tottenham Hotspur. Anyway, having gone from Royal Highness to Royal Minus I suppose for now that all we can do is sit back and wait for the court case to start later this year. Presumably the lesson here is that if you really insist on hanging around with the likes of Jeffrey Epstein and commuting crimes and the like, at least have the common sense to do it in Australia, before not getting vaccinated and blaming your absence on pen-pushers at the airport.

Happy new year and here’s a thought: if “people are as honest as the day is long," then is that why there's more crime in the winter, over Christmas and New Year? And talking of criminals, Tony Blair finally got given a knighthood in the New Year’s Honor list. Reportedly it was delayed for the past 2 decades at the personal bequest of Prince Phillip who despised him although ultimately the prime minister thought that Mr Blair should be rewarded for his services to making the Labour Party unelectable as well as associating the “People’s Referendum” campaign with his special brand of toxicity+hubris.

In other news I also saw a story: “Motorcyclist killed in A1 collision” and I honestly think the Telegraph should show more respect to the grieving family and refrain from rating fatal vehicle accidents with scores like A1 as if it's Buzzfeed

But the large story from the last few weeks has probably been the Ghislane Maxwell story, she spent her 60th birthday in prison and by the looks of things she’ll probably be spending the next 60 of them in prison too. I’m joking of course, she’ll probably befall some kind of tragic yet fatal accident like tripping and catching her neck on a rope or the kitchen accidentally using cyanide rather than paprika. It is after all a Maxwell family tradition, dying in mysterious circumstances.

In a surprise turn of events however it turns out that one of the members of the jury lied on the screening questionnaire, had been a victim of abuse when they were younger and discussed this in the deliberations, thus laying the grounds for a mistrial. It also means we are unlikely to see what so many had hoped, which was her cooperating fully with the police and naming a series of high-profile names in exchange for a reduced sentence. Perhaps instead of 50 years, the judge might cheekily ask if to match her crimes she’d like her prison time to be under 18. In exchange for testifying against Prince Andrew and Bill Clinton and the like, which is what this has all been about from the start

The Ghislane Maxwell case has always been very much a warm-up show, it’s like back in the day when people went to the cinema to see a Pink Panther movie and they’d show one of the cartoons during the opening credits and that’s great. But you were really there to see Peter Sellers and some kind of farcical crime caper where Inspector Clouseau investigates whether Prince Andrew can sweat or not. As to how things are going, Andy has just had to flog a chalet in Verbier Switzerland to fund his legal team’s war-chest, although some of that money will be used to pay off Isabella de Rouvre who loaned him the money to buy the chalet and who also later sued him for £7million. Perhaps the money troubles are why he likes the weekday specials at Pizza Express although it remains to be seen whether he’s going to later be catching the Midnight Express (bit of prison humor there). Or perhaps the easiest and cheapest way to get him off the hook would be for the queen to just hand out some honors to Ghislane and some other witnesses in exchange for never mentioning Andrew’s name again. After all, “Dame Ghislane Maxwell” is no less bonkers than “Sir Tony Blair”.

Last week it was Matt Hancock with marital issues and this week Michael Gove announced that he’ and his wife are getting divorced. Not sure if you’ve heard the old one about the dentist and a manicurist that decided to get divorced? They fought tooth and nail. Reminds me also of the friend I have who used to go out with the lady that was the voice of the speaking clock but then they broke up and she won’t give him the time of day now. Anyway, the Michael Gove story that is not terribly surprising to many and I want to be careful here with libel law so I’ll simply suggest that you search online for Michael Gove and Dominic Cummings and let Google go the work.

But anyway, the main story this week seems to be the unveiling of the Princess Diana statue next to Kensington Palace. If you ask me it looks more like a young Mary Berry or possibly Tommy Steele if you remember him from back in the day. Give it some credit, I certainly prefer it to the modern artistic experiments they put on the 4th plinth at Trafalgar square and at least the statue is unlikely to result in anyone injuring themselves like at the memorial pond. When I saw the story I must be honest, I had no idea as to why they they were choosing this year to erect a statue other than perhaps get William and Harry in a room together, but apparently she would have been 60 today. She’s held up as some kind of saintly divine figure by many when up until the day she died she was just another face doing the rounds at the tabloids and OK magazine, like Jennifer Anniston minus the haircut or the acting. If she were alive today she’d almost certainly be her 4th or 5th playboy husband by now, all of them questionable with shady connections to money, and the press would have spent the last 20 years continuing to churn out the same scathing articles that were seemingly forgotten about the day that Elton John sat at a piano. I’m thinking a down-market Elizabeth Taylor but blonde and fewer movie roles. Looking back at the time, the fawning over her death by the London press probably did more to stir up the Scottish nationalist movement than any royal since Edward Longshanks. Let’s lighten the mood somewhat with a joke, Why did Princess Diana cross the road? Because she wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.

