Hancock’s half hour is sheer hypocrisy

OK, so England beat Germany. Well done, I suppose. I’d be a lot happier for them if I didn’t live here and have to hear about it “coming home” every five minutes.

To be honest, I suppose we would be going on about it as well if it was Scotland who were going through to the quarter-finals.

Don’t tell anyone, but I was rooting for Germany just because I knew England would be a bit unbearable if they got through.

I’m only joking of course. It was an incredible achievement, 55 years after the last time they beat Germany in a knockout competition.

It was lovely to see little Prince George there, all dressed up like his dad.

Ollie went to football matches with his daddy from quite an early age and it brought back memories, although I don’t think many little boys wear a tie to go to the match. But then they are not the future king.

Good luck though England. I promise to root for them tonight and not be so mean!

So for the first time in a year I was back in the recording studio this week.

I can’t say I wasn’t a wee bit nervous about being in a room with people for a week, but I loved the feeling of another bit of my job coming back.

Our producer was on Zoom from New York, but that didn’t seem to matter. Everyone was excited. I even got the most beautiful bouquet of flowers on arrival from the singer’s management. That’s most definitely a first. I could get used to that.

I didn’t even mind the commuting because I really like the structure of doing the same thing at the same time every day.

Now those of you who do that every week will be shouting at me, but for one week it was lovely. Catching the same train, popping to the same coffee shop, I’ve enjoyed every minute.

I’m fair scunnered by Covid now though. Whether we come totally out of restrictions this month or not, the virus isn’t vanishing any time soon. I think we will just have to live with it and that’s a bit scary and depressing.

Are our children going to be telling their children that they remember a time when people hugged each other and didn’t wear masks as if it’s a fairytale? I do hope not, but I’m beginning to think that life really has changed for ever.

Sorry to be so negative about it but it was actually around a year ago that we were beginning to come out of lockdown and now a year later are things any better?

The Delta variant numbers are still increasing. How bad will they get?

But I’m certainly going to be cheered up this week because never mind football coming home, my boy is coming home.

Ollie is coming back from Amsterdam for his second vaccination so I will certainly have a smile on my face for a while.

Of course we haven’t been able to escape from those images of Matt Hancock and his “aide” Gina Coladangelo canoodling in his office.

Office affairs are quite commonplace, or it certainly seems like that if you watch any office-based TV dramas. I’m sure many executives walked into their offices this week and had a good search for security cameras.

Surely Matt Hancock knew he had a camera in there. It all seemed a bit odd to me that he wouldn’t have thought of that. But the real mystery is who leaked the camera footage?

Dominic Cummings said Matt Hancock should resign for many reasons so I’m sure he knew about this affair. I’d put him on a list of suspects, along with the Sage advisor Neil Ferguson who resigned after breaking lockdown rules with his mistress.

It was certainly a huge scoop for the newspapers. I don’t think the editor who first saw the footage could have believed their eyes. It almost seems like it’s an actor pretending to be Matt Hancock in a comedy spoof.

But it was very real and people are of course rightly enraged about Matt Hancock doing the opposite of social distancing while he was telling people they weren’t even allowed to see their loved ones, many of whom they would never see again, and he certainly needed to resign for that reason.

Hypocrisy was his main failing as far as the nation was concerned.

This story will run and run. Have a good week,

Yvie x

Yvie back in the studio, above, and William and George watch as England defeat Germany in the Euros.