10 UP Parisian rats
We open this week’s business with alarming news from across the Channel — Paris is being overrun by a strain of super-rats: larger, glossier and more confident than the usual rat and breeding by the million.
Le Parisien quotes the city authorities admitting that there are more and more rats in public places, and footage of a bin full of rats — imagine a nightmarish Room 101 kaleidoscope of writhing rat bums garnished with the occasional rat tooth and rat eye — has gone viral.
The city’s rubbish collectors have blamed Paris’s great restaurants for the rat boom. They leave dumpsters “full” of leftovers and the rats “are growing fat on foie gras”. Thus, plump and embolded, the rats have begun to attack. “One colleague told me that a rat jumped at his throat and another at his arm,” a man identified as “David” told the newspaper.
But no! Wait! Hang on! This isn’t the bad news it appears to be! The Parisians have got these rats all wrong! They’re French rats! They love the foie gras! They’re not attacking people — they’re just trying to emulate Remy, the rat hero of Ratatouille!
Bin men of Paris, just let these massive, writhing rats run up your arm, past your throat, and thence to your hat, from underneath which they will cheerfully coach you on how to make a bouillabaisse in exchange for having a massive rat on your head for ever! This could work out for everyone if the people of Paris simply take the rats out of the bins and let them live in their hair.
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CW is sure this is a plan everyone will immediately get behind. It foresees no problems here.
9 UP Frank Lampard
Unexpected Fact of the Week came from the former footballer Frank Lampard, who revealed that as a child he nearly died after swallowing the mouthpiece of a trumpet. “I had to go to hospital to have it taken out,” he told The Observer.
Of course, while CW is very glad the infant Lampard recovered, it can’t help but imagine how, if the operation should have failed, and with the wind in the right direction, Lampard could have sounded a moving version of the Last Post as he passed away.
8 UP Kardashian bins
It would not be Celebrity Watch without at least one mention of the Kardashians, and this week’s first entry centres on an Instagram shot posted by Kim Kardashian that reveals that her wheelie bins are by Louis Vuitton.
Still very much normal, council-issued bins — one blue, one black, both emanating that unconcealable “I am full of really horrible things” vibe innate to bins — the Kardashian wheelie bins are uniquified by the addition of the Vuitton logo stencilled all over both items.
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CW doesn’t know much about the Louis Vuitton brand other than that knock-off £29.99 Louis Vuitton totes are the handbag of choice for harassed single mothers pushing a double buggy down Seven Sisters Road, so are presumably extremely emblematic of fortitude and “keeping your shit together even when your electricity key is down to the last £1”. However, it does wonder just why a brand worth $28 billion would want its logo all over a horrible smelly bin, Kardashian or not. What next? Gucci litter trays? Prada toilet-rod systems? Chanel drains?
7 UP Chicago West
The Kardashians’ bins were not their biggest news this week. No, it was the birth, via a surrogate, of their child, Chicago West, which sounds like the first line in an advert for an apartment or how someone very confused refers to Des Moines.
Kanye West, the child’s father, was in the delivery room, but “behind a curtain”. Although he knew that it was there to give the surrogate mother some privacy during labour, a part of him must have been itching to shout: “Twenty-one Grammy awards! Thirty-two million albums! One hundred million downloads! One of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2005 and 2015! Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the stage, KANYE! OMARI! WEST!” and making that “Ksssssshh” applause sound while his wife looked as disapproving as her present face will allow.
6 UP Dakota Johnson
At first she was famous for being the daughter of Don Johnson and Melanie Griffith. Then it was for having rude stuff done to her in Fifty Shades of Grey. Now, it seems, Dakota Johnson will be famous for being the romantic partner of Coldplay’s Chris Martin since pap shots of them walking hand in hand on the beach — predictably in Malibu, not Filey — appeared in Grazia under the headline “Chris Sends Dakota For The Gwyneth Test”.
Martin, it seems, is still in thrall to his ex-wife, Gwyneth Paltrow, and their relationship “looms” over new girlfriends. “[Dakota’s] friends have joked that [meeting Gwyneth] is like preparing to meet your mother-in-law for the first time,” “a source” told Grazia.
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Having spent the past few years chronicling the hippy balls that Paltrow believes in and pushes through her lifestyle website, Goop, CW is tremulated by imagining what a “Gwyneth test” might consist of. It’s going to involve Dakota’s widge, obviously — everything Paltrow does comes down to “faffing over possible faultiness of your widge”.
Bearing in mind the treatments that Paltrow recommends, from steaming the widge, to the insertion of jade eggs into it, Johnson may well want to set boundaries as soon as they meet: a brisk handshake, followed by, “Lovely to meet you, Gwyneth, but I’m afraid that any testing of my New Shmoo is totally out of bounds.” Otherwise, CW fears that Paltrow may well be like one of those contestants from Channel 4’s Four in a Bed who run their finger over every surface looking for dust and judging accordingly.
5 DOWN Tom Cruise
In August, shooting was suspended on Mission: Impossible 6 when Tom Cruise landed awkwardly in a stunt jump and broke his ankle.
This week pictures showed Cruise back on a rooftop being pursued by a helicopter, clearly driven by baddies because it was black. You can’t be evil in an orange vehicle — it ruins the vibe.