This week saw a rather strange turn of events, first there was a retrospective story talking about Martin Bashir’s subterfuge to gain an interview with Princess Diana. Prince William reacted with a professional tone of sadness and disappointment, putting out a statement. Whereas Prince Harry saw things differently and was disgusted at his own mother of all people hogging the limelight, upstaging him and Meghan’s interview, before going on camera yet again to complain about it all. The last time I saw an interview with such lack of restraint or self-control shame, it was Oliver Reed stumbling onto Michael Aspel’s show back in the day.

So talking about drunken mishaps from the 90s, that Segway's perfectly into the first of these stories, the Princess Diana one. The classic joke back in the day was that Princess Diana’s favourite drink of choice was a Harvey Wallbanger with six chasers. Anyway, the story this week was about Martin Bashir and how as a fairly junior member of staff he’d somehow landed one of the interviews of the century. It turns out that he falsified bank statements to gain trust along with a series of stories that were made up but nonetheless confirmed Diana’s growing paranoia to the extent that the state was out to get her. She trusted him and that ultimately this led her to spurn the protection services, relying on Dodi Al-Fayed’s team. Two years later she discovered that sometimes stopping a Mercedes is harder than stopping world hunger and she was all over the radio, and the dashboard and the front seats. The queen mother famously caught the bouquet at the funeral and Martin Bashir went on to continue as a successful journalistic career with the BBC backing him all the way. The BBC was still defending Bashir up until last week when he stepped down, yet this story actually came to attention last year due to a freedom of information request which the BBC lawyers tried their best to overturn. They certainly defend their own, this is the same corporation that defended Savil for years although they were pretty ok with slandering Cliff Richard, slandering James Dyson, slandering Lord McAlpine, the list goes on really, ironically they could probably commission a television series on them all.

Let’s talk about Prince Harry though because having apparently learnt nothing from his mother, he decided to go on television again for another interview, wallowing in self pity and presenting a delusional image that despite being multi-millionaires living in the height of luxury in sunny Santa Barbara, they’re actually just the same as you and me. If anything they’re worse off, we should feel sorry for them, sure they don’t have work a 10 hour shift in an Amazon warehouse or worry about if they can pay the gas bill next month, but they are a bit moody and down in the dumps and that’s much worse. There’s a general vibe that despite having a lavish wedding at Westminster Abbey paid for by the taxpayer and broadcast around the world, they didn’t get paid enough attention. Meghan seemingly feels hard done by because she didn’t constantly get treated like a queen and the things is, “no, because you’re not the queen, like The Queen, or Kate who will literally be the queen one day” Anyway, as the most senior royals living in America, they now feel they have the platform to say and do what they want, which they call “their truth” and everyone else calls “a bunch of egotistical and fanciful wokery”. I say that they’re most senior royals living in America, that is of course until Prince Andrew eventually winds up there for several years in a one bedroom flat with bars on the windows. I imagine that if he were somehow arrested and imprisoned then Harry would already be cutting a deal with Amazon Prime to go on tv and explain how Prince Andrew planned it years in advance as a calculated and deliberate ploy to hurt Meghan’s feelings and distract their social outreach work. Work like where Harry talks about how Asian people have to suffer appalling racist attacks, whilst sneakily omitting the bit about how they had to suffer attacks from his helicopter gunship in Afghanistan. One last thing before I go that nobody else seems to mention, look at Harry’s hands, they’re really really old looking.

