REVENGE porn – a sad, grubby phenomenon which sees disgruntled former flames post private, hugely intimate photos on the internet. Dominic Cummings may not have dated Boris Johnson but he is behaving like the most embittered ex-boyfriend of all time, leaking personal WhatsApps online. It’s political porn for the masses. Cummings has betrayed Boris in […]
REVENGE porn – a sad, grubby phenomenon which sees disgruntled former flames post private, hugely intimate photos on the internet.
Dominic Cummings may not have dated Boris Johnson but he is behaving like the most embittered ex-boyfriend of all time, leaking personal WhatsApps online.
It’s political porn for the masses.
Cummings has betrayed Boris in the most embarrassing way possible — minus the nudes. (Which is something of a blessing, I suppose.)
By sharing the pair’s private text exchanges, the Prime Minister’s former chief adviser has put a dagger through the heart of free speech.
If the PM can’t let off steam, vent or joke to his most trusted aides without fear of it being made public, what hope is there for any of us?
Such a stabbing is all the more wounding given it’s from a man Boris so loyally defended during Barnard Castle-gate.
Almost everyone uses WhatsApp — a messaging service we were told was encrypted.
Most millennials would sooner die than pick up to an unknown number on the landline.
With cancel culture flourishing, WhatsApp — as opposed to traditional text or email — was seen as a “safe space”.
But in the age of the screenshot, as Dominic has proven, we are all doomed.
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t feel like they are one leaked message away from a P45.
Who hasn’t made an inappropriate retort or slagged off a friend in the heat of the moment?
It’s life. It makes us human.
However, it seems we are increasingly living in some sort of reimagined Stasi horror show — neighbours spying on neighbours, colleagues screenshotting colleagues. Or “s*** show”, as Dominic would (and did) say.
While most of us have an assortment of various WhatsApp “groups” ranging from “Sarah’s hen dooooo!!!” [champagne, party and dancing woman emojis] to “Saturday brunch!!!!” and finally the photo-filled spam-pot “Family group”, Cummings and Boris, it transpires, had: “CSA-CMO-Matt-PM-Dom” and “Covid No10 Coordination”.
Neither of which sounds like particularly good bants.
Continuing from his Committee hearings last month, Cummings’ latest 6,500 word blog-rant included brutal assessments by Boris at the height of the Covid crisis in March and April of last year.
One screenshot showed the Prime Minister calling hapless Health Secretary Matt Hancock “totally f***ing hopeless”.
The following day, reporters dispensed with their usual pleasantries, asking poor Matt as he got into his car: “Are you hopeless?”
Of course, much of what Cummings has leaked, he alluded to in the hearing.
This means that from a legal perspective, Boris and Co would struggle to go after him on grounds of privacy.
These hearings also have “privilege” protection, allowing Dominic to have been “full and frank”, so poor old Matt — while undoubtedly embarrassed — can’t even get him done for libel.
But Cummings’ actions set a dangerous precedent.
If other MPs and ministers feel backed into a corner, what’s stopping them from following his example and leaking their own messages to exonerate themselves.
A few days ago, singer Leona Lewis got embroiled in a screenshot slanging match of her own on Instagram.
Her row with fashion designer Michael Costello quickly escalated, with the duo seemingly attempting to cancel one another out.
First our politicians, then celebs . . . Soon it’ll be the rest of us publicly, and regularly, hung out to dry.
In doing Boris up like a kipper, Cummings has taught everyone a sad but valuable lesson: Never put anything in writing if you don’t want people to see it.
But hey, who needs Hansard when you have WhatsApp?
TWO things to note about the Euros. 1) Under no other circumstances ever would I be found of a Saturday night cheerily watching Spain versus Poland.
Or remarking on the prowess, say, of Robert Lewandowski and Piotr Zielinski — two men I have given very little thought to previously.
But more than six million Brits watched the match, so I’m not alone.
2) Whenever the camera pans to a member of the crowd, invariably that person is staring gormlessly at their phone instead of watching the live game unfolding before them.
Which is a sad but fair indictment of where we are now.
LAST week, 88-year-old screen legend Joan Collins was casually pictured atop a yacht in St Tropez showing off her ridiculously great legs.
Fans gushed all over Instagram, suggesting she basically had the pins of a teen.
