A New Messiah
And on Monday the papers were full of the news that Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt was among us. Hallelujah!
All the papers said that Shiloh is Hebrew for Messiah, while Nouvel is French for new. All hail the NEW MESSIAH.
This is some name to live up to, and the girl could have got off to a flying start had, as the Sun reported, Angelina opted for a water birth.
What joy Shiloh would have brought to us all had she stood on her legs and walked across the waves that lap the beach at Namibias Burning Shore Beach Resort.
While Angelina nursed the wound left by her C-elebrity-section, we were treated to more hilarity and high politics from John Prescott, the shirking class hero.
Prescott had been caught playing croquet on the lawn of his grace-and-favour mansion. The Sun calls him a lazy idiot. The Mails front page featured a quote from one of its writers asking: What next, fox hunting?
When croquet fans attack
But let us consider things calmly. If Prescott is an idiot and there exists a considerable weight of evidence to suggest that he is wouldnt we prefer him to be playing croquet than paying politics?
But Prezza was working. He was. Really, he was. On Tuesday we heard Joan Hammell, Prescotts special adviser and croquet partner, tell the Times: Work continued all the way through, even the croquet game. I had three faxes brought out. I then went back inside to make phone calls. We are working seven days a week, we can promise you. And croquet may be the ideal way for a politico to unwind. In its leader the Telegraph suggested that far from being a sport for effete fops, croquet is a brutal game full of aggression and spite. Croquet is snooker with malice, it said. It is bare-knuckle fighting embourgeoisé, and so much more vicious for the appearance of gentility…It is therefore a good game for politicians.
Talk softly and carry a big wooden hammer, as they say in Westminster.
On Thursday, we heard that Prescott had seen the light and given up his Dorneywood pile. We speculated on the reasons for this move. Perhaps he saw that swanning around playing croquet was not the stuff of the self-styled working class hero, the tireless grafter. Perhaps he realised using such a massive house made him look greedy. Perhaps he lost the keys to the place in a croquet bet.
Helpfully, the Guardian had an interview with the Deputy Prime Minister. Over a bacon roll on a train up north he just so happens to be going home for his 68th birthday dinner with wife Pauline – Prescott talked.
The croquet was not his idea. They say Can we play croquet? I cant reply Sorry, you cant play croquet, its against my ideological position, said Prescott.
He pleaded ignorance. I dont know the rules. Isnt it to put the ball through the hoop and beat the other bugger? Its the imagery. Its really just a competitive game, like Monopoly.
Monopoly? Isnt that the game where you buy loads of land and stick houses on it?
Prescott might be an idiot, but he is not peerless. Look, here comes England footballer Rio Ferdinand.
Rio was making some dire TV show and thought it a good idea to play a joke on Englands captain and best surviving player.
With barely a week to go before the big World Cup kick off, Ferdinand staged a mock kidnapping of David Beckham.
Beckham, sat in the back of a car driven by his would-be captors, panicked and made a dash for it for it. As the vehicle slowed down, he opened the door and fled. He crossed a dual carriageway and legged it towards a less salubrious part of Manchester.
Thankfully, Beckham is OK, not breaking a metatarsal as he escaped his would-be captors.
Although had Beckham been injured in the course of this caper, all might not have been lost Shiloh Jolie Pitt could always have healed him…
Posted: 6th, June 2006 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