Most of this weekend’s news focused on the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral at Windsor, there was a 41-gun salute, followed by a phone call from Emmanuel Macron saying that they surrendered, and a protest in America demanding a ban on assault-style ceremonial cannons. No sign of Meghan of course, although perhaps she’s claiming to have attended a secret private funeral a few days ago with just the Archbishop of Canterbury in attendance. I did personally wonder why there were so many people at the event although I later saw David Icke commenting that the Covid rules about family gatherings do not apply to lizards or shapeshifters. All things considered I found the more bizarre story to be the one about how Prince Andrew expected to be allowed to show up wearing an admiral’s uniform, as if the funeral was some kind of bespoke-tailored fancy dress occasion. Who would have thought that Phillip’s least embarrassing son would end up being the one that talked to trees? Personally speaking if I was the prime minister I would have stepped in and told Andrew to wear the outfit on condition that immediately afterwards he was flown out to Ukraine where a major naval skirmish may be about to kick off. She how dedicated to the cause he really is.

The situation in Ukraine is actually rather serious, but sadly that fact is no longer news, one of Ukraine’s biggest imports in recent years has been the Russian military and after Putin was criticized by NATO for annexing Sevastopol he was reported to have shrugged and said “Crimea River” Personally I’m just glad I wasn’t born there, mostly because I don’t speak a word of Russian, though also because it looks like Vladimir is itching to invade again. And why not, it’s an election year and there are seats in the Duma up for grabs so he needs to make sure everyone knows he’s got Russian interests at the forefront, rather than Russian assets in his bank account. In the meantime, Alexi Navalny, the opposition leader, is slowly dying in jail, although half the voters suspect him of being a CIA backed stooge anyway and there’s no conceivable way that Putin would actually lose. It’s a fairly depressing situation really but then wasn’t it always. It’s just a shame that we aren’t at least getting a new Tolstoy or Faberge or Shostakovich out of it. Say what you will about Stalin or the Tzars, at least we got some good music and books out of it all. As for these days the best we can hope for is whatever piece of music they enter into the Eurovision Song Contest next month. Personally speaking I’d rather sign up and join the military in Ukraine than sit through an evening of that. Given the shear scale of the Russian troop buildup on the border, at least the war looks like it will take less time to be over and done with, at least until another year. Just imagine if the BBC got Graham Norton to commentate on their News Chanel, I jest of course, they would never do that, because he’s white and over the age of 50.

Royal news this week as Prince Phillip the queen’s husband, passed away at the age of 99 which is a shame because if he’d lived another 2 months then he would have gotten a telegram from the queen.

When it comes to the royal family, I’m pretty ambivalent, they’re certainly better than having President Blair, they make for an interesting national soap opera and if it wasn’t for the royals then what would we name hospitals, railways and especially drinking establishments after. We can’t name all the pubs after coloured lions after all. Trawling through the acres of press coverage, Prince Phillip did lead a fairly interesting life and for everyone moaning about spent more than half a century living a life of idleness, you have to remember that unlike his kids he actually fought and risked his life for those war medals he wore on special occasions. He was at the Battle of Crete and the Invasion of Sicily, as compared to Prince Edward who decided to drop out of the marines and organise It’s a Royal Knockout. Or Prince Harry who seemed to be making himself a career as a soldier until he got confused and wore a German military outfit that time.

There’s a list of quotes and supposed gaffes through him over the years, most of them actually end up painting a pretty good image of someone who was probably quite fun to have a drink with, I quite like his comment that "When a man opens a car door for his wife, it's either a new car or a new wife." and supposedly at the coronation he made a comment about the queen getting another new hat. I also used to occasionally look at the court circular in The Times and be surprised by just how much he and the wife actually got up to, attending charity meeting and spending decades seeing to a never ending stream of new lifeboats, museums, youth centers and so on. If he did dislike Tony Blair as much as they say then you can hardly blame him because all that extra money to upgrade schools and hospitals probably meant he was staring down the barrel of 20 years shaking hands with teaching assistants and hospital cleaners. I wouldn’t want that life, no matter how much swan the wife let me eat.

Now we have a week of mourning and round the clock news coverage and with any luck folks might get the day off work which would be good now that the weather is better than it was. There’s also talk about whether or not Harry and Meghan will attend the funeral, personally speaking I’d not be surprised if Meghan flies over early with a shovel to help dig the grave.

Oh well, the Duke of Deadinburgh, god racist his soul.

