JENNIFER
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WHAT’S happened to the Speaker’s wig? Betty Boothroyd – who had big hair of her own – was the first Speaker to abandon its use in 1992. Speakers Martin and Bercow also declined to wear it. Bercow felt that such flummery was “stuffy” and inconsistent with a modern parliament but his successor Sir Lindsay Hoyle had intended to revive a tradition that dates to the 1680s.
The trouble was that the wretched wig hasn’t been seen for 20 years or so, though you would have thought that someone would have put it somewhere for safekeeping. Perish the thought that it would be put out with the recycling.
And isn’t there some functionary who can be asked that most annoying question of all: “When did you last see it?”
THOUGH I was a latecomer, I binge-watched the steamytv series The Affair starring Ruth Wilson and Dominic West (above). It’s about the ramifications of an affair thatwest (playing a married father-of-four) begins with a waitress (played by Ruthwilson). Like the spreading circles on a pond when you throw in a stone their relationship has unimaginable consequences over the years.
Turning to series five (the final one), it’s notable for the absence of Ruthwilson.the real reason why we don’t see her is, according to the Hollywood Reporter, that she quit over nude sex scenes she felt she was being pressured into doing.
My husband, who never likes any programmes that I do, scornfully renamed it “Rumpy-pumpy”. And he wasn’t wrong. There was masses of sex, and most of it was spectacular, arising at moments when normal people would make a sandwich or de-wax their ears.truth is, sex still sells even in the Me Too era.
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THANK goodness nobody gave me the new feminist Monopoly (called Ms Monopoly) for Christmas, a version in which women get more money than men when they pass Go. Instead of buying houses and hotels you invest in inventions allegedly thought up by women such as “chocolate chip cookies” and “modern shapewear”, whatever that is. My family would cheat anyway. Both sons would be more than happy to identify as a woman for the afternoon if it meant thrashing a sibling at a board game.
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IT NO LONGER seems quite right to call the BBC “Auntie”. Auntie suggests someone conservative in cardigans who’s easily shocked and talks nicely, which is how we used to imagine the Beeb. It was coined by those who thought themselves more cool and with it. But the BBC today is so right-on and woke that it needs another nickname. “Bro”, “mate” and “dude” spring to mind. Unfortunately.