How much would you pay not to spend a weekend in the company of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex? How much would you fork out not to have your picture taken with her? We know the going rate for both.
If you happen to be in Australia, £1,400 will buy you “a VIP experience” on what’s being billed as the ultimate "girls’ weekend”. The three-day event will take place during Meghan and the Duke of Sussex's trip to Australia in April. Touted as "a girls' weekend like no other", Meghan will speak at a gala dinner, with VIP ticket holders offered front-row seats and a group photo with the duchess.
Who knows? The price might also include watching Meghan pouring a bag of pretzels into another bag and tying a bow on it or even putting segments of fruit in a straight line on a platter and sprinkling them with dried flower petals. They say everyone has their price. Now we know Meghan’s.
‘The child is father of the man’, wrote Wordsworth forcing generations of beleaguered A. level students to churn out essays on the tarnished innocence of youth. It turns out Wordsworth was spot on, but teachers shoving the angelic infant philosophy down our throats misunderstood him.
Babies are not miniature saints. We are born with buckets of original sin. Tiny tots engage in nefarious activities. Professors at the University of Bristol discovered a quarter of children under ten months old are capable of deceptive behaviour. Infants commit subterfuge, fudge the truth, pretend not to hear when adults address them and, prompted by impish urges, hide passports and car keys.
Far from brimming with thoughts of teddy bears and warm milk, their silken heads are teeming with mutiny, self-interest and daylight robbery.
Parents reported their offspring engaging in 16 types of deception while under the age of four. Caught red-handed, banged to rights, these pre-school scammers even have the brass-neck to look their accusers squarely in the eye and deny all knowledge. Two year olds brazenly invent false explanations to put mum and dad off the scent, exaggerate, play sins down and pretend to experience urgent calls of nature when asked to tidy up.
Told not to look in a bag, mini-miscreants calmly wait till the coast is clear and help themselves to a good old rummage.
Are we truly surprised we are bubbling with wickedness almost as embryos? My mother regaled company with tales of my hiding small toys in my socks at nursery school so I could “bring them home to show her?”.
Told by a two-year-old Vanessa: “My mother is in hospital with strawberry poisoning”, the kindergarten headteacher took it to be a euphemism for ‘has had a miscarriage’. When my mum turned up to collect me in perfect health, the woman exploded: “Teach the child to tell the truth.”
She tried. I wasn’t keen. The truth was deadly dull. Fibbing was far sparklier. Selected pupils were made to stand in front of the class on Monday mornings and deliver their ‘diary’, a leaden plod through the predictably pedestrian events of the weekend. “I had cereal for breakfast. I watched ‘Songs of Praise”.
My instinct to entertain kicked in. I treated the class to soap-style scenes of glamour, unrequited love and fisticuffs. Truth be damned! Now I know I wasn’t the only dissembler, I take immense comfort from the notion we are all born Artful Dodgers.
Vivacious actress Debbie Arnold, 70, known for appearing in every major UK soap opera, bounced into the Vanessa Show studio aflame with brand new love. Where did she find her irresistible, compassionate and equally-besotted swain? At an ex-boyfriend’s mother’s funeral. The telephone lines jammed with callers stricken by Cupid’s dart in the unlikeliest places.
One bumped into her now husband dumping rubbish at the tip. Another fell head over heels for her now Beloved’s voice as she waited at the bus stop and he, invisible, worked deep down in a hole in the road. Yet another succumbed to the trainer reining in her wayward German shepherd.
My panelist, broadcaster Cristo Foufas, met his adored husband on popular ‘hook-up’ site Grindr, thought by many to be a source of instant gratification, not enduring love.
Where does that leave reluctant singletons? Should we trek to the sewage plant or hang around outside A&E hoping for what Hollywood filmmakers call a ‘meet cute’. Everyone trots out the identical phrase: ‘Love will strike when you least expect it”, I’m hoping for a romantic connection on the Jubilee Line.
Speaking of Tube travel, when I was left strap-hanging, I couldn’t suppress a scintilla of pure triumph. Standing right next to the two seats commanding incumbents to vacate for those ‘less able to stand’, was surely proof I look far younger than my ludicrously antique vintage.
Naturally, I began wondering just how much more youthful than 64 I must look. Were the sitters convinced I was a mere stripling of 57, 47, 37? Just how dewy and succulent did I appear? Was I fooling all the people all the time?
Unfortunately, my bubble of joy burst when I realized the seated two might just be ill-mannered boorish oiks. They knew full well I was ancient, but didn’t give a fig. It wasn’t that I looked young, but that they were sociopaths. Cue collapse of temporarily inflated ego.
Hurling a wrecking ball through millions of hitherto merry Saturday evenings, Liza Tarbuck, 61, has unexpectedly announced she’s quit her engagingly dotty Radio 2 show. It could well be disarmingly charming Liza genuinely wants to regain possession of her weekends after 14 years of amiably rambling repartee.
Of course, it could also be that Radio 2 treated Liza as unceremoniously as they behaved to legendary and beloved broadcasters Steve Wright and Paul O’Grady and told her to sling her hook. The station certainly has form on hurling the nation’s most cherished and gifted broadcasters into the wheelie bin.
If Liza is departing willingly, I wish her fabulous fun on her reclaimed Saturday nights. If she jumped before (or after) she was pushed, I hope she knows how sorely she will be missed by legions of fans, wretched at the news of her departure, currently licking their wounds and wondering how they’ll ever fill the yawning gap she leaves behind.
Where are the parenting books telling befuddled parents how to cope with adult children? Breast feeding and potty training are a picnic compared with navigating the tears and tantrums of oppressed Gen Z.
I’m OK. My girls have married and moved out. Friends marooned in their own homes with querulous kidults still expecting laundry done and piping hot dinner laid invitingly on the table mourn the lack of an authoritative manual to help entice their supine offspring into switching lights off when they leave a room, picking up wet towels and lending an occasional hand around the house.
A survey by Utility Warehouse found mums bewailing their children’s blasé belief that the Spic and Span Fairy will fly in and magically turn chaos into order. On the bright side, 75% said being a parent is one of life’s most rewarding pleasures. Post a delightful Mothers’ Day celebration, I heartily concur.
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