Did Boris Johnson’s money worries makes his wedding low-key?

In perhaps the most startling, last minute of stoppage-time victory ever scored by hope over experience, our beloved leader Boris Johnson finally made an honest, or at least an honestly mistaken woman, of his former fiancée and the nation’s erstwhile first side-chick Ms. Carrie Symonds, in what we are told was a modest ceremony in front of as few witnesses as possible, erm, I mean, a few close friends and relatives, this Saturday last.

I say we are “told” it was a modest ceremony; no photos of the event itself have yet been released (is Hello magazine even still a thing? I’ll check – M). We have thus far seen just one official image of the prime minister and his new ex-wife-to-be: it shows the bride looking radiant in a floral-themed gown and the groom with most of his buttons done up.

The low-key, indeed stealthy nature of the ceremony is perhaps unsurprising when we bear in mind what we are given to understand about the prime minister‘s current financial woes (of which more later); if the PM were seen to, in his own delightful phrase, “spaff“ too much money at this wedding, then he’d then be obliged to spend the same amount again on his next one. And the one after that.

“FINAL VENGEANCE OF FAILING SUPERVILLAIN” MOMENT OF THE WEEK 

The most compelling political spectacle since last we met was, of course, the appearance before the Covid Response Select Committee of the prime minister’s consigliere turned archnemesis, Dominic “The Second” Cummings.

This consisted largely of the self-proclaimed super-predictor of British politics rattling off a five-hour list of things he hadn’t anticipated. Principally, of course, that the man towards whom he had gravitated as a natural liar, whom he had encouraged to lie bigger and better than ever and for whom he had orchestrated two successful campaigns based entirely on lies, might not after all be the most trustworthy individual.

While Dominic “something wicked this way“ Cummings was unstinting in his scorn for the prime minister, curiously he reserved his true bile and vitriol for the ever-hapless Matt Hancock, which is a bit like the torch-wielding mob storming Castle Frankenstein, rushing straight past the Baron and his monster and beating the crap out of Igor.

LITERARY NEWS OF THE WEEK 

One disputed fact-or-not that which had already emerged before the select committee’s Domathon was the theory that the prime minister‘s decision to bunk off the first few COBRA meetings of the pandemic was not merely a case of slovenliness and complacency… Rather, it is alleged, Mr Johnson decided he needed the time off in order to work on the manuscript of his long-overdue (I was going to say long-awaited, but… nah) biography of Shakespeare. 

The completion of this book has, one hears, assumed paramount importance to the prime minister as he really needs the money he’s been promised upon its delivery before the final settlement of his divorce from his PREVIOUS ex-wife, in which, we are told, he fully expects to be, to use an arcane legal term, taken to the bloody cleaners.

This book had better be worth the wait, although if Johnson’s autobiography of Churchill is anything to go by, it will be less a biography of Shakespeare than a book about how Boris Johnson feels about Shakespeare, and about how Shakespeare would probably have felt about Boris Johnson, and how Shakespeare and Boris Johnson probably would have been like really good friends, and in fact, when you think about it, isn’t Boris Johnson just like Shakespeare?

“HERE WE ARE AGAIN” MOMENT OF THE WEEK 

So, with the HM the Queen having apparently personally nixed the Prime Minister’s suggestion that the absolutely necessary, entirely worthwhile and in no way extravagant to the point of delusional new £200 million royal yacht be named after Prince Philip, the vessel is currently nameless.

Hugely tempting though it is to throw the naming open to a public vote, we should bear in mind that the last time we tried that it didn’t end well. I can’t imagine HMS Boaty McBoatface going over too well with HM Queeny McQueenface.
I’ve been thinking about some possible names for the yacht myself and the one I keep coming back to is the Marie Antoinette. Can’t think why.

POEM OF THE WEEK

Alas, the poor Gen X-ers 
Our innocence is gone
There’ll be no getting over
The Friends reunion.

We stared in numbing horror
At what we knew was true
They’re all so tired and middle-aged
So that means we are too.

They seem like only yesterday 
Our twentysomething years
The decades got away from us
How fast time disappears.

We switched back on to Netflix
In panic and dismay 
Truly no-one told us
Life was gonna be this way.
(Clap clap clap clap…)