My Fake Media awards will be the biggest and best

REUTERS
Joy Lo Dico19 January 2018

If Donald Trump can hand out awards for Fake Media — The New York Times and The Washington Post cleaned up in his — then I can too. For the most exceptional world leaders.

After carefully selecting the best stable geniuses across the globe to be on a judging panel, there will be a big ceremony, the biggest the world has ever seen. The red carpet will be a mile long, and the women who walk down it will wear the finest dresses.

Meryl Streep will read out the categories and open the glossy envelope, her voice catching at emotive moments. Television sets around the world will flicker as families gather round in awe.

The categories are:

1. The worst fake tan

2. The most disgusting eating-in-bed habits

3. The smallest hands

4. The most indiscreet holder of nuclear codes

5. Having the hots for one’s own daughter

6. The worst judge of character in his appointments

And there is also one special award:

7. For making a once-fine people the laughing stock of the world

And it will be clean sweep. Not since Titanic won 11 Oscars has an awards shelf groaned so heavily. Rather how you imagine someone would themselves groan in the bathroom after those two double cheeseburgers and a double of fillet-o-fish pass through the Presidential #posterior.

Let the US press, so pilloried, wear their Trump Fake News awards as badges of honour. After all, this President won’t be getting any medals. And if he ever appears wearing one, the chances are it will be Fake.

Yes, says NZ premier, I can have a baby and the top job

Jacinda Ardern and her partner Clarke Gayford
AFP/Getty Images

“Woman has baby” was the front cover of Private Eye the week that Prince George was born. Even the Virgin Mary would have struggled to get a good headline out of the satirical mag.

And yet, news that the Prime Minister of New Zealand is pregnant has made the front pages around the world. Jacinda Ardern is the leader of the country’s Labour Party, which formed the ruling coalition after New Zealand’s elections in October. She had unexpectedly become leader in the summer, when the incumbent suddenly stepped down, and had discovered only days before the election that she was expecting her first child.

Power, like pregnancies, often come when it is least expected.

Ardern, 37, has already had to answer the question as to whether she will continue in the top job, saying she will be available through her six week maternity leave and then back at her desk.

Historically there have been several — male leaders — who have suffered bouts of ill health and carried on.

Winston Churchill was Prime Minister for two years after having a stroke. So even asking if it is possible to suffer morning sickness and run a country should make one queasy.

So, back to “Woman has Baby”, which might as well say “Woman has Job” or “Woman is capable of doing two things at once”.

The next time a male world leader announces that he is to become a father, one hopes that he too feels compelled to give a full statement about how he’s going to manage.

Wonderland reopens in Soho House rethat can be used to indicate how

Welcome back to the original Soho House on Greek Street, following a major refurbishment and rejig. Last night’s reopening marked a return for many of the original crew, both members and staff, who helped to build arguably the best and most beloved of the now global brand.

As the first, this House has something special: it has been a kind of Alice of Wonderland world for nearly quarter of a century: your entry is through an inconspicuous door, a buzzer, past the reception staff — who must have spent hours practising their nonchalant gazes in the mirror — who give you the nod. And then up and down a crazy maze of staircases, into room upon room of well-poured cocktails and beautiful people, eccentrics, cruel queens and mad hatters — last night I think I saw Jay Kay from Jamiroquai playing that part

Who hasn’t been through its doors at least once, I asked a London friend I’ve made in the past few years. “Oh yes, I’ve been,” she said. “And I can’t go back: I was barred.” It transpired that she had tumbled down the stairs and split her forehead open. The staff, deciding she’d gone beyond their a la carte “eat me, drink me” menus to a privately arranged “snort me” one, ejected her

As she recounted the scene, I had a memory of walking up those stairs as a woman rolled down them, limbs flailing, almost straight out of the door and right out of Wonderland.