Covid news this week as the bureaucratic farce known as the EU have given up trying to steal vaccines and instead go crawling to Vladimir Putin asking if he has some spare vaccines he can sell them. The Russian-developed Sputnik V vaccine has been shown to be quite effective although I’m guessing that its dispensed by members of the state police jabbing vaccine laced umbrellas into unsuspecting members of the public maybe asking if they want to with them to a small room to be shot, by which they mean a shot of the vaccine. But if Brussels wants to write a cheque to Moscow then Soviet (so be it)

In America the news was the announcement that the family of murdered man George Floyd were going to be awarded a $27m settlement. George Floyd looks set to be earning more than Pink Floyd, showing once again that perhaps crime doesn’t pay, but your grieving relatives might do quite well out of it.

Also this week a story that it seems that we’re not going to be seeing any more of Mr Potato Head and I initially thought that was a story about Piers Morgan being sacked, following his refusal to apologise about comments he made about Harry & Meghan. Not often I agree 100% with Piers but he’s pretty on point with this one and most of what they said in that interview was either sanctimonious garbage or just plain untrue, like the claim that she had her passport taken and was unable to travel, when in truth she traveled a lot during those years and there are countless PR shots to prove it. They claimed that someone was racist but then refused to divulge anything beyond that so without facts or a specific accusation who knows what happened. She mostly just seem to hold a grudge based on her being unable to use the position and its public resources resources to peruse a career as political activist or cash in on the role to get get rich, it’s like she thought that Victoria Beckham and Queen Victoria were the same thing and got confused because she was lazy and didn’t research the job. Admittedly the two of them both seem to be in on the jape, the two of them presumably have a lot in common, like how I don’t care for either of them. Where next though? There’s Netflix shows in the making and if anyone’s a betting man I wager £100 she launches a perfume in the next 2 years. And people are making comparisons to Princess Diana so if she does launch a perfume, maybe she shoud call it Tunnel No 5. You know what, it many respects she maybe has a lot more in common with Prince Phillip, like distain for the British Press, being born overseas and life expectancy.

A bit of news in France this week as Nicolas Sarkozy was found guilty of trying to bribe a judge in 2014. I'm guessing it was an actual judge, but then he's a former politician so maybe it was a judge on the French version of Strictly. Or perhaps the X Factor, he is an "ex" president after all and he's been married 3 times.

The main stories were from America though where the culture wars and cancel culture continue. This time it is the beloved children books The Cat In The Hat that's been branded racist and offensive. I'd have actually though that Dr Seuss' works were exactly what the woke left would want these days, he has that one with the characters Thing 1 and Thing 2 and I thought that those are the names that those idiots want to use nowadays instead of "mum" and "dad" I was quite tempted to just draw the cat this week, along with a Seuss-styled poem like as follows

No I wear not wear that mask
I will not do the thing you ask
I will not wear it on my face
I will not wear it any place
Go back home to your safe space
You really are a sad disgrace

But of course he big story is the Harry and Meghan interview which isn't out yet but it will be by the time this is posted. It doesn't matter though because I've decided to respect Harry and Meghan's request for privacy and not watch the thing. The only way it would be entertaining would be if Oprah went on the offence and asked Harry if his clothes got lost in shipping and if that's why the only thing he seems to wear these days is that grey suit with beige shoes. Maybe crack a joke about if he felt relieved when the chauffeur driven car made it safely to the studio. They presumably have to pay that driver a lot, being their chauffeur is probably up in that top 5 list of dangerous jobs along with Iraqi security contractor and gamekeeper in the Congo. As things stand it will almost certainly have been the pair of them wallowing in deluded self pity and the only way it would be worth it would be if it occasionally cut to the Duke of Edinburgh doing a Gogglebox style series of reaction shots. I continue to find it amusing that Williams wife Kate had topless photographs shown in a French Magazine, and yet she's still considered the classy one. I wouldn't mind if the pair of them wanted to just live out a quiet life of luxury in Santa Monica but I'm not going to be lectured to on climate science and history by someone with 2 middling A-Levels. If the pair of the whining spongers were and music album, they'd be that U2 album Apple downloaded onto everyone's phone a while back. Who's more annoying though, them or Bono. I guess Bono has the edge.

