Weight a minute, Gregg, that photo isn’t so tasty

FromF Covid chaos to exams fiasco, Tories deserve a D.. for dunces

Now it’s commendable that MasterChef’s Gregg Wallace has lost a whopping 4st through diet and exercise.

And I’m sure the 55-year-old is chuffed to bits with his “almost six-pack”.

But do we have to see it to believe it? Couldn’t he just show it to his wife and be happy? The half-naked pictures he shared last week – grinning like he’d just scoffed a delicious low-fat pud – weren’t the kind of images you want to see before breakfast, that’s for sure.

He’d missed one crucial ingredient (a shirt) and been rather heavy-handed with another (his ego). puppets… not useless muppets.

After his disastrous handling of the Covid crisis, the PM’s trying to deflect blame by scrapping his quango Public Health England (it was their fault, not his,

It struck me when I was shopping for school uniforms that these were the first items of clothing I’ve bought in months – and they weren’t even for me.

My wardrobe has been in its own form of coronavirus lockdown – shielded from the outside world and making do with whatever basics it has already.

Used to be, in those “normal” days of yore, that I’d add a new item or two every week. At least every fortnight. But guess what? I haven’t missed my fashion fix at all.

When you don’t have to go into the office every day and your social life consists of walking the dog or chatting over the garden fence, there’s no pressure on what to wear.

It’s liberating.

As I write, I’m wearing a pair of jeans I’ve had for at least five years and a sweatshirt I got in the Victoria’s Secret sale eons ago, which might soon count as a heritage piece now that the knicker company is in administration.

Whisper it… but I think I’ve got enough decent threads to keep me going through to Christmas.

Now this won’t be good news to the ailing retail sector, which is falling apart quicker than a cheap suit. And we must all feel for the staff at high street giants such as M&S, Debenhams and John Lewis who are facing job loss in the midst of a pandemic.

But an enforced pause in established shopping behaviour has combined with a general sense that we should be grateful for what we have in this troubled world.

And many of us now feel we’ll do things differently when all this is over.

It’s been a wake-up call to learn that clothes for some of our biggest brands are being produced under sweatshop conditions right here, in our own country.

Makes you wonder whether you really need a new top/skirt/ jacket, even if it’s only a fiver you see) and replacing it with a bigger quango.

And Dido Harding will run it – a Tory peer, married to a Tory MP and whose career highlights include presiding over a massive security breach while and can be chucked in the bin if it bobbles in the first wash.

British fast-fashion retailer, the £ 5.2billion Boohoo group, owns brands like Pretty Little Thing, which is beloved of the young and stylish and promoted by feisty, fearless celebrities such as Little Mix.

But it’s facing modern slavery accusations after claims that factories in Leicester paid staff as little as £ 3.50 an hour and forced some to work during lockdown.

There was a coronavirus outbreak at a Pretty Little Thing warehouse in Sheffield where worried workers had reported a shortage of precautions.

Boohoo’s share price plummeted last month in the wake of the allegations, the brand was abandoned by some “influencers” and removed by some stockists.

None of which has deterred Love Island “star” Molly-Mae Hague, 21, who was posing up a storm last week, plugging Pretty Little Thing for all she’s worth. Which is about £1million apparently. She turned down an offer from rival fast-fashion brand Missguided. They were only offering £350,000 and an £ 80,000 Range Rover, you see.

Principles, eh? Concern for human life? Cognisance of the effect of her endorsement – other than on her own bank account?

Zilch.

Zero Waste Scotland textiles analyst Anna Graham told me: “There is understandable growing concern about some of the business practices used by the leading fast-fashion brands, most recently in the way workers are treated in the supply chain.”

So-called “disposable” fashion has contributed to a clothes mountain in Scotland, with garments worth an estimated £12.5million ending up in landfill every year. There’s a real human cost and a serious environmental one from our national pastime of buying new threads at the cheapest possible price. Surely even the likes of Molly-Mae can see that?

When we’re finally free of Covid-19, there will be many hobbies to which we’ll rush back. But I’ll be leaving my wardrobe in lockdown. And if anyone asks, the contents aren’t “old”… they’re “pre-vintage”. boss at TalkTalk and heading the woefully ineffective Covid track-and-trace scheme.

Meanwhile, education secretary Gavin Williamson is blaming everyone else for the exam results fiasco, despite being warned of it months ago and seeing it happen here two weeks ago.

Tune in next week, folks, to see Michael Gove in clown pants (no surprise there).