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THE BBC’s Emily Maitlis has done the nation a huge favour with her spittle-flecked rant on Newsnight about Dominic Cummings.
Maitlis posed the important question: Why are we still paying for this crap?
We would surely all be a lot happier if the BBC finally dropped its laughable pretence of political neutrality and got by without public funding.
Here was the Cummings controversy seen through the eyes of those who will never ever get over Brexit, who grind their teeth at that 80-seat Tory majority and who this week sensed a chance to claim a pound of juicy Leaver flesh.
Maitlis assured the Newsnight viewers that our nation is totally united in feeling “fury, contempt and anguish” about Cummings taking his family to Durham during lockdown.
A bit presumptuous, Em.
This wasn’t impartial broadcasting — this was overexcited propaganda.
Personally, I feel more fury, contempt and anguish at the bullying middle class mob baying for blood outside the home of Dominic Cummings, his wife and their young son.
I feel more fury, contempt and anguish that the national treasure that was the BBC has been annexed by the likes of Emily Maitlis, who only meets a member of the working class when they come to clean her toilet.
That is where my fury, contempt and anger burn — at a corporation that still pockets £4billion a year from the Brexit-voting, Tory-supporting nation who they loathe.
Emily’s mad-eyed monologue would have been far more at home in the comment pages of some little-read left-wing rag.
It had no place on a supposedly neutral state broadcaster that exists by taxing anyone with a TV.
I fear the BBC overplayed their hand this week.
Too shrill. Too nasty. Too partisan. Because it wasn’t really about a family fleeing to Durham, was it?
The row was about Brexit. And that row has changed the BBC forever.
The current generation of BBC hacks will NEVER get over Brexit, and they find it impossible to hide their fury, contempt and anguish.
For those of us who grew up with the BBC and who have loved the BBC for a lifetime, seeing the corporation sink so low is a national tragedy.
Through the ages, the best BBC broadcasters — Andrew Neil, Jeremy Paxman, Robin Day, anyone called Dimbleby — parked their ego at the entrance to Broadcasting House.
These BBC legends gave everyone a kicking.
They were never vain enough to believe they spoke for the nation.
Coming off the back of her interview with Prince Andrew, Maitlis is ridiculously puffed-up with a sense of her own importance.
But nobody cares if you don’t like Brexit, Emily.
Nobody cares that you — an investment banker’s wife! — hate Leavers.
Of course you do! But your opinions do not matter a damn.
What really matters is that the British public are still obliged to subsidise your left-wing megaphone — so boring, so banal, so predictable — when you should be taking your chances in the open marketplace.
Labour MP David Lammy, that intellectual giant, called the Maitlis rant, “public service broadcasting”, and it went down a storm with all the moaning, middle class minnies who pine for Brussels like a lost first boyfriend.
But even the BBC could see Newsnight’s trolling of Cummings had gone a tad too far, the corporation offering a half-hearted apology, pretending Maitlis’ mad tirade was a “summary of the questions we would examine” rather than — heaven forbid! — the sneering presenter’s own point of view.
And if you believe those weasel words from this distrusted news source, then you will believe anything.
Emily Maitlis spoke of “a deep national disquiet” on Newsnight.
Oh, Emily — once again you have captured the mood of our nation!
There is a deep national disquiet that the BBC still pockets £4billion per annum from a public they openly detest.
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Britt Ekland mourns the passing of the Bond girl.
Britt, who played Mary Goodnight in The Man With The Golden Gun, talks as if a love interest is a thing of the past in the 007 films.
“I’m the proudest Bond girl in the world because there are not a lot of us left and there won’t be any in the future,” she said.
“The Bond girl has to look good in a bikini. That was her role.
“The Bond girl of my era exists no more because they’re not presented that way.
“You wouldn’t see her in a bikini next to Daniel Craig today.”
Britt is right that the Bond franchise gets embarrassed about the term “Bond girl” in our woke modern world.
But the Bond girl – even if they don’t call her that – still exists.
The next Bond film, No Time To Die, features Lea Seydoux, Lashana Lynch, Naomie Harris and Ana de Armas – 007 has never been so surrounded by so many stunning women as he is in 2020.
The Bond franchise is not as PC as it wants to be.
And the Bond films of the past are not quite as racy as we remember.
When I see pictures of Britt Ekland as Mary Goodnight, I am shocked at the modesty of her white bikini.
The last time I saw pants that big, Hugh Grant was trying to remove them from Bridget Jones.
The Premier League is back on June 17.
Cinemas start opening in July. Foreign holidays probably resume the same month if the Government ditches its lunatic plan of a 14-day quarantine for any airline passenger entering the country – an idea that is around five months too late.
And best of all, the schools open for Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 tomorrow morning.
After all these dark months, the nation will be led out of lockdown by an army of children.
As Vera Lynn sang – it’s a lovely day tomorrow.
ANNEMARIE PLAS, the founder of Clap for Carers, says that this week’s applause should be the last and that she hoped “to stop at the peak”.
A good idea.
Because we could clap every Thursday night for the rest of our lives and never truly thank our frontline workers enough.
Boris Johnson, seen jogging in the grounds of Buckingham Palace with his dog Dilyn, is clearly making a big effort to lose weight.
He came perilously close to death’s door when he was in that ICU and believes his weight – reportedly over 17 stone before he went into hospital – badly exacerbated the virus.
All the evidence suggests coronavirus is especially dangerous for the overweight. Oxford University research says that the morbidly obese are three times more likely to die of the virus.
Twenty five per cent of all UK coronavirus fatalities had diabetes – a condition linked to obesity.
We can all protect ourselves from a second wave by not being overweight.
Japan is in many ways very similar to the UK – a densely populated nation with an ageing population.
But it does not have an obesity problem and less than 900 people have died of Covid-19 there.
But in the UK, one in three of us is now overweight and we have over 38,000 deaths.
If Boris, above, could get this country to slim down it would save lives and take untold pressure off the NHS, which must manage the multiple side effects of obesity such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
As we reflect on our nation’s tragic death toll, thank God we have a PM who is ready to say what no previous Prime Minister would have had the nerve to say – being fat can kill you.
As for Boris, he is looking healthier already.
LIKE many British sports fans, I had always thought that basketball was just netball for big lads.
But I have just watched the astonishing Netflix documentary on the mercurial, magical and madly driven Michael Jordan of the Chicago Bulls.
And had my tiny mind changed forever.
The Last Night Of The Proms will be broadcast live at the Royal Albert Hall on Saturday, September 12.
The planners say that the night will be “to bring the nation together” after the trauma of coronavirus.
Only if there is no audience!
The Last Night Of The Proms features the most patriotic music ever made – Land Of Hope And Glory, Jerusalem, Rule Britannia – but the audience is stuffed with Remoaners waving their little EU flags.
Nothing reveals the divisions that exist in this country quite like Last Night Of The Proms.
I HAD never really appreciated the extent of Cardi B’s tattoos until she posed on a pool lounger during lockdown.
Who knew Interflora did body art?
Heidi Klum kissed a pig on America’s Got Talent – and he liked it.
You might have expected Heidi to place a chaste smacker on the animal’s cheek but the kiss was on the side of mouth.
No wonder the porker was practically purring.
I don’t think I have ever seen a pig looking quite that happy since the last time Peppa Pig and her brother George encountered some muddy puddles.