A couple news stories this wee. Prince Harry has been told he’s not allowed to wear formal British Army dress at official functions any more. The new directive of course is an expansion on the existing rule about not wearing German military clothing after that story in the Sun a few years ago. His grandfather the Duke of Edinburgh has also been taken into hospital and so it’s a tense time for newspaper editors up and down the land as they wait to see if it’s time to finally send out the commemorative magazines they no doubt printed years ago. Let’s just hope they didn’t include too many pictures of Prince Andrew. I heard a discussion over lunch about whether when Prince Phillip passes they plan to bury or possibly cremate him and it really put me off my Greek kebab.

Also a big story from Australia, also known as the land down under, except on Saturdays when the nickname is switched to ‘the land hungover’. They’ve gotten in an argument with Facebook whereby Facebook have decided to shut down certain news services and sharing options rather than pay a new tax to benefit local news providers. People writing news in an office in Melbourne rather than Belarus is so often Facebooks way. Although if we’re being honest here the main beneficiary from the payments would be News International and thus Australian tycoon Rupert Murdoch so in many respects I can see both sides of the story. Would Facebook be forced to hand money over to all content providers, fake or otherwise, or would perhaps an unelected commission get to decided what news the public were allowed to read? It’s all very 1984, or possibly 1985 would be a better year, that’s when Neighbors started and also Mad Max 3 Thunderdome came out. I always thoguht the problem with Mad Max is that if they just slowed down a little bit then their cars would get better fuel economy and they wouldn’t have to fight over the petrol so much

Anyway, in other sandy dry desert news, Thursday saw Nasa land the Perseverance rover on Mars which was greeted with great excitement although if you look up Mars on Yelp it only has a 1-star review, something about lacking atmosphere. Also very bad mobile internet speeds too: it says on Wikipedia that Mars only has 0.4g. Anyway, it’s been 8 years or so since Nasa last sent their last rover to Mars which is pretty impressive beacuse I once had a rover and it could barely make it to Sainsburies let alone off-world. One of my hopes for this mission is that it will once and all prove that they did in fact send it to Mars and not to a dessert in New Mexico where a combination of rain and snow currently make New Mexico look more like Newcastle. Less like the sandy planet in star wars and more the icy one but best wishes to them. I also saw a Nasa official who said that the 2012 Curiosity rover reminded him of when he met his wife: it was supposed to last a few months but here he was 14 years on. The technology behind it is all is pretty impressive although I was confused by an article stating “the software that got it to Mars' surface must now be exchanged for a software system that enables the robot to drive across that surface.” Perhaps memory cards were too expensive to install both sets before it set off, or they just took a leaf out of Elon Musks Tesla playbook with his constant software upgrades, I guess we’ll find out in a few years when SpaceX launches its own mission there. Personally I’ve been wondering if when Elon Musk eventually sends people to Mars, he’ll hire a number of Muslim Astronauts so that they can travel to mars and construct Elons Mosque.

Royal news this week as Prince Harry announced that he and his wife are as fed up with the tabloids as the rest of us, and want to resign from royal life although it's unclear at this stage whether he will be changing his name to "formally known as prince" like the singer or similarly swapping his signature to a strange symbol. I imagine that official calligraphers and people involved with heraldry are more concerned about their job than whoever ends up getting the new job in charge of Iran's military. That was another story this week, the US threatening to drag us all into into World War III, maybe Harry just quit because he was worried he was going to get called up for military service again and a war with Iran would probably be the one thing on this planet potentially more dysfunctional than being in the Royal family.

What we do know is that the decision was a private one and he didn't discuss it with the Queen, or his dad, or Prince Charles for that matter. The public are also being left with more unanswered questions then one of my old latin exams. For all the couple claim a desire to be financially independent they're currently costing the best part of a million quid a year in security details alone; we know that Harry has some cash left to him by his mother but that was a long time ago and we all saw the photos of him in Las Vegas, maybe he has plans to start up some kind of trendy financially sustainable version of Charles' Duchy Originals, like a craft ale brewery, or perhaps he could try the same kind of financial scheme that his prince friends in Nigeria use to earn money

For what it's worth I hope that they do make a decent go of it and stop living on taxpayers money. Although I suspect that the whole thing is driven by an attention seeking desire to spend more time spreading Meghan's woke messages on climate change and gender equality. A message on climate change that will be spread by someone advertising that they plan to spent a large amount of their time flying between the UK and Canada whilst running up a carbon footprint larger than the time his grandmother's castle in Windsor burnt down.

