Mockery of celebs rears its ugly head again

Being Prime Minister doesn’t look like a lot of fun at the best of times, without having your dance moves analysed endlessly.

Such is the lot of Theresa May, who found herself in one of those ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situations when called upon to join in with the festivities on her recent trip to Africa. I’m not sure any of us would come out of it well if we were asked to perform an impromptu jig to ‘Africa’ by Toto.

Refuse to dance and you’re dubbed an aloof stick-in-the-mud with no sense of fun; have a go - while looking slightly awkward - and you’re subjected to worldwide ridicule and predictably unkind comments on social media from the sort of people who take offence at anything but think it’s fine to mock someone’s appearance if you disagree with them politically (see also Donald Trump).

It’s also apparently fine to make fun of women if they have plastic surgery to feel better about themselves (which is invariably the reason people have plastic surgery, rather than wanting to attract incredulity on social media and in magazines).

The singer Cher has been the recent target of such jibes because of her youthful appearance in the film Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again. Being way beyond the target demographic for this film, I’ve yet to have the pleasure of watching it, although I’m sure ITV2 will oblige in a few years’ time. If Cher is happy with the way she looks why does it bother other people so much?

She even had the decency to record a hit song called If I Could Turn Back Time, which has been a gift to lazy headline writers since the 1980s.