Daily Express

Bell spat’s bong bong bonkers!

Proof is in the pudding Time to move on, Lisa

- Email me at carole.malone@reachplc.com

SANDI Toksvig on her decision to leave Bake Off: “Spending time with Prue, Paul and Noel has been one of the great pleasures of my life. Bake Off is a wonderful programme.”

Cut to show “insiders” who say she’s been desperate to leave for months, she’s been grumbling all the time and has spent the hours when she wasn’t recording hiding out in a shepherd’s hut on her own, knitting.

Just wondering why you’d leave a show that had been one of the best experience­s of your life, where you love everyone you work with and where you’re getting paid shedloads of money?

I’m sure it won’t be long before we find out.

ULRIKA Jonsson took a step back in time on GMB this week when she briefly stood in for weather girl Laura Tobin.

Ulrika says that when she was doing the job 30 years ago she was told to talk about her personal life as much as possible.

It’s a habit she clearly hasn’t been able to break. Although her recent revelation, posing in sexy lingerie and talking about how she was looking for “intimacy” (sex) might have been a tad too much informatio­n.

WHEN Boris went on national TV and asked the British people to crowd fund the £500,000 cost of having Big Ben chime on Brexit day, they immediatel­y showed they were up for it by raising £150,000 on Day 1. But in a farcical fit of pique that deadbeat body, the Parliament­ary Commission – jampacked with Remainers – came up with a raft of ’elf and safety excuses as to why it shouldn’t happen. And new Commons Speaker, Lindsay Hoyle – clearly channellin­g the spirit of John Bercow – moaned that it was going to cost £50,000 a bong. So what? If the money isn’t coming from Government coffers, what’s it got to do with him?

Since 1859 it’s been a tradition for Big Ben to chime on momentous occasions and whether or not you voted for Brexit, leaving the EU after 47 years IS momentous. Especially as the three-year fight for it nearly did for our democracy.

Of course the Great Bell should bong on January 31 because it’s the day we celebrate becoming an independen­t country, free from the shackles of the unelected, undemocrat­ic, bloody-minded cartel that is the EU.

And as Big Ben is THE symbol of our democracy, it’s only right it should ring to herald our exit from the EU which happened thanks to the biggest democratic vote in our history.

But even now the Parliament­ary Remainers can’t stomach the fact they’ve lost and are doing their level best to scupper it by staging what looks like a Carry On version of Custer’s Last Stand.

What in God’s name is wrong with these petty, embittered little people who, even now, can’t accept it’s over and claim that ringing Big Ben on the 31st would be provocativ­e and rubbing Remainer MPs’ noses in the fact they’ve been beaten.

How the Hell can it be provocativ­e? Big Ben is the heartbeat of our capital city, for God’s sake.

These MPs really need to get over themselves. No one’s interested in rubbing their noses in it. Boris’s 80-seat majority on December 12 rammed home the British people’s message on Brexit loud and clear and that’s the day those Remainer MPs’ thoughts on it became irrelevant.

So, no, ringing the Great Bell isn’t about crowing. It’s about celebratin­g a new era of independen­ce, even though technicall­y we don’t leave until the end of the transition period which Boris has said won’t be more than a year.

But it isn’t just Remainer MPs getting their knickers in a twist. Others have compared what will be a celebrator­y party in Parliament Square at the end of this month to Kristallna­cht, that terrible night in 1938 when Nazis torched synagogues, vandalised Jewish homes, schools and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews. Dr Mark Berry, a reader in music at Royal Holloway University tweeted London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, asking: “Why have you given provisiona­l agreement to this re-enactment of Kristallna­cht?”

And people had the gall to accuse Boris of using inflammato­ry language to aggravate the bitter divisions over Brexit? This kind of deranged comment, comparing what will, in effect, be a big Brexit street party to that hellish night which foreshadow­ed the holocaust, is beyond vile.

Our bishops are also getting in on the act saying there shouldn’t be any bell-ringing in churches across the country. These bishops, like many of our MPs, have forgotten that a higher proportion of Anglican churchgoer­s voted leave than the general population.

Wanting Big Ben to chime isn’t about saying “Up Yours!” to Remainers because their objections to Brexit don’t matter any more. It’s happening whether they like it or not.

But, after three years of frustratio­n, despair and division, the bongs would signal a fitting end to it all.Which is why Boris needs to make sure it happens.

This is the start of a brave new world where it will be US, the British people, who determine our place in it NOT a bunch of bolshy, unelected EU bureaucrat­s.

And THAT’S worth celebratin­g.

A NEW study says that if women want to delay the menopause, they should have lots more sex. I’m not sure there’ll be many takers on that one. I think most women would rather deal with the sweats than have sex every five minutes.

I’VE always been pretty vocal about the fact that Ant McPartlin treated his ex-wife Lisa Armstrong pretty shabbily when he ran off with her best friend, Anne-Marie Corbett. But I’m not sure that entitles her to a £31million slice of his £50million fortune which is the figure currently being mooted. Lisa says bits of the stories about the divorce settlement aren’t true but won’t specify which bits.

But if it’s even close to £31million, that’s too much. Greedy, even, if that’s what she’s asked for. She didn’t earn that money, they don’t have kids, she’s got her own career – although if she got even £20million that’s enough to ensure she need never work again.

If Lisa’s holding out because she can’t let go of McPartlin, she really needs to. Rumours he’s getting married this summer show he’s clearly moved on.

She should too or, even with £31million, she’ll still be miserable.

 ?? Pictures: GETTY, ROB GREIG ??
Pictures: GETTY, ROB GREIG
 ??  ??
 ??  ??

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United Kingdom