Not just a smug adulterer
GEORGE OSBORNE says he will not rest until “Theresa May is chopped up in bags in my freezer”. He’s gone a bit strange hasn’t he? And he uses the paper he edits – London’s Evening Standard – as a stick to beat the Prime Minister at every opportunity. He’s beginning to cut rather a sad figure and that freezer quip (a reference to the modus operandi of serial killers presumably) is in keeping with the ludicrous prince-of-darkness image he has affected since he left Westminster.
ONE thing puzzled me about the first series of Doctor Foster. What on earth did Gemma (Suranne Jones) find appealing about her drearily provincial husband Simon (Bertie Carvel) who was having an affair with a stony-faced 22-yearold? He was so dull, so ordinary.
You might well have keyed his car, cut up his clothes and engaged the services of a lawyer. But once you’d got that out of your system you’d move on to pastures new and you wouldn’t have gone what we must now call the “full Foster” and comprehensively trashed his life.
If you’d settled down to have a drink with Gemma (she likes a drink or seven) you’d have told her kindly: “He’s not worth it, love. To be honest nobody knows what you saw in him anyway.”
But now we do know! As the second series gets under way (giving us all something to look forward to on an autumnal Tuesday evening) we’re rapidly discovering that he is as bonkers as she is. Nut jobs the pair of them. They’re a match made in heaven – or hell – if they did but know it. Since the last PUY lentils were on the lunch menu at Prince George’s new prep school. Not that he’d be troubled by them as he’s only doing half-days. Personally I wouldn’t want to be around a gang of excitable nippers who’d been fed pulses. Remember that bean-eating campfire scene in Blazing Saddles? series Simon has done something to his facial hair which gives him the look of a lurking Shakespearean villain chewing away on murderous thoughts. Once merely a smug git he’s now a malign Machiavellian, a devil in a suit, a one-man horror show. He’s out for revenge, revenge for the punishment that Gemma inflicted on him in the first series when she found out about his affair – the long blonde hair on his scarf.
He has got over being found out, he has so got over being the guilty party. Now he simply hates his ex-wife with an icy passion. And he has suddenly become a whole lot more interesting as a result. Once just any old suburban shagger, he’s now full of surprises.
For instance Gemma told her new lover – a mildmannered teacher who should run for the hills if he knows what’s good for him – that Simon used to enjoy sex in castles, specifically in the battlements. Now there’s a tip for anyone looking to make the most of their National Trust membership.
Gemma has been tipping wine down her throat following Simon’s announcement that – two years after their violent break-up – he Any research about sex grabs your attention. This week’s – the National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles – says women are more likely than men to lose interest in sex after a year. But what on earth does that mean? Do they lose interest in sex per se or lose interest in the person with whom they’re having sex.
There’s a difference. Isn’t there? was moving back to the fictional town of Parminster with his lover (now wife) and small child.
Mostly drunk and deranged, Gemma’s default setting is Defcon 1. Her mad smiles are becoming madder. She is not just a loose cannon, she is a North Korean nuclear missile primed for launch. She haunts people’s back gardens peering through their windows, she says inappropriate things to teenage boys and – on a whim – hits Parminster’s premier night club (a place of eternal punishment if ever there was one).
My guess – Simon and Gemma will get back together and conspire to slaughter everyone in Parminster. Just because they can. THE Tories, desperate to get in the good books of young voters, are said to be considering a cut in the outrageously high interest rates on student loans – currently standing at more than six per cent. Others have looked askance at the whopping salaries paid to university vice-chancellors. One example is the VC of the University of Warwick who retired last year after just over nine years in the job. During that period he had a salary increase from £199,000 to £290,000. He was also entitled to a £240,000 lump sum and £150,000 in lieu of employer contribution. Plus an annual pension of £80,000. His name, funnily enough, is Nigel Thrift. Meanwhile Professor Bob Cryan of Huddersfield University has seen his salary rise to £364,564. That’ll be Professor Bob Cryan-all-the-way-to-the-bank.