As I’m an OAP, it’s not very often that I see an amusing online game I got into early trending online, so imagine my glee on seeing the following on X this week: ‘Peter Murrell Meme Turns Follower Counts into Luxury Kitchen Splurges.’ Freelance journalist Jill Foster started the game by pairing a pound sign with her follower count and a kitchen item, sparking replies from a £35,900 cutlery tray (the proud possession of The Spectator’s own Gareth Roberts) to a £394,000 salad dressing bottle. The humour stems from Murrell’s real court-listed buys, including a £3,232 Jura coffee machine and Jamie Oliver spoons, all funded by SNP donations from 2010 to 2022.’
To be specific, it had to be the last item in the kitchen that one touched. My own contribution a few hours earlier was a Brexit mug, which, playing by these rules, cost a majestic £48,000, while Jill herself boasted a £42,600 pizza wheel. But these over-priced items were a snip compared to the haul that Murrell amassed, which ran the price-point from a bottle of Loctite super glue at £3.50 a pop to a luxury motorhome for £124,550. Gaming equipment – costing almost £2,000 – is the classic prized possession of boys and men of all ages for whom life has not proved as exciting as they hoped; one can easily see how a man married to Nicola Sturgeon might want to lose himself in the extremely ‘problematic’ (according to AI) mean streets of Grand Theft Auto. Still, I bet the extreme aggression which takes place in ‘Liberty City’ is nothing compared to the tongue-lashings he’s had from the Tartan Terror since then.
As for the manicure set, the ‘gents dry touch gloves’ and the hand cream? I’m afraid this combination conjures up a rather unedifying image, and certainly not one which I’m prepared to go into here. Suffice to say that like the gaming equipment, many a teenage boy will have found a use for such things. More puzzling – looking at Mr Murrell, who makes Jeremy Corbyn look like Harry Styles when it comes to visual flair – are the amounts spent on status symbols: five-figure watches, four-figure fountain pens, Smythson vanity bureaux and – perhaps Murrell’s equivalent of the £1,645 floating ‘duck house’ claimed by the Conservative MP Sir Peter Viggers during the parliamentary expenses scandal of 2009 – a pair of Lalique salt and pepper shakers priced at £2,618.16. (Love that 16p!) All in all, it made Boris and Carrie in their golden wallpaper era look like a pair of Poor Clares.
If I were a regular member of the SNP, knowing that my hard-earned contributions had been keeping this ghastly man who somewhat resembles Mr Blobby in a style befitting rapper Rick Ross (who famously commissioned a $1.5 million diamond necklace featuring a life-sized, diamond-encrusted pendant of his own face), I’d be spitting tacks right now. But looking on the bright side, there’s one trans-pandering political party that won’t be getting quite as much power to stick rapists in female prisons any more – and after a good few months of serious stuff, this marks the official start of the Silly Season for we gentlepeople of the press. Hopefully there’ll be more fun to be had when the case gets to court and the Mental Elf makes his inevitable appearance, with some blather from the defence about how poor Petey saw Mummy kissing Santa Claus or some such rubbish and how we should feel sorry for him.
Though Sturgeon had no knowledge of the Aladdin’s cave her erstwhile swain was sitting on, I wouldn’t mind betting she’s having a few sleepless nights over what he may reveal about their withered union. Only guessing, but I can’t help thinking they probably didn’t have the most chuckles ever. When I think of them getting engaged as youngsters, I think of the fiancé from Ayrshire who Miss Jean Brodie left behind, him having informed her upon proposing: ‘We shall have to drink water and walk slow.’ It’s understandable that they would want to kick over the traces in their different ways; her going power-mad, him treating life as if it were the conveyor belt at the end of The Generation Game.
But until then, we can have a good laugh at the sheer brass neck (which sounds like something he’d have bought to hang pendants on) of the man. Murrell will now join the questionable ranks of the great luxury hoarders of our times; Imelda Marcos with her thousands of shoes, and Michael Jackson, who reputedly spent $6 million on a single shopping trip. One of my favourite spend-spend-spenders is Katie Price – otherwise known as the glamour model Jordan – who acquires not only husbands (always ‘The One’ – until the next one) and, less amusingly, animals. Seven of her pets have died prematurely, leading to PETA offering her thousands of pounds to sign a legally binding agreement not to acquire another one. Her online shopping habits are thought to have contributed to her bankruptcies, with a room full of unopened packages at her home, the notorious ‘Mucky Mansion’, now abandoned.
I purchased three Rolexes in the space of a decade – but gave them all away when I was drunk
Personally, I have a horror of what I think of as ‘stuff’. Whenever people give me presents – the exception being perfume, cheese or canned cocktails, which by their nature disappear – I feel a brief but definite flash of pure loathing towards the gifter. ‘O great – more rubbish cluttering up the place!’ I think, whether it’s a piece of art (the Banksy from Banksy was an exception, as it bought me my flat) or a piece of jewellery. Meanwhile I arrange my face in a delighted expression and say ‘O, you absolute MIND-READER – how did you KNOW?’ while already plotting which other clown of my acquaintance I can unload it on to. Paradoxically, I love giving things to people. I purchased three Rolexes in the space of a decade – but gave them all away when I was drunk. I gain enjoyment from divesting myself of possessions – especially prized and precious ones – rather than hoarding, which though it may have its own weird psychology does strike me as morally and aesthetically superior.
There are two extreme schools of thought about possessions; ‘He who dies with the most toys wins’ as some awful rich person once said, and ‘He who dies rich dies shamed’ as the far richer Andrew Carnegie said. What’s odd is how little joy the toys really give their unsatisfied owners, always chasing the next purchase. Viggers later admitted that his ducks never even liked their floating island home, in 2010, a decade before his death, it was auctioned off, raising £1,700 for Macmillan Cancer Support. Imagine the money Murrell could raise for charity if his ill-gotten gains were auctioned; why, I’d be tempted to put in a bid for the Lalique salt shakers myself, just for laughs – so long as I could ‘gift’ them quickly on to someone else.
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