AS YOU would not expect, I am a devotee of Hello! magazine. You laugh. Why? Explain yourself. "All right. You? The untrendiest man in western Europe. A man whose ignorance of the world of celebrity is legendary. Who can name no-one of shallow substance, and whose lifestyle is a million miles removed from those deservedly famous for their undoubted talent. You, a reader of Hello!? Don't make me laugh."
Tut-tut, taunt me not with your titters. But, yes, I like to look at Hello!. True, a man in my position cannot be seen to be purchasing it. Instead, I just go to the dentist every week and read the copies in the waiting-room. I've no teeth left now,
but I feel it's a small price to pay.
It's the quality of the photographs that I like. You could almost believe they were true representations of the people involved and not touched up in any way. You see them at their best, and this is a good thing. How one tires of seeing pictures of Amy Winehouse or Lily Allen or Madonna – see, I can name vacuous celebs when I put my mind to it (thank you, Google) – looking tousled and in need of some wholesome broth.
For these are our gods, or godlets, with their beauty and their up-to-date clothes and their gardens full of unexpected topiary. We like to see them looking chipper. We want to see them happy and glorious.
But I can understand the Queen's displeasure at appearing in the magazine. Her grandson, Peter Somebody, allegedly sold pictorial rights for his wedding to Hello! for £500,000. The publication dealt with the matter discreetly, devoting a mere 100 pages to the event. Despite declining to pose, the Queen not unnaturally crops up in the photos, and is now unfairly attacked for bringing her hallowed sinecure into disrepute.
Ian Gibson, a Labour MP, frothed: "I think the British public would expect the Queen to rise above being pictured in the pages of Hello!. She is the Queen, after all, not a footballer's wife." Coming so soon after her most loyal subjects rioted in Manchester after a football match, La Liz must be getting fed up with all this guilt by association with soccer.
She is correct to be unhappy. A wedding is a private, family affair, not a voyeuristic feast for vulgarians. That said, the pictures are splendid, and I was delighted once more to witness how the other half lives. There are amusing pictures of countesses dancing and of Prince Harry appearing sober.
The accompanying text does justice to the couple – I forget her name; Summertime O'Shaughnessy or some such – with its reference to his smile melting a glacier. If only he had been on the Titanic.
The camera is the curse and blessing of the age. As you will see from the top of this column, it loves me not, making me look a freak. In reality, I am a perfectly ordinary-looking fellow. I don't even have a beard, for goodness sake, never mind a black pullover that a tramp would hesitate to vomit on.
I think that, where photos in Hello! are touched up, ours are touched down.
The Queen looks fine in her photies. On balance, therefore, I think Her Majesticness should be proud to be in Hello! It is an acknowledgement that she has made it. Her life may never be her own again. A prisoner of the lens, she will be stalked like one of the deer her elephant-lobed son loves to mangle. But it is better that than to be a nobody, like the majority of her subjects, who sadly live and die without ever appearing in Hello!
Nothing great about the outdoorsTHE Conservative Party has a well-merited reputation for cruelty. But the Scottish chapter of the obscure sect has gone too far with its plans to force children outside.
It wants to force every secondary school pupil into a free week of "outdoor adventure". By Bruce's beard, these two words would make any sensitive man or child gag.
They remind me of a ghastly teacher of mine, who loved belting people, and dragooned his young victims into some perverse tomfoolery called orienteering which, like most leisure-amenity pursuits, took away all the fun of being outdoors.
Aside from occasional games of Subbuteo, I spent my entire childhood outdoors and would not recommend it. It did me absolutely no good whatsoever, leading me later to be withdrawn and socially inept.
My message to the nation's nippers is as follows: don't let the Tories bully you. Remember, they are Scottish Tories, so their plans are mere fantasies, as they are psephologically dead and only haunt the corridors of power like some wicked poltergeist, picking up policies and chucking them at the lieges.
Children of Scotia, stay indoors and close all the windows. When you grow up, you will be forced to work in offices where it is almost impossible to breathe, unless you've been habituated to such conditions. The same goes for pubs and anywhere else that Caledonian-style humans gather.
You will want to be cool - in the fashionable sense - so, for God's sake, don't go outdoors now. You'll only end up with a farmer's face and an impractical need for fresh air.
I should know. Going outdoors more or less ruined my life. And we didn't get any counselling in my day either.
The puff that dare not speak its nameHOW sad that corner shops will soon have to sell cigarettes under the counter. This further stigmatises a group of people worthy of our admiration. The bravery of smokers is unparalleled. Their devil-may-care dumbfounding of the stuffy health-and-sackcloth brigade makes me want to pin medals on their chests.
But their ranks are dying out, and it seems unlikely that succeeding generations will fly the flag for fags. Picture our enterprising adolescent intent on inhaling fumes from burnt vegetation. He has practised his lines in front of the mirror and told himself to remember to breathe deep and slow. He struts into the shop like John Wayne entering Mulhaney's Saloon. But then, as the gimlet-eyed newsagent eyes him suspiciously, his courage deserts him and he says: "Er, I'll just have a copy of Jiggling Juggs, please. And some of that haemorrhoid cream."
The full article contains 1077 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