One thing before I end is to raise awareness of the somewhat suppressed scandal involving the revelation that that the Canadian mansion in which the couple recently spent several weeks staying at is allegedly owned by a Russian Billionaire who the couple have refused to name. Still, it's better than the billionaires that Harry's uncle Andy was hanging out with.

It was a quite extraordinary set of events this week after Prince Andrew decided to put an end to whispers and internet chatter by giving a full interview about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein and it turned out to be probably the 2nd worst car crash in royal history. I'd go so far as to say it was actually more cringeworthy tv than that bizarre Royal Family edition of Its A Knockout that Andy and Edward conjured up back in the 80s.

If I was talking to you from a stage, I might ask anyone to put there hand up if they'd been to Pizza Express before the gig, if anyone had had enjoyed a Margarita, although there is of course nothing to suggest that Prince Andrew met any girls called Margarita, lovely Spanish sounding name as it is. Hands up anyone who fancied a pint before the show and went round to the Duke of York. Obviously that would be a pub unless the Queen or one of Prince Andrew's advisors was in the audience and was referring to an earlier meeting that day.

My favourite part of the Prince's interview was possibly the part where he denies being able to sweat, apparently due to heavy exposure to helicopters in the Fawklands, despite dozens of photos to the contrary. When he mentioned an alibi story involving Pizza Express I was also expecting him to put on a Russian accent and say that the restaurant was in Salisbury round the corner from the magnificent 123m spire.

Nonetheless, he's now been dropped by any organisation, business and charity that ever associated themselves with him which is a real shame for one reason. Namely that I enjoyed that film The Kings Speech and I always thought it might work well if they did a sequel where Prince Andrew had to fly to Uzbekistan or somewhere like that in order to deliver an especially difficult and moving powerpoint presentation. And now I guess that film will never exist.

I'm posting a little bit late this week but I guess that's in keeping with the overall Brexit theme this year. Just be glad I don't copy the HS2 delays and send everyone an apology by means of an invoice.

But did anything of note even happen of late? Well actually it was the Queen's Speech, perhaps you didn't notice or maybe you were too full up with turkey and red wine, oh wait no that's the other Queen's speech. This is the one where she reads out whatever Dominic Cummings hands her, which this time round included 26 government bills most of which are aspirational, seeing as even the Prime Minister's closest allies assume that most of the next year will be taken up with organising trade agreements. But then these days government bills try to make up in quantity what they lack in quality.

You'd think that parliament would be fairly popular with the leftist, green-fanatics, what with how they reuse and recycle the same costumes, year after year to the extent that parliamentary procedure now looks increasingly like a period drama, not helped by the fact that the building itself still retains its antique charm with everything from hand painted wallpaper to more serious structural things like asbestos everywhere and no doubt lead pipes if you look hard enough. Also, it's worth noting that when it comes green credentials the queen often makes a point of choosing a horse drawn carriage over something with a combustion engine but of course not, the green lot and their friends will never be satisfied. Instead we got a few hours of followup criticising every part of the day to the extent that you half expected someone to demand that the Queen try it in another language to accommodate those who don't speak english, by which I mean the sort of people who speak Flemish and ride around in a big German car. For me the most puzzling observation all day was from someone on the news commenting about government spending and they said that "cuts lead to knife violence" Surely the other way around though isn't it (If you think about it)

Looking over the news this week, I wondered if the climate protesters were up to their usual tricks in London but it turned out to just be the 50th anniversary of the Beatles Abbey Road album and a bunch of idiots commemorated it by blocking the zebra crossing, which happens to be on a major road, while observing motorists sat motionless, wishing that the fans would start recreating the latter minutes of John Lennon's life.

There's also headlines about a power outage, although on further inspection that's something to do with the electricity and not the remainer powers that be losing control of the situation as it dawns on them what I've been saying for months which is that if nothing happens and Boris doesn't actively sacrifice his reputation for the sake of the EU, then the status quo is a no-deal Brexit no matter what they say or do, the timeline of events in already enshrined in law with a approaching sense of optimistic inevitability. It must feel like when you get one of those cards from a delivery company and the depot isn't open until after the weekend but you need that stuff tomorrow. In that analogy, maybe it's FedEx or UPS but Jeremy Corbyn claims to be a mix of the two: "FedUP" or at least he claims to be, on the off chance that he could call an election and get back to making spurious promises and soundbites. Honestly, I think if I had to listen to him stand in Trafalgar square giving a speech I'd rather lie down and cover myself in birdseed, it would be more fun being pecked to death.

