Emily Hill

Generation Rent, we are always being told, are fed up of having to pay ‘dead’ money to their landlords. The rate of home ownership among 35- to 44-year-olds plunged from 74 per cent in 2003 to 56 per cent in 2019. But no one should think they will necessarily be better off, or feel more in control of their destiny, if they succeed in taking the plunge and buying a home. They could end up like me. Notionally, I have become a home owner by virtue of buying a one-bedroom flat in an ‘affordable housing’ scheme in Wandsworth, south London. Yet I feel more like a serf who must pay an exorbitant annual tithe to her feudal overlord. In common with the ‘owners’ of Britain’s other 4.6 million leasehold properties, I will never actually own my property.

Johnny Depp, a Hollywood star whose career currently consists of a perfume advert, is suing his ex-wife Amber Heard, a Hollywood actress who didn’t star in anything before she met him, for defamation. He says that she destroyed his career by telling the world he’s a wife-beater – and he wants $50 million in compensation. She says he is destroying her career by denying it – and wants $100 million ‘for nuisance’. Unfortunately, only one of them is any good at acting – which makes this trial a real nail biter for the folks back home drenched in Dior Sauvage who feel the only crime Johnny Depp ever committed was breaking up with Winona Ryder.

‘Get woke, go broke’ is the rule that explains the collapse of so many powerful institutions which profess social justice principles before asphyxiating on their own hypocrisy. Playboy may be the next corporation to consign itself to oblivion. This week, it distanced itself from its late founder, Hugh Hefner. It's a mission that is doomed to failure. 'Today's Playboy is not Hugh Hefner's Playboy,' we were informed in an open letter published on Playboy's website. The statement came after various 'Bunnies' told a TV documentary that Hefner drugged, groomed and secretly filmed girls and celebrity guests at his mansion.

After listening to an hour-and-a-half of Emily Ratajkowski talking about My Body I had to look up naked pictures of her on the internet to understand what she was complaining about. She arrived fully clothed to the 'How To Academy' to be interviewed by Pandora Sykes. This made it hard to know whether her dangerous-sounding upbringing as ‘an only child in a house with no walls’ had affected her physically.  ‘It had a profound effect on me,’ Emily told Pandora, explaining that she gets the ‘woozies’ to this day.

On Monday, the Prime Minister says, we can hug again. Personally, I never stopped, but then I’ve been corrupted by southerners, foreigners, posh boys and gorgeous homosexuals. In luvvie land (aka London and Twitter), there’s this perception that everyone is desperate to rush into one another’s arms because they’ve desisted for so long. In many places outside the M25, that idea is so nuts it’s comical. In Norfolk, where I was raised, most people meet with a nod and a grunt, and it is the height of good manners not to ‘look at anyone funny’ (in other words, we don’t make eye contact with strangers). If any outsider tries to offer a hug next week, they’ll likely get clobbered.

Long ago, a friend warned me I was living in a J.G. Ballard novel, but only in lockdown has the plot of High-Rise started to unfurl on the banks of the Thames. Developers are forced to build a certain number of homes for Londoners who could never otherwise afford anything, and height comes at a premium. So we’re stuck on the lower floors, in small, airless flats, overlooking land we’re not allowed to stray on to, as the rich exist in splendid corona-isolation above, peer down from their balconies and call security — to persecute us by making hints and suggestions. Ten days ago, a letter was stuffed underneath my door.