Helen Brown finds something to get her teeth into and muses on Rishi Sunak’s retraining tips to those in the arts

Never having been a great shopper (and tight with it), there is often little in stores and emporia that catches my eye enough to part with the hard-earned spondula. But, having taken a few days away from home following a recent bereavement, I found myself charmed by a gift shop in the Yorkshire Dales (yes, we were allowed to visit friends there, although not to go next door to ask our neighbours to deal with the bins while we were away. Go figure).

It stocked many a whimsical trinket, some of which (already relating to the season to be jolly), I loftily ignored. But there was one display that fair tickled me. Pet Hates soft toys for your animal companion of choice to get their teeth into. Other pet treats and playthings are, obviously available. But these were little stuffed figures, all instantly recognisable, from the public life of our present day.

Forget Spitting Image – and judging by the reviews of the revamped 2020 version, many already have. The cutting edge of biting satire is being provided, in these beyond-satirical times, not by incisive TV programmes but by – pet toys. There they were, all hung up in a row (contemporary retailers obviously do irony, too), like those sinister wax dolls people used to stick pins into in the days of voodoo. Michael Gove, Priti Patel, Jeremy Corbyn, Keir Starmer, the prime minister, Theresa May and, in a show of fairness and lack of bias, both American presidential candidates. Aptly, there were two versions of Donald Trump. One was for dogs and the other for cats.

Boasting of being particularly durable and well- constructed with reinforced stitching, they appeared to be made of wonderfully strong stuff unlike most of the characters they were depicting, many of whom are currently showing a worrying tendency to come apart at the seams. Many came with built-in internal squeakers. You couldn’t make it up.

They do seem particularly appropriate for politicians who regularly, as we all know to our cost, bite off more than they can chew. Top of my “must-have” list is the one of Michael Gove, until they come up with one of Dominic Cummings. And I don’t even have a dog.

Nigel Farage’s, interestingly enough, was reduced in price on the website I studied, probably on the principle that they couldn’t give him away in a gift…

Chancellor Rishi Sunak may, as he argues, have been misquoted when he (and I paraphrase) told currently unemployed members of the arts fraternity to get a grip and go out and re-train for another type of work.

He may well, as he subsequently claimed, have been referring to “all walks of life” being open and flexible to change. But I bet you a multi- billion- pound furlough package that he wasn’t talking about anyone in his own circle of life, many of whom seem entirely unqualified to do the jobs they already have, let alone capable of acquiring the skills for something new and “useful”.

Mr Sunak, of course, has been prettily pictured turning his hand to waiting tables and, in his copious free time, putting in his shift as a kind of monetarist Monty Don, cultivating the magic money tree.

Ironically, many people in so called lowskilled, under- paid jobs – teaching assistants, carers, hospitality staff, manual or farm workers, some grades of nurses and the retail sector, from shop assistants to delivery drivers – have often had to turn their hand to more than what’s in their official job description, just to make ends meet.

Quite apart from the sterling efforts of the caring professions and emergency services, I’ve been amazed at how intrepid, adaptable and creative restaurateurs, food producers, retailers, musicians and performers (and others) have been in getting their wares out to us, starving for some kind of stimulation, contact and company as well as food and booze.

The problem with people in power is that they think anyone can do certain jobs. They should give it a go, I say, and see what kind of a cods they manage to make of it.

Too many seem full of sound and fury, signifying not very much at all. It’s like Boris Johnson stamping his foot like Just William’s Violet Elizabeth Bott, “squeaming and squeaming and squeaming until he’s sick” at the French president on the other end of the phone that he’s going to turn round and walk away if he doesn’t get what he wants out of the continuing (aka neverending) Brexit talks.

I can imagine Emmanuel Macron shaking in his chemise about that. Like most of the rest of us, he probably can’t wait to see the back of him. On the other hand, it seems churlish to point out that it might be rather difficult to walk away at all if one has just shot oneself in the foot…

Pet Hates soft toys for your animal companion of choice

FLEXIBLE: Freelance professional musicians gather in London, as part of the Let Music Live campaign, as Chancellor Rishi Sunak has suggested members of the arts fraternity should re-train for other kind of work amid the coronavirus pandemic.