Nonetheless there are now legitimate commentators talking about a 3 or 4 Labour front-benchers giving up their vitriolic anti-monarchy work online to visit the Queen and ask her nicely to sack her new PM and appoint them so they can beg the EU for an extension to article 50. It's at this stage you realise that Corbyn is less like Tito the authoritarian Dictator of Yugoslavia and more like Tito out the Jackson 5, a figure of fun, of entertainment value and yet a sideshow while the main act is going on.

The craziest part of all is the idea that a Corbyn government would either have support of the Labour Party, many of whom despise him, or indeed want to stop Brexit in the first place, given how most hard-left policies are now illegal under EU law anyway. All as part of the EUs policy of eventually making all nation state laws illegal I guess.

It's the weekend of the Royal wedding, the television equivalent of a mandatory powerpoint presentation at work. But crack open some sparkling wine and raise a glass to the thought of a half hour news program featuring no mention of Brexit, Russia meaningful content. For those small shops up and down the land selling small flags and London bus keychains, it's truly a day of celebration. Or if you have zero interest in the whole thing, why not go for a day out at the Legoland in Windsor which I suspect has fairly low attendance and short queues for the rides this weekend.

The press coverage really built all week, culminating in the wedding itself although I personally think it's a missed opportunity not to try sending an undercover reporter along to the stag do or hen night, presumably pretending to be an Arab prince like they always do to snare corrupt politicians. It would be nice to see, for instance, whether princess Anne could out-drink Kate or whether Harry uses Euros at the 'gentleman's club' - as compared to £20 notes which are all of course small pictures of his grandmother.

The wedding itself though, Prince Charles stepped in to walk Meghan down the aisle after her father was unable to attend due to health reasons. He was recently exposed trying to make money out of the event by staging some paparazzi shots and he has subsequently apologized although will presumably have to spend the rest of his life on medication as well as on the lookout for a white Fiat Uno. I'm joking of course, Prince Phillip prefers the new hybrid-electric Fiat 500 these days, there's some great finance deals out there right now and the Queen is, as we know, thrifty.

So what now? Presumably lots of drinking and normal news service will be restored sometime into next week when Theresa May once more refuses to rule out a customs arrangement. With any luck, Harry and Meghan might be persuaded to have a child in March 2019, just to take the edge off the Brexit stuff.

This week the UK saw an assault of royal commemorative plates being launched with Kate giving birth to another child and Prince Charles cracking open a tincture of homeopathic champagne to celebrate. The baby weighed just over 8 pounds making it just slightly heavier than the special commemorative supplement you'll be removing from this week's Sunday paper; I guess it's up to you whether you use it for lighting the barbecue or stash it away in a cupboard as an investment, it could potentially triple in value and be worth more than a fiver in years to come.

Prince William was very excited to announce the new heir, although later a palace official sat down with him and explained that the doctor had sad new "heir" - not hair "hair" - and that he should just embrace the bald look. Come on William, it doesn't matter how much you try to look like Bobby Charlton, it's still not going to help England get past the World Cup's group stages.

Talking about crazy haircuts though, this week has saw President Trump busy as always. He arranged a visit to the UK scheduled for July, he phoned into Fox & Friends and invited his french pen-pal Emmanual Macron over to play. Those letters presumably go along the line of J'habite dans le White House, chest terrific. Macron actually has pretty respectable hair so Trump made a point of supposedly brushing alleged dandruff from his shoulder during a press conference. Later Melania was sporting a eye-raising white chapeau hat and Kanye West managed to anger 10 million twitter followers after posting a picture of his Make America Great Again Trump baseball cap, It was all rather strange. In the middle of it all, Emmanual Macron made a speech about globalism and Iran although given France's recent track record with the middle east and islamic extremists, he would perhaps be better trying to focus his efforts on gastronomy and convincing President Trump to not add Ketchup to a New York strip steak.

