Greg Jackson, Octopus Energy’s boss, says the elderly should “snuggle up” under electric blankets to save money on fuel as the cold kicks in this winter. Mr Jackson is one of the good guys. His company has given customers 65,000 free heated blankets and his advice is sound. Heat the person not the house and the average householder will save £300. Plug in those blankets and – hey presto – there’s salvation from the spectre of huge bills and hypothermia is kept at bay.
Let’s not relax before we contemplate the harsh reality. Replace the cosy, reassuring word “snuggle” with the far more accurate “huddle”, and you begin to get the true picture. And one wonders if we really want to condemn our oldest and most vulnerable neighbours to six months cowering under blankets? Can we comfortably condemn our pensioners to this half-life, that’s bearable only when sedentary?
Think about it. At some point, the blanket huddler is forced to unwrap him or herself from the heated cocoon and brave glacial temperatures to attend to life’s necessities. Taking care not to trip over the blanket’s flex, he or she must venture to arctic lavatory and freezing kitchen, then to disrobe in the icy bathroom. Their home is bone-chillingly cold, only bearable when enfolded in the blanket. When they’re not it’s a penance and an endurance test.
Some callers to my LBC show were already experiencing an electric blanket-based existence. One jolly half of a happy couple made light of the predicament. She assured me that she and her husband were fine. Other callers were clearly suffering. One spoke of the loneliness of surviving beneath the blanket. She can’t invite friends into her bitterly cold house. She can only eat her meals on the sofa under the heated blanket. Her home is not homely. Life is limited by the piercing cold.
Callers also described the mould sprouting in their unheated houses. Adult children expressed concern for parents determined not to use their central heating while debilitated by illness or recovering from operations. An electric blanket, they told me angrily, is not a life raft.
I share their horror that in 2024, our senior citizens are banished to burrow under blankets until spring. We expect Charles Dickens’ oppressed clerk Bob Cratchit to be plagued by the cold in A Christmas Carol. It was written in 1843. One hundred and eighty-one years later we must and should do better.
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Since when was the word “disrupter” such a compliment? Trump supporters claim their hero is a dynamic “disrupter”. Prince William says he wants to be a “slight disrupter” in the fight against homelessness.
Adopters of the “D” word use it as a synonym for “reformer”. The implication is that all disrupters are beneficent agents of change, using their talent and vision to dismantle dead wood and replacing it with fresh saplings bursting with new leaves.
Unfortunately, they are mistaken. Disrupters all-too often agitate and destroy without a rescue plan in their pockets. They seek to blow up the status quo without a constructive strategy for reform or reinvigoration. Disrupters are frightening because they flatten without rebuilding. Every time I hear the word, I wince – and so should you.
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Did any of us need or want to spend £208million (and counting) on the Covid Inquiry? Didn’t we all know, before a single penny was spent, what this cumbersome creaking tribunal will find? That the UK was pathetically ill-prepared. That our PPE supplies were – in some cases fatally – insufficient. That working men and women without the luxury of working from home lost more lives than the middle classes. That there is no such thing as “the science” – which can be whatever the Government’s interpretation requires. That ministers created policies affecting all of us on the hoof in panicked WhatsApp messages, doled out contracts to cronies and punished us for failing to keep rules they themselves ignored. And that we benefited from the early vaccine roll-out.
Lockdown has left an indelible legacy on our young and elderly alike. Too many people suffered. Too many people died. That’s it, isn’t it? Why waste another pound telling us what we all already know?
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Falling in love is intoxicatingly beguiling but shouldn’t the late Princess Diana’s brother Earl Spencer, 60, think before he speaks and possibly put a sock in it?
Although he’s still married to wife number three, the mother of Charlotte, the youngest of his seven children, Spencer waxes enthusiastically in public about his newest amour. She’s a Norwegian archaeologist who at 42 is 18 years his junior. The two seem keen to proclaim their infatuation to the waiting world. Says Spencer, “With Cat I can be myself. She knows who I really am. I don’t have to pretend to be something I am not. And she brings out the best in me.” Asked if this is his first relationship of such openness, he replies “yes”.
Is the Earl really so bedazzled with Cat that he can’t spare a second to think about his children’s feelings? Doesn’t he realise he is painting their mothers and his marriages to them as hollow shams? How are his offspring supposed to respond to their father pouring scorn on the unions from which they sprung? Why does he want to flaunt his latest romance anyway? Hasn’t he reached the age where he could relish his happiness in private?
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Is it possible that you, like me, read Gwyneth Paltrow’s annual global list of her top restaurants, saw her ringing endorsement of the legendary River Cafe in London’s Hammersmith and thought: “What on earth?”
Gwynnie recommends “hand-cut malfatti and Barolo-marinated veal shin.” Sorry – “mal” what? A quick waltz to Google and I am enlightened. Malfatti is an Italian dumpling dish made of ricotta and spinach. Now that’s clear, I know exactly what I fancy for post turkey-overload Boxing Day lunch. There’s just a minor challenge to overcome – how the heck do you make malfatti?
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In my autobiography Vanessa Bares All, I highlight one of the grubbiest downsides of fame. I know from bitter experience that any unprincipled individual with the slightest claim to “insider information” about a celebrity can make a quick buck selling a so-called “story” – and that it’s most heartbreaking when that person is a close family member.
Danny Jones, 38, endearing member of band McFly, is going great guns in the I’m A Celebrity jungle. But then, out of the woodwork, comes the father he hasn’t spoken to for 18 years. Alan Jones, walked out on Danny’s mum Kathy in 2005. He lives in Benidorm with the woman he left her for. Danny told his campmates of the chronic debilitating anxiety which has plagued him since his parents’ breakup. Meanwhile, his absent father merrily states, “I think any reunion with me… would upset his mum.”
Talking about the son he never sees in public is hardly the most convincing or sensitive way to nurture a reunion. There’s always the non-attention seeking option of writing a private conciliatory letter or quietly sending a bunch of flowers with a loving card. Sadly, this is an option that the limelight-loving nearest and un-dearest of public figures never seem to take.