CW is amused by how this will look. Cruise will jump from one roof surrounded by London’s greenery and land on the next building with the trees mere dolorous skeletons.
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CW hopes that there’s a line of dialogue added to explain this.
[Shot: Cruise leaps from one building in summer, and lands on the other in winter]
TOM CRUISE: Whoah, I’ve heard the weather in London UK is changeable — but this is ridiculous!
4 DOWN Ukip
Never the most smoothly run of political organisations — CW’s go-to mental image is a clown car full of arseholes — Ukip hit more turbulent water this week when its leader, Henry Bolton, refused to resign over racist texts about Meghan Markle sent by his ex-girlfriend, Jo Marney.
Indeed, Bolton said that they may get back together — because nothing re-sparks that flame like seeing your ex’s face plastered all over the press, captioned: “RACIST.”
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CW was astonished by her statement: “No offence was intended.” It struggles to see how referring to Markle as a “dumb little commoner” and “a Negro” whose “seed” will “taint” our royal family could have had any intention other than offence.
It’s clearly not positive and the odds of it being a random sequence of letters that accidentally spelt out racist sentiments are 9,844,894,999,499,494 to 1. CW’s going to call it: offence was intended. What Marney really means is: “No consequences were intended.” Too late now, dude.
3 DOWN Julian Assange
Sometimes CW likes to shout things at headlines. Just a quick yell when something is stupid to release all the tension. To this end CW presents its latest quick-fire roar. Headline in The Guardian: “We examined Julian Assange, and he badly needs care — but he can’t get it.” YES HE CAN. HE JUST NEEDS TO MAN UP AND STOP HIDING. NEXT.
2 DOWN Cheryl not-Cole
There is a long and glamorous history of things being named after female celebrities: Anna Pavlova is immortalised in the spectacular dessert; Brigitte Bardot lives for ever in the sexy Bardot top; and there are others that CW can’t remember, but which would prove its point admirably should they occur to it. Oh! Jane Birkin! The Birkin bag! Yes! That’s three!
To this illustrious if admittedly half-remembered list we can add Cheryl not-Cole, formerly of Girls Aloud. She too is imperishable and eternal having had a new L’Oréal hair dye named after her. And the name of the dye? Cheryl Brown.
Although CW can see that L’Oréal was trying to do a nice thing, this does sound a) like it’s actually been named after someone called Cheryl Brown and b) like the most boring product ever.
Still, it’s the thought that counts!
1 DOWN The Presidents Club
In a month scarcely lacking in high-profile misogyny, the scandal of this year’s Presidents Club charity dinner scored an impressive 8.9 on the WTF? scale after an exposé by the FT.
Going undercover as a “hostess” for the men-only event, the journalist Madison Marriage uncovered what we might refer to as “The Sex Case Hive” wherein 350 wealthy men donated money to a host of worthy causes, including Great Ormond Street Hospital, but only on the proviso that before they wrote their cheques they could spend an evening cosplaying the scene in The Handmaid’s Tale where Offred takes off her Sinclair C5 bonnet, is put into a sexy dress and taken to the Jezebel’s club.
The seating plan for the event — proudly billed as “the most un-PC event of the year” — included Peter Jones from Dragons’ Den; Richard Caring, the owner of fish restaurant Scott’s; the Ocado boss Tim Steiner; Philip Green from Arcadia; Nadhim Zahawi, the secretary of state for children and families; and Makram Azar, the head of Barclays’ Middle East business.
At the party 130 hostesses — the advert specified they must be “tall, thin and pretty” — were paraded across the stage two by two and distributed among the tables to “keep the guests happy”. All the hostesses had been instructed to wear “black underwear” and “sexy shoes”, sign a five-page non-disclosure agreement that they weren’t given a chance to read and supplied with a uniform of a short black dress and corset-like belt.
By and large, a job for which you’re told what underwear to put on and made to sign a non-disclosure agreement is unlikely to be an evening of untrammelled feminist joy, and so it proved. Hostesses were repeatedly groped, shown hopeful penises and, in another deft nod to The Handmaid’s Tale, timed for how long they spent in the toilet before being herded out by security.
Amazingly, all of this happened despite a full-page advert in the programme for the night reminding attendees not to sexually harass the staff. Although CW is no expert, it would humbly suggest that if you have the kind of guests who need a blanket warning, IN WRITING, not to sexually harass the staff, then you have the wrong guests. And, indeed, entirely the wrong vibe.
CW can’t quite work out what it would be about a “secretive”, men-only event for powerful men, with auction items including plastic surgery to “add spice to your wife” and a night out at a strip club, that might contribute to an atmosphere of misogyny and incontinent groping of young women, and it guesses that the Presidents Club won’t either. Within ten hours of the story breaking the BBC announced that the club was “disbanding” after international outrage.
Still, there are two positive outcomes. The first is proof that, whatever their detractors might say, the #MeToo #TimesUp campaigns are working. A similar exposé on the Presidents Club dinner ran in 2005 and, frankly, no one cared. By way of contrast, this new wave of activism is working like a pyroclastic flow of female rage burning down previously impervious structures.
The second is that “all over the place like a Presidents Club dinner” can now replace “all over the place like a mad woman’s breakfast” as the analogy of choice when describing something dementedly wrong that is doomed to failure. That seems fitting, as mad — mad-as-hell — women are getting shit done.
