Did the Queen make David Cameron beg for forgiveness over his ‘purr’ gaffe?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/oct/09/queen-david-cameron-beg-forgiveness-purr-gaffe

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David Cameron has apparently apologised to the Queen for – and really, I’m so sorry to have to bring this up again, but you must understand that it is the very profundity of the horror that requires us all to revisit and grant ourselves closure on it – telling the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, that when Cameron told her Scotland was still part of the union, she “purred” down the phone at him.

I’ll give you a moment to get over what our Caledonian cousins so evocatively describe as “the dry boak”. If you’re wondering quite what it is about what he said that set off your spasmic heavings, it is because “purred” is a quasi-sexual word and you feel you have suddenly been given a wholly unwanted glimpse into a man’s private fantasy.

I would have paid good money to hear that apology. I crave the sight of Cameron looking fearful, embarrassed, ashamed – and I suspect that only humiliation before the Queen can elicit that from an old Bullingdon boy. She’s rich, famous and aristocratic – the poshest woman in England now that Debo, Duchess of Devonshire has gone to that great mansion house in the sky. She matters.

Do you think he was coached before he went in? “You’ve got to say sorry. Look, like this – hissing sound like a snake…ssssss, you see? Then lips go round like an ‘O’ – that’s it, like you were saying ‘My mother-in-law’s retail chain full of aspirational baubles including an armorial log bin for £249, OKA’, then ‘rr…rrr’ as if you were – well…purring, and then just an ‘ee’. So-rree. Don’t sing-song it. Just say it.”

Do you think she fixed him with a basilisk stare, watched him squirm until he nearly passed out, then without breaking eye-contact reached for the phone-butler and said, “Gotta ring the masons. Someone needs to find me a new lizard-boy”?

Do you think he broke down and started grovelling? “I’m so sorry – Bloomberg was so near and so rich. Cash-rich, Mrs W, not duchy-and-other-assets rich. He’s liquid. So, so liquid. I had to impress him and what else have I got but occasional enforced access to you? A few weeks getting coffee for Michael Green at Carlton wasn’t going to cut it. We were in New York!”

Do you think she made him beg? Do you think she did it? For all her subjects who have been stripped of benefits, security, health care, human rights, happiness, comfort, peace of mind over the past four years? Do you think she did it? For us?

Good graffiti

We’ve all seen – either in the flesh or the pictures printed in the kind of media outlets that like to stoke resentment and envy in equal measure – the gold-plated Ferraris and the plutocrats’ Porsches scattered around Harrods like Dinky Toys, the bespoke Lamborghinis racing through London at will because what price a pedestrian’s safety when there’s lambskin upholstery to cushion the blow? There they stand, four-wheeled monuments to greed, roaring symbols of shamelessness, waste, the obscenity of great wealth, the inequality gouged ever deeper in society by the untrammelled excesses of late-western capitalism.

A photograph taken in Seattle went viral yesterday. It was of a Bugatti Veyron 16.4 Grand Sport, a £1.5m supercar, on which someone had drawn a crude but readily identifiable set of cock and balls. It was a salutary reminder to all tortured liberals that sometimes we overthink things. Sometimes life is very simple. Sometimes life just needs a cock and balls drawn on it. It’s worth a thousand angst-ridden words. You dick.

Crumb of discomfort

The last round of the fifth series of Great British Bake Off had 12.3 million viewers – more than the World Cup final – and an over 50% audience share. Nancy won after the favourite, Richard, fell at the last hurdle. I don’t know who these people are. I haven’t watched a second of it – nor of The X Factor, Strictly or Britain’s Got a Lot of Vulnerable People Not Being Watched Closely Enough. I am a stranger in my own land. I can’t join in the Twitter talk for hours and hours every week. Attempts to bond with strangers at parties without reference to these communal viewing experiences fall flatter than a novice’s cronut. It’s cold out here, man. It’s cold.