Life and Nothing But: Michelle Obama got into trouble for saying it, but here goes. For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country.
Michelle Obama got into trouble for saying it, but here goes. For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country. What could have brought on this surge of patriotism? Why, it's the great Strictly Come Dancing rumpus.
Let me see if I have this right. Capitalism is eating itself. The planet is hot and bothered. Other news stories are impossible to encounter without weeping. Yet millions are up in arms over a fat bloke with two left feet who has quit a television show to go on a cruise.
As displacement activity goes, the kerfuffle over Strictly has assumed heroic proportions. It's as if the Second World War was suddenly put on hold while the public debated whether George Formby's lyrics were too saucy.
You have to marvel over Blighty at times like this. When the going gets tough, Britain gets silly. In this case, it has decided to go gaga over the deeply serious matter of light entertainment. Let us not ponder whether John Sergeant jumped or was forcibly retired by doctors due to Lycra-induced chafing. We could waste time ruminating on the next stage in the saga, refunding the cost of viewers' phone calls, and wonder just how big a mess that is going to turn out. But let us stroke our chins instead on why people have lost the plot over a show built around the paso doble.
As Wolfie Smith might say, it's about powerlessness, innit. The ordinary citizen has never felt so insignificant, at the mercy of powers beyond their ken. The government can't make the bad times go away, so we need to find our cheer where we can. And if that means fixating on some poor former political correspondent trying for a last gasp with fame, let's face the brassy music and dance.
But the Strictly affair is also, deep down, about Britishness, a love of the bumbling over the slick, and plain old fair play. The public was thumbing its nose at authority. And when that authority comes in the form of Arlene Phillips, whose previous contribution to western culture was Hot Gossip (for the young and uninitiated, women dancing about in naff underwear), I think we know which is the side of justice and right.
WHAT a hoot to hear NICK Griffin, leader of the BNP, complaining that the leaking of its membership list was a breach of the Human Rights Act. That will be the same law his party swore to scrap in the unlikely and unthinkable event it ever forms a government.
As for a membership list said to run to some 12,000 individuals: that truly is amazing. I would have thought the lack of opposable thumbs would have scuppered such acts as the signing of membership forms.
POOR Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper, the lady astronaut who lost her tool bag while carrying out repairs to the International Space Station. Darn thing just floated away.
Two aspects of this story intrigue me. First is why she had a full tool bag in the first place. As any woman knows, all that's required for any act of DIY is a butter knife. Second, what would have happened if the satchel in question had been the average woman's handbag? Meteor storms would seem like a spring walk in the park compared to being hit on the head by a lipstick, a 1975 bus pass and a can opener coming from light years away.
ODD fellow, Artur Boruc. I have no idea about the identity of the mystery lady who accompanied the Celtic goalkeeper to the pictures in Poland, but his choice of movie, a horror flick by the name of Midnight Meat Train, meant it surely could not have been a first date.
Or perhaps Artur has spent too long in the west of Scotland. A first-date movie should spell out the kind of man you are, or hope to become. It should be sensitive, funny and moving, and ideally involve baby animals in brief peril. Never, ever, choose The Exorcist. Unless, that is, you intend to marry the person and one day have teenage children in your life. In that event, Friedkin's classic counts as a training video.
