Crikey! I didn’t realise until today that Spam writes a column for the Times under the pseudonym “Giles Coren”!
Giles Coren: In a cage fight, I’ll take Mad Vlad over Truss
Giles Coren
I bet you think you’ve read just about every possible insight, opinion, viewpoint, prediction and wider cultural overview of the war in Ukraine. And you probably have. At this stage in the media response, everything it is possible to think or say about the war has now surely been thought or said. Many times over, in fact. But, as the great Sherlock Holmes so perspicaciously asseverated: “When you have eliminated the possible, all that is left is the impossible, which might not be the truth, but is at least worth thinking about . . . actually, Watson, that doesn’t make sense at all. May I have another go at it?”
Yes, it’s all very sad but I’m bored with it now. It’s not as if it’s happening in Wales or something. Ukraine is miles away. You probably wouldn’t even hear a nuclear bomb if it went off over Kyiv. I’m fed up with talking about war and death all the time and everyone walking around with long faces. It’s time we got back to discussing important things like Brexit and facemasks and whether one of the upsides to losing the Test series in the Caribbean would be that they might recall Broad and Anderson for a proper send-off at home this summer.
A nuclear war would actually be quite interesting. I mean, we’ve talked about little else for 75 years and there are still so many questions unanswered. Would anyone be dumb enough to press the button? Would the only possible response be a retaliatory strike? Would the inevitable upshot be Mutually Assured Destruction? It’s time we finally found out. I, for one, have been having nightmares for 40 years in which I see a mushroom cloud from my bedroom window, far in the distance, over rolling English hills, and I want to find out if I’ve been getting the mental picture broadly right or not.
What if Putin has a point? What if Zelensky really is a Nazi and Ukraine really was planning to nuke Russia? I’m not saying it is true. What do I know? I’m just saying that if it is, then we’re all going to look pretty bloody silly, aren’t we?
I never liked Ukraine anyway. In fact, I’m going to boycott Ukrainian stuff just to shake things up a bit.
Shouldn’t we all be a bit more like Vladimir Putin? Say what you like about the man, but he gets a lot of exercise, takes social distancing seriously, doesn’t kowtow to public opinion and is ruthless in achieving his ends. In a cage fight, you’re going to bet on him over Liz Truss, aren’t you? Or Gareth Southgate. You don’t have to approve of the Ukraine war to resolve to “be a bit more Vlad” in the office, on the trading floor, on the football pitch, in the bedroom . . .
I was talking about Ukraine way before everyone else. I went there on my gap year and really got to know it and it’s just not fair, all these people going on about it now like they discovered the place. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you I discovered it. But it’s completely ruined now. Just sooooo touristy. In my day you could get a meal and a beer and a bed for the night for, like, a pound? And there was literally nobody on the beaches.
Putin is hot. Some of the best columns in The Times in recent years have been Caitlin Moran’s ones about how she fancies the likes of Ed Balls, Gordon Brown, Aslan and Chewbacca. But on the sexual appeal of Putin, Caitlin has remained mysteriously silent. I don’t know much about what women want, but Caitlin seems to require some sense of a deep down “goodness” in a man (or animal) before she starts to feel fruity. Well, not me! I don’t care about the genocidal monomania, I’m just looking at those cheeky arrow-slit eyes, the vertiginous cheekbones, the barrel-chest, the puffy face like a cartoon gibbon etched onto a pole-dancer’s buttock, and I’m just betting he wouldn’t mess around, you know what I mean? There’d be no sonnets and roses with Vlad, he’d just throw you down and . . .
What’s so bad about a kleptocracy? You’ve got to be ruled by someone. Democracy is meant to be “rule by the people”, but who wanted Brexit? No “people” at all. Not in my part of north London. So that’s whack. And you know what the “aristos” in aristocracy means? No, it’s not “the chinless” or “the red-trousered”, it’s “the best”. But that didn’t pan out either, did it? And what sort of political system do you think we’re running in Britain in 2022 anyway? A symposiocracy (rule by party-goers)? A oenocracy (rule by drunks)? A pseudocracy (rule by liars)? A lagnocracy (rule by omni-shaggers)? Or is our system of government best described as a oenosymposiops1eudolagnocracy (rule by lying, drunken, party-going omni-shaggers)? It’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? So give me the kleptos every time.
Flippin ’eck, Tuckov! With the 2,300 Russian children currently attending English public schools in danger of being thrown out (because a single breach of money-laundering regulations could lead to schools losing their charitable status), it is being suggested that they attend state schools instead. This will be great news for local education authorities as the world’s richest and most demanding families are funnelled into big comprehensives (think Grangeski Hill), demanding (and possibly funding) a swift improvement in education standards, discipline, music, art, parking for chauffeurs, sushi and caviar bars in the dining hall etc.
The “Z” logo is cool. Fashion has been drab lately but the arrival of the cool new pro-invasion “Z” motif could provide just the fillip it needs. Not since Lady Gaga’s meat dress has fashion had a chance like this to be so shockingly relevant.
Now we know why the Russians have been building all those mega basements in Chelsea and Belgravia. They are bunkers in which to sit out the nuclear war they’ve been planning all along. But it’s not too late to build your own. Turn to “Ten Top Tips To Style Up Your Fallout Shelter” in Bricks and Mortar today. The Times — Best for Bunkers.
This proves that Black Lives really do matter. Because a wider European War will kill practically all the white people in the world. It is the wokest international conflagration imaginable, for the number of black people killed will be vanishingly small by comparison. And nobody is going to bother nuking Africa, so with all the white people dead, black people can start all over again, and do it their way this time.
