Roll up roll up for the very latest and most important news of the past seven days. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are getting divorced. Quelle surprise. Maybe she finally got the message when he said he would be running for president. Meanwhile Dilyn the Dog, the Prime Minister’s Jack Russell cross and beloved of fiancée Carrie Symonds, is in the dog house, having chewed priceless books and furniture at Chequers and landed Boris with a repair bill of over £1000. Surprise surprise, Jacks have been doing the same for centuries. I had one, she ate sofa cushions for breakfast and car seats for dinner. Also Ann Summers (other retailers are available) announced sales of the quietest vibrator, the Whisper Rabbit, are up by 60 per cent compared with a year ago, attributed to people wishing to be discreet. Strange that as I have always found rabbits to be quiet and circumspect.
Meanwhile Harry and Meghan, previously known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have announced they will not be returning as working members of the Royal Family. The Queen confirmed the couple would not “continue with the responsibilities and duties that come with a life of public service”. They cheekily replied saying “service is universal.” Naughty, nobody but nobody gets into tit for tat with the monarch, but no surprise considering how they set out their stall in the past few months. Royals and ex-royals take note there are countless people in the general population carrying out “public service” every day.
All those incredibly important stories had plenty of media coverage last weekend. So much so that irrelevant and less significant matters took a back seat. For example the search for life on Mars has begun in earnest. The United States landed their rover Perseverance on the Red Planet, an achievement that pales into insignificance when compared to Dilyn and the publicity shy Sussex couple…all will be revealed in a forthcoming ninety minute Oprah special. The jubilation in the Pasadena headquarters of NASA (North American Space Agency) must have been tempered greatly by news of Kim and Kanye’s difficulties. True professionals to the end, they managed to hide their upset and went about their business with great technical expertise, precision and passion. The truly out of this world dramatic images we received on planet Earth were beyond my scientific ken but again I found it hard to concentrate on what was actually happening there knowing that the spat between Prince William and his now estranged brother was getting worse. Where is Diana when you need her? Especially insensitive on their part knowing that grandpa Prince Philip had been hospitalised a few days earlier “as a precaution.” Sounds ominous for the 99-year-old. The very thoughtful and caring Prince of Wales, a loving and sensitive son, made a two hundred mile round trip to see his ailing father. This is becoming a common theme in my column. Where Amanda Holden leads (last week), the future king follows. Your turn next week?
Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, I had a conversation with a close friend on Monday which merited a period of incarceration. That’s exactly what he got. He went to Dubai to visit his cousin and returned saying he was unaware of the quarantine hotels. Where’s he been, Mars? Gala na bathi and I told him so. Not that he has a problem affording the £1750 hotel bill but more that he’s been grounded. The scheme is many months too late, as was the closing of borders, and is now nothing more than a PR job for a country torn between the hope offered by the vaccines and decrease in cases, and the stark contrast of the UK still topping the list of deaths per million population. Currently at 1,766 with a total of 120,000 dead.
All this stuff happened in the week when arguments about vaccine passports continued and the Health Secretary was found to have acted “unlawfully” and breaching the “vital public function” of transparency when awarding multi-billion pound Covid-19 government contracts. He denies wrongdoing. Maybe, like me, he was distracted by other more newsworthy stories, such as the sighting of a yellow King Penguin on the island of South Georgia. A magnificently proud yellow belly. Yes my friends, that was the week that was and on the horizon, I spy a lockdown exit plan. Dilyn’s attention-seeking tactics are paying off.