Toyboys

As seen on X ‘Another,’ I say with a belch, letting fork and knife fall to my plate. ‘Pork belly this time, I think.’ The waiter scuttles off to the kitchen of our local Greene King pub. This will be my fourth roast dinner of the afternoon. Beef, chicken and gammon have come and gone – each with heaps of crispy roast potatoes, lashings of gravy, golden brown yorkies, steamed cabbage and carrots piled high. I wash them down with Aenglish ale. I’ll have to put in a double session at the gym to work it off. Romanian deadlifts and kettlebell swings. But it’s worth it. Because there is an active intelligence operation to subvert the British Sunday roast.

As seen in the Times ‘Sodding sods!’ I exclaim, as I discover that I’m £16,000 overdrawn. Between the tweakments, the Berry Bros deliveries and the maintenance of a feckless toyboy in rented digs in Hove, I’m deep in the red and digging deeper. I shoot Emilia Cash-Barings a WhatsApp. ‘Babe, have you got any comish for me? Something on the new scourge of Athleisure or a righteous skewering of Soho Farmhouse?’ ‘Look, Helen,’ she replies. ‘All I’ve got is something on this “AI” stuff. £2,000? What do you reckon?’ That’s the problem with tech journalism. It’s all done by dorky pale men who want to hide from women AI? Moi? I’m no incel.

As seen in the Times I’m fiddling with my phone when a news notification pops up. Another independent school has closed, the latest atrocity in Labour’s unrelenting Khmer Rouge-style anti-middle-class genocide. Seething, I knew it was high time for me to spend a few weeks away from Britain, Andy Burnham and mad, bad Ed Miliband. But where to go? Husband Simon’s place in the south of France? No, much too hot. Sardinia? No, can’t risk running into Georgie, not after what happened in Sexy Fish on New Year’s Eve in 2012. Then I remember. Emilia Cash-Barings has been raving about this saucy sex cruise she’s just been on. A week of pure hedonism that made Tiberius’s palace on Capri look like the Women’s Institute AGM.

As seen on X ‘Subversive.’ With this word I sign off my vitriolic X reply to Beth Rigby, who has once again failed to endorse Restore Britain live on Sky News. With the monthly online-right Folkmoot taking place this afternoon at the Boar’s Head on Stockport high street, a show of force like this would be essential in rallying the troops. For the troops were wavering. Rupert Lowe has been making a series of alarming gaffes of late – distancing himself from ethnic nationalism, and indeed, national socialism. It came as a great shock to us that this 68-year-old business associate of Rishi Sunak’s wife and personal friend of much of the Conservative front bench had failed to endorse either of these platforms.

As seen in the Times ‘You young people, I don’t even know where to start!’ My phone call to my daughter Isabel is entering its 40th minute. ‘You’re all too busy donning keffiyehs these days to do any BONKING. ‘When I was your age, it was snogging to Duran Duran all night, then onto the couch for an hour’s kip, then into the office for a full day’s work at the PR agency or Tatler or wherever I was then… the point is there was no whingeing, just working hard and having a bloody good time.’ I then ask about Tom, Izzy’s long-term boyfriend, but interrupt with another harangue: ‘The thing is, Tom is very sweet.