See previous MOOD RING posts
SINKING SUNAK
The election campaign is in full swing, in the same way a wrecking ball about to convert your house into biscuit crumbs is in full swing. Except, instead of Miley Cyrus in hotpants astride the wrecking ball (a 2014 reference, which feels like the recent past but… oh dear), we have our very own Stuart Little in a Moss Bros wedding hire suit, Rishi Sunak. The human embodiment of the ‘This is fine!’ dog, Sunak has been stepping on rakes since the very first day of his premiership, which itself feels like it was created in a lab by careers teachers looking for the ultimate simulation of ‘careful what you wish for’.
His election campaigning so far appears to be an experiment in just how many body blows the Terminator could take before removing his brilliant white M&S vest and running it up a flagpole in surrender. First, he attracted the ire of every helicopter parent within a 5,000-mile radius after pledging to reintroduce national service, a burden very few people alive can actually remember, but has been romanticised as if it’s an episode of Dad’s Army.
Next, when actually announcing the date of the election outside Downing Street in a downpour, instead of taking a massive Sports Direct golfing umbrella with him – which would surely demonstrate he was a man of the people – he stood, exposed to the elements, looking like he was having some kind of never-nude breakdown in the communal showers at the gym. Since then we’ve had leaked memos, digitally altered photos, failed TikToks and, of course, the D-Day furore, when Sunak left the commemorations early to jet back to the UK and be interviewed by ITV. Now, he’s tweeting like some kind of fridge magnet-inspired Confucius going through his burn book.
It’s easy to make a joke out of the state of British politics – the politicians themselves are only too happy to belch out material, and nothing cuts across party lines quicker, and further, than mockery. But if anyone really thought the Tories had a chance of winning the election, their descent into slapstick would’ve likely been glossed over, and instead everyone would be following Keir Starmer round, waiting for him to eat a sandwich or insult someone over a hot mic. Perhaps the only interesting bit of campaigning has been watching Ed Davey, who I recently discovered is the head of the LibDems (remember them?). Davey has been channelling a stand-in Blue Peter presenter, windsurfing, freewheeling a boneshaker down a cobbled hill, jumping on rollercoasters and even being interviewed on policy while swirling about on a teacups ride. Which would all be very charming if he hadn’t been part of the Con-Dem coalition that hollowed out the country, and his greatest achievement so far wasn’t taking ten years to open an inaccessible staircase at Surbiton station. There is a feeling, from this correspondent at least, of inevitability about it all. No new ideas, no real feeling of change, just a different rota kicking in. Another day on set of the Lamest Show on Earth. We will even be denied our tricoteuse moment, watching elite heads roll on election night, as most of the upper echelons of the Tory party are too vain to be seen losing on TV – that Portillo defeat from 1997 is doubtless played on MP training videos – and have jumped before being pushed. Even watching Sunak’s political career be democratically euthanised holds no thrill; if he loses his seat, he’ll simply scoop up his family and his millions and head to pastures new, while the rest of us are stuck in the muddy field he created, with yet another charmless man waiting to take the reins.
