Life on the farm not quite how it seemed
Widdecombe
A NEWSPAPER reports that Theresa May will use her meeting with President Trump to protest over his attitude to women. Fortunately I think she is far too sensible to worry about comments he made 12 years ago when the priorities must surely be trade deals with the US and to persuade him to take Nato rather more seriously.
This meeting should be a positive not a carping affair. Churchill’s bust is back in the president’s office, Mrs May has been chosen to be the first world leader he meets and unlike his predecessor who said that Britain “would be at the back of the queue” if we dared to vote Brexit, Trump is all in favour of trade deals with us.
We have a president who likes us and Mrs May should build on that.
SUGAR Free Farm was an interesting experiment but the reason I am glad I did it is that I enjoyed the farmwork so much: rounding up sheep, cleaning hen houses, herding buffalo and feeding wild boar. The milking was massively tedious but most of the rest was fun. I do wish, however, that these programmes would stop overdramatising. The commentary says we all admit to terrible diets. No, I don’t actually. I eat oily fish, avocados, fruit, salad and lean meat in abundance and that is what I told them. Yes, I like biscuits and cake and the occasional burger but I am hardly eating them every day! Yet the nutritionist proclaimed that my diet was less healthy than that of the two most overweight people on the programme who admit to excessive stuffing of chocolate and fizzy drinks. Why? The food diary was kept at the height of the Brexit campaign when I was eating on the hoof. They knew that too. Then every single loss of temper, yawn or shiver was put down to sugar withdrawal. That living with six complete strangers, working like slaves and being asked to sit outside on cold evenings might have caused any or all of these reactions was discounted in the name of the programme’s agenda. THE CIA seriously proposed during the Falklands crisis that the islands should be handed over to Argentina and the residents resettled in Scotland. Cheek! That is America at its worst, assuming that it can parcel out the world as it pleases and set the terms for doing so. Fortunately President Reagan had a lot more sense and recognised that Maggie would deal with it in her own way, which indeed she memorably did.
IT IS a pity that TV in general does this so often. The programme has a good, challenging concept and I was committed to finding out all about the workings of sugar in the body but now I wish I had been running the show because, if I had, the recipes would have been simpler and less time-consuming and of a type we would have wanted to take away with us. After a week of leaving kale juice every morning, I would have looked for a more palatable substitute.
I would have explained at the outset what sugar does in the pancreas. I would have welcomed a range of eating habits rather than sought only “terrible ones”.
After all, few viewers would have
Sensible PM will strike right tone
DIPLOMACY is a nightmare when it comes to dealing with nasty regimes and it is no good getting all steamed up about Charles and Camilla receiving expensive watches courtesy of the Bahraini royal family.
Refusing such a gift would have been a deep insult and would consumed 20 cans of fizzy drinks or nine packets of wine gums a day and if the programme is to be effective and educational then the general public must be able to relate to it probably have caused a diplomatic incident with Prince Charles at the centre of the maelstrom.
At the millennium I went to Bethlehem for a special edition of Any Questions and the panel included a Palestinian ex-terrorist. He gave me a Christmas present, which I was obliged to unwrap rather than dismiss it as a freak show. Meanwhile viewers have been pouring their own suggestions on to my website.
A special butterdish is recommended before suspicious Israeli officials at Tel Aviv airport next day. They stepped back several feet when I revealed who had given it to me but it turned out to be a harmless cushion cover.
He wasn’t the sort of chap I dream of having dinner with but refusing his offering would have been rude for keeping butter spreadable and one viewer has developed raw cane sugar products for diabetics or those with just a sweet tooth. The range is called Schweet.
DIPLOMATIC PRINCE CHARLES KNOWS THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING POLITE
and it is simply a fact of life that politicians, diplomats and international businessmen have to deal with some rum characters in the name of world peace and furthering understanding.
Refusing the watches might have been a sop to conscience but it would have helped nobody at all.