One of the UK's most popular highstreet stores is Marks & Spencers and if you're a shareholder then you're probably hoping to benefit from the free advertising now offered by the new Royal couple-to-be: Markles and Spencer, also known as Harry and Meghan. I imagine that with those initials, the marketing team at highstreet rival, "H&M" will also be rubbing their hands. The wedding is set for next spring and hopefully won't coincide with the Grand National like when Prince Charles got married. So many questions though, who will design the dress? Will Meghan be able to bypass the immigration bureaucracy in time to get a British Passport? Will James Hewitt use the wedding as a path to obtain himself an American passport?

It's also unclear whether the UK will get a national holiday or time off work for it. Let's cut to the chase, a lot of us are primarily concerned about whether we too will be allowed to act like royalty, spend a weekday doing not very much work and knock back gin at 10 in the morning. Bear in mind folks that next year St Patrick's day falls on a Saturday so it would be nice if the couple could be decent, save the taxpayer a few quid and coordinate some kind of booze fuelled madness sponsored by the good people at Guinness.

The whole thing does also open up the curiously vague possibility though that a future child would be able to make a run for the US presidency and then later potentially inherit the British throne. Open your eyes people: the house of Windsor are in the process of running the longest con in history and the yanks are falling for it hook, line and sinker.

If they are planning on something along those lines they could do worse than ask Michael Flynn how not to go about things. News just in this week was that he's admitted to lying to the FBI about a meeting with the Russians. It's not really news of course, we've known about most of this since back in February and time will tell whether he implicates anyone in anything. I suspect if there was anything going on other than stupidity then a smoking gun would have come to light. I'd would like Trump haters to once and for all clarify where precisely they stand on things though: do they think president is [a] a moronic imbecile incapable of running a bath or [b] a Machiavellian genius scheming with the upper echelons of the KGB. As I said, time will tell.

Not content with the damage it’s already done to the ExxonMobil share price, the Caribbean has another three storms moving in; the latest one (Hurricane Irma) has pretty much wiped out Barbuda and Hurricanes Jose and Katia are forming out at sea. I suppose hurricanes come in 3 or 4s like busses, although if I was a cyclist I’d frankly rather take my chances with hurricane Irma than take on a Bendy Bus.

The names of these storms by the way are preassigned and go up alphabetically, earlier in July we already had a tropical storm called Don which most people didn’t hear about, what with the fact that there’s another Don hogging the headlines in Washington. If we get as far as ‘V’ then we’re apparently scheduled to get Hurricane Vince which I thought was what the LibDem leader calls himself down the snooker hall when me meets up with Nick Clegg for a drink.

Unfortunately for the Labour Party though, there’s not Hurricane Theresa or Hurricane Jacob Reese-Mogg so Jeremy Corbyn will have to rely on rhetoric, policy debate, persuasion and rational arguments to attack the government. Unfortunately for the Labour Party members, Jeremy instead decided to spend the weekend thinking about whether or not to go vegan. I always think “show me a bloke who’s a vegan and I’ll show a bloke wanting to sleep with a vegan” but maybe I’m overly cynical and Puy Lentils are indeed what it takes to give him some inspiration about a Brexit strategy. Perhaps he’ll try acupuncture next and get the idea for a needle exchange to help heroin addicts

Speaker of the House, John Bercow, has never been one to be shy away from the press if he can get everyone to see how progressive and ‘right on’ and politically correct and he is. And so this week he decided to let everyone know that he doesn’t like Donald Trump by saying that he wouldn’t be welcome at Westminster. I imagine that a lot of folk would rather John Bercow wasn’t around either, especially his wife when she’s got one of her gentleman friends round.

It’s the hypocrisy that annoys most MPs as well: in the past we’ve welcomed leaders like Robert Mugabe and Vladimir Putin to the UK. We even gave Nicolae Ceausescu a knighthood for crying out loud, and we let famed war criminal Tony Blair walk around Downing street like he owned the place or something.

Elsewhere, Nigel Farage has supposedly “Brexited” from his wife. Say what you will about his politics, at least the guy’s consistent in how he approaches life. Contrast that to Jeremy Corbyn who’d struggle to definitively say what the result of a coin toss was, or to the candidates in the upcoming French election who apparently can’t decide whether they want to be President of France or simply gang leader in a local white collar prison, following indictment and prosecution on grand corruption charges: Vive La France!