GAIL FORCE
News that Helen Worth is to leave her role as Gail in Coronation Street after 50 years of service has rocked me almost as much as the Marks & Spencer overlords closing my local store (which they did, last week, I am in mourning). Gail and her immovable, helmet-esque blowdries have been at the centre of some of the show’s hugest storylines and, as I grew up in a house which fell silent on Mondays and Wednesdays (and, later, Fridays) at 7:30pm, many childhood memories. Her first husband, the repugnant Brian, being shivved outside a nightclub; her battles with Weatherfield’s own papal envoy, mother-in-law Ivy; her generally disastrous parenting of her three, awful children Nick, Sarah, and David; various power struggles over the frying pan in Jim’s Café; a decade-long sentence as pepper to drab toyboy Martin Platt’s salt; falling in love with mild-mannered serial killer Richard Hillman; being jailed (wrongly) for killing another husband in a botched insurance fraud; finding herself married to Les Dennis, of all people; her brief period as a homophobe when Sarah’s boyfriend Todd started dancing on dicks; her fractious relationship with her mother, the more glamorous and vivacious Audrey; warring with Eileen in her bathrobe and improbably wet hair; being swindled out of her house by Nigel Havers; eating her way through a lifetime’s supply of olives. I could go on. Nothing quite beats Gail showing off her engagement ring and causing time to freeze, however:
I reckon that most Corrie-watching homes in the 80s, 90s and 00s would’ve classed themselves as a Deirdre household or a Gail one – Deirdre for ever, for us – but Gail deserves our respect. Helen, as our Gail, has kept a straight face during some of the Coronation Street storylining team’s most hallucinogenic episodes and has somehow made even the most ridiculous denouements seem convincing. I don’t know what comes next for Helen – Strictly, hopefully, paired with Vito for a Debbie McGee-style renaissance – but when it comes to Gail, I hope that for a change, the end is something undramatic, almost humdrum. Dying in her sleep while a birthday party goes on downstairs, for full tragicomic juxtaposition. One more marriage, perhaps, that frees her from the cobbles forever. Or at the very least a visitation from a zombified Richard, shrieking ‘J’accuse’ all the way from the bottom of the canal.
RAT KINGS
The Guardian and The Times ruffled a few feathers this week, or should I say bristled some fur, when it reported on the alleged ‘hot rodent boyfriend’ trend. For the uninitiated, the trend stems from a Dazed piece back in mid-May that suggested the current range of internet beaux Hollywood was offering up for objectification – so Josh O’Connor, Mike Faist, Timothée Chalamet, and Jeremy Allen White, for starters – shared certain rodential qualities. No, not constantly growing incisors and a summer home in the sewer. I’m talking angular faces, a skittishness about them, perhaps, an innate weirdness or quirk that transforms them from a ‘yuk’ to an ‘mmmmm’.
The original writer meant it as a compliment – as much as being compared to a pest that gnaws its way through skirting boards can be considered flattering – but almost all coverage omits the other factors that elevates these supposedly ratty men to the status of sex god: fame, money, repeated exposure and access to stylists. I’d actually venture that most of the hot rodent men are pretty much conventionally attractive tbh, big set of lugs or a chin shaped like the Millennium Falcon notwithstanding, but a liberal application of internet coverage and expensive facials can do wonders even for your most challenging jolie-laide leading man.
What’s strangest to me about this whole phenomenon is that almost no famous man – other than the biggest horse-frighteners like Tr•mp or B•ris – are immune from the online arena’s fevered loins. Go and look under any tweet featuring a famous man and alongside the obligatory T I T S I N B I O bot post, you will see at least one genuine tweet from someone in desperate need of a hobby, or a fleshlight, or therapy, thirsting over them. To misquote Michael Bluth from Arrested Development: ‘Him?!’ Obviously this has been a woman’s lot since the birth of the internet and untold centuries before, and shows no sign of letting up. We never learn. For the record, I don’t think any of those man look like rats – except maybe The 1975 frontman Matty Healy, who confessed he was the inspiration for Roddy in Flushed Away (no seriously) – and I would never say such a thing even if I did. Although I did once say that guy from The Bear had aardvarkian qualities, so maybe I’m just as bad as everyone else.
Girls, gays, go and get your rat boys, you deserve them. Just don’t blame me when they disappear up your drainpipe.
Polite reminder that my new book LEADING MAN is out now on hardback, ebook, and audiobook and it would make me so happy if one of you bought it. Or grab it at your local library (request it if it’s not there). BUY LEADING MAN
Another polite reminder that my debut novel THE LAST ROMEO is just 99p on Kindle/ebook at the moment and indeed for the entire month of June. Less than a pound to access some of the best jokes I’ve ever written and a heartfelt story about a difficult man who’s very lonely and has only the internet’s strangest and sexiest for company? Bargain. You can read the very first (and very short) chapter in this tweet here! BUY THE LAST ROMEO FOR 99p
Very funny. You are making me laugh out in a very staid cafe