I once interviewed Joan over lunch in Los Angeles (*clang ! *) and asked her the secret to her never-changing looks. (Which, I’m sure, she has never been asked before.)
“I’m religious about not getting the sun in my face,” she said, over a small vat of midday wine and a whole avocado.
“I always sunbathe wearing a hat, sunglasses and full make-up. I don’t mind ruining the skin on the rest of my body, just not the face.
“I watch my weight because I’m quite bosomy so if I don’t, I just look like a lump.”
We should all be more Joan.
GRANTED, Victoria’s Secret campaigns probably aren’t marketed at people like me.
At 5ft 2¾in in my stockinged feet, and clinging desperately to my (very late) thirties, I’m unlikely to be gracing their catwalks any time soon.
Except, maybe now I could. Because the American lingerie chain is the latest firm to go all woke – replacing their erstwhile harem of Amazonian beauties with a more diverse clan of women.
Having ditched their “Angels”, among the first seven stars to join the all-new “VS Collective” are pink-haired US footballer Megan Rapinoe, actress Priyanka Chopra Jonas and activist Valentina Sampaio, the first transgender model to be featured in Sports Illustrated.
These women are all inspirational trailblazers. But traditional models they are not.
Sixty years ago women burned their bras to make a stand for women’s rights.
Today, Victoria’s Secret CEOs aren’t burning bras; they’re padding them.
By going woke, they may think they’re striking out for womankind.
In reality, this is little more than opportunist virtue-signalling – and the feminists of yesteryear would be horrified.
ON Saturday, with some trepidation, I wrote about the fallout from my last Sun column.
I recalled the horror of being dropped by a charity for making a joke about Baa Baa Black Sheep.
But I was completely overwhelmed by the support I received from readers, friends and celebs. Even some of the Twitterati were begrudgingly pleasant.
It seems we’re all fearing imminent cancellation.
One household name, a daytime presenter, texted to say he was too terrified to go off-script in case the “worker bees scouring the media, who know exactly what to do to get us sacked” took offence. And, well, get him sacked.
Brilliantly though, I was also contacted on behalf of another wonderful children’s charity who said they’d “love” to work with me. Turns out Sun readers really are the voice of common sense.
FOR years we have lauded “brave” Hollywood stars when they’ve piled on the pounds for a new movie role.
Rolls for roles and lbs for pounds, if you will.
How we marvelled at Renee Zellweger as Bridget Jones for daring to balloon to a size 14 on a diet of doughnuts and Stork.
Then it was the turn of Hilary Swank, beefing up to play a boxer in Million Dollar Baby – earning her millions of dollars and some Oscars.
And last month, how we LOL’d as fearless Mark Wahlberg went from six-packed poster boy to tubster in a matter of weeks for his latest blockbuster.
These stars are paid millions to eat, before employing a vast team of personal trainers, nutritionists and “well-being experts” to get them back down to size.
So spare a thought for two proper heroes who admit to putting on some timber . . . in order to save millions of lives.
Professor Sarah Gilbert, a 59-year-old mother of triplets, designed the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.
Biologist Cath Green created the cell culture from which the first doses were made.
Both said sleepless nights working around the clock led to weight gain.
As Prof Gilbert explains: “There were days when we swore or cried with frustration and exhaustion. We lost sleep and gained weight.”
Now THIS is sacrifice.
THE Government is planning to regulate streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon Prime and Disney+.
It comes off the back of (fictional) shows like The Crown being criticised for “historical inaccuracies”.
In short, it’s an attempt to curb these behemoths’ power and give terrestrial telly a crack at clawing back some viewers.
But surely TV – lavish, big-budget dramas in particular – is a form of blessed escapism.
Especially when we’re all so bored and still relatively housebound.
If we want grim, pre-watershed reality, we can watch the news.
Otherwise, let us have our Crowns, and stop interfering.
MUCH has been said about Enid Blyton’s “racist, sexist, homophobic” language.
While she may well have been two out of three, in my mind there’s little doubt the author was progressively LGBTQ+.
Forget George, I’ve always had my suspicions about Timmy the dog . . .
SOME racy post from BMW. The company wrote last week to say my decrepit old vehicle is in need of a good servicing.
More specifically, a “reworking of the blower regulator plug connection”. Phwoar.
But in these lean times, I’ll take my pleasures where I find them.
