Theresa’s a Super Trouper

You have to hand it to Theresa May. And trust me, stick with the hands. You don’t want to get anywhere near the feet. She may not be making much forward progress on stemming the party in-fighting on Brexit but give her her due, she at least is prepared to laugh at herself, rather than, like Boris Johnson, act blithely as if the joke’s on everyone else but him.

Dancing (I use the term loosely – and I speak as a woman with two left feet whose sense of rhythm stops at the knees) on to the stage of the annual party conference to the strains of Dancing Queen might have had a few onlookers cringing in the aisles but what the hell.

Maybe she is looking ahead to the time when she has to find ways to fill her day with activities other than sticking pins in a wax dolly of Jacob Rees-Mogg (how could they tell?) or working out how many smutty anagrams can be created out of the names Jeremy Hunt and Jeremy Corbyn.

In that case, she is obviously setting out her stall for the next series of Strictly Come Dancing. In which case, if I were Anton du Beke, I would be looking out my shiny new blue passport and booking the last remaining EU-allowed flight back to the welcoming shores of my Hungarian and Spanish ancestors, as he, judging by last Sunday’s results show, must surely have had quite enough of being paired with the middle-aged woman who makes Spotty Dog from The Woodentops look like a lovely little mover.

Me, I think Mrs May missed a trick with her choice of song, if not with her very individual set of mean moves. If you’re going to go for ABBA, Theresa, old girl, while simultaneously announcing that austerity is over and that more cash (ie taxpayer’s money) is going to have to be spent on practically everything you can think of, surely you should have plumped for Money, Money, Money or Gimme, Gimme, Gimme? Delete as applicable.

Alternatively, if you’re making what passes for forward-looking preparations for the 2022 election (we should all live so long), how about Take A Chance On Me or, in a spirit of over-confidence, not to say rampant self-delusion, The Winner Takes It All?

ABBA, as we all know, usually has the answer to most things. But I don’t think, somehow, that even those great songwriters Bjorn and Benny could make much of a hit out of Strong And Stable or No Deal Is Better Than A Bad Deal. And they’ve already written SOS.

Ye what?

And, speaking of contemporary beat combos which we almost were, I hear with interest that one Kanye West, an entertainer of the modern school, has decided that his given name is no longer snappy enough to capture the fervid imaginations of the generation with the collective attention span of a fruit bat.

He has, therefore, decided that henceforth, he will be called Ye.

This move makes me suspect him of harbouring Scottish ancestry as I can only surmise that he might be vaguely related to a range of creative Caledonian musical forebears. Obviously, with his abbreviated monicker he will have to miss out on the possibilities offered by that old favourite, O Can Ye Sew Cushions but will soon be able to make up for that by suffixing or prefixing his new designation with such classic add-ons as banks and braes, Jacobites By Name or Freedom Come All. Perhaps, though, it would be better to settle for Of Little Faith.

He is, of course, following in the august footsteps of the late and much-lamented purple poser Prince, who at one point, as you may recall, decided to be represented as a no doubt deeply symbolic squiggle and insisted, much to his record company’s wrath, on being known as The Artist Formerly Known As…

Which didn’t, with the best will in the world, exactly trip off the tongue. At least Ye, for all its faults, has the virtue of brevity, although given its possessor’s previous in terms of selfimportance and self-belief, I reckon that in the dim recesses of his mind, he might believe that it is actually short for Ye-hovah. As he has already released an album entitled Yeezus, taking the next step up the promotional ladder looks like a natural progression.

He may yet have to learn a salutary lesson from the experience of his purple predecessor, though. TAFKA remained on the books, or at least the sleeve notes until, inevitably, he saw the light and the dollar signs and reverted to his given name. I blame his parents for calling him Prince in the first place, but there you go.

Somehow, although I am obviously of the wrong generation and demographic to appreciate him fully, I suspect that before long, Mr West, or Mr Ye, as I suppose I must now call him, will go down in history as The Artist Formerly Known As “Who Is This Person Exactly?”

Even Bjorn and Benny would struggle to make a hit song out of No Deal Is Better Than A Bad Deal

Theresa May dancing to the strains of Dancing Queen might have had a few onlookers cringing in the aisles but what the hell, says Helen.