The Sunday Times - UK (2022-05-22)

The Sunday Times May 22, 2022 25

COMMENT

My bus fan’s holiday

among puzzled monks

Football fans in East Sussex,

where I’ve just moved, are

used to this kind of abuse,

thanks to Brighton and Hove

Albion’s location on

Britain’s gayest riviera.

I am an Arsenal fan, but

I’m off to see the Seagulls

because I can take the No 12

bus, which runs between

Brighton and Eastbourne

with such frequency,

convenience and panache

that I was moved to describe

it on Twitter as the best bus

in the world. A row broke

out with those advocating

other services, in Cumbria,

Cornwall and the Hindu

Kush. All excellent, I am

sure, but only the No 12

stops at the end of my road

and takes me to Brighton, so

it is an easy win. Also, it has

cheerful drivers, free wi-fi

and — best of all — the most

wonderful view as it reaches

the edge of the South Downs

and plunges towards

Eastbourne, fringing the

sparkling grey seas of the

Channel like Biarritz in

faded pomp.

The local TV news picked

up the contretemps and did

a report in which they

interviewed passengers

extolling the route. I had to

film myself on my phone,

for I had gone on retreat to a

monastery in Yorkshire. I

hid in some bushes to

record my contribution, lest

I spoil the cloistered silence.

someone unscarred in this

fight tell you there is nothing

to see here when a pro

footballer comes out. In an

ideal world the sexual

orientation of strikers

would be no more

noteworthy than their

sandwich preferences, but

that ideal world is still some

way off: check the hostile

reaction if you doubt it.

Will Daniels risk abuse or

mockery from fans not

comfortably compliant with

the diversity standards their

clubs profess? “Shout what

you want,” he says. “It’s not

going to make a difference.”

I had heard rumours that a

professional footballer was

about to come out, but it was

still a surprise to see the

interview with Jake Daniels.

The 17-year-old Blackpool

striker was the first active

player to come out since

Justin Fashanu revealed his

sexuality in the 1990s, at the

cost of his career, his prestige

and his wellbeing.

The response to Daniels

was different. League clubs

everywhere tweeted their

support; the captain of

England, the prime minister

and the Duke of Cambridge

tweeted their support.

Though not completely

different. Some responded

with extraordinary hostility

on social media, and I

re-posted one particularly

horrible example.

Those of us who have been

on the receiving end of that

kind of abuse shrugged our

shoulders, but the response

from some straight people

who would think themselves

on the right side of this

argument was striking. “Why

go on about this?” one said.

“What difference does

sexuality make to a footballer,

or to anyone?”

It is quite difficult to have

Please don’t argue: that lad is the

bravest man in football and beyond

lI was revisiting the

monastery where I trained

for the priesthood. A chunk

of me never really left it, so I

go back when I can to see

the monks and to reconnect

to the pattern of life, which

is organised entirely round

prayer: first thing, in the

middle of the day, in the

evening and before bed.

Prayer must seem terribly

quaint or inconsequential if

you don’t practise it, but for

those of us who do it all the

time it is a demanding

discipline with rich

rewards. I don’t mean by

making two plus two equal

five or helping you win the

lottery, but by revealing the

fullness of life for which we

are intended.

It is a this-world rather

than other-world

experience, as was

reaffirmed by Ruby Wax,

whom I took with me,

fulfilling a promise I made

when I interviewed her for

The Sunday Times Magazine

last year. She managed to

lock herself out before

compline and then got stuck

in a window while gamely

trying to break in without

disturbing anyone,

delighting the brethren and

inspiring a dozen sermons.

Boris in

wonderland

It is politics that looks other-

world to me now, not prayer.

Ministers solemnly

admonishing the EU for

prioritising the interests of its

members over those of non-

members, for expecting the

UK to stick to agreements the

UK negotiated, is pure Alice’s

Adventures in Wonderland.

Or maybe that does a

disservice to children’s

literature. It is the

childishness of what passes

for government that makes

our politics feel so unreal. I

watched the Queen’s Speech

— with a special chair for a

special hat next to the heir to

the throne looking like a

postmaster from a vassal

state of the Astro-Hungarian

empire — but it was the

content, not the delivery, that

was unpersuasive, a

smorgasbord of empty

calories. God help us.

NEWMAN’S

VIEW

Richard Coles

Week ending

It’s all so horribly familiar — Heard and Vardy

are the unwitting victims of witch trials

Camilla Long

Kudos, I suppose, to the

woman at the Cannes film

festival for ripping off her

dress and screaming “Stop

raping us!” on the red carpet.

For a moment you could

see the other guests

wondering: did she mean

Harvey, or Roman, or pretty

much any French film

director 1950-2005?

It turned out she meant

Russian war crimes: stop

raping women and children

in Ukraine. It is true this is an

outrage — but what can stars

like Idris Elba do about it?

Wars aren’t caused by

Elba, Tilda Swinton or anyone

else at the premiere of Three

Thousand Years of Longing.

They’re caused by people like

Vladimir Putin and

superpowers winding each

other up. The people who

need to be made to feel

uncomfortable are

politicians, not actors and

actresses, who probably

have a Ukraine flag in their

Insta bio already.

I bet the first thing anyone

at that premiere thought

was, “Why didn’t I think of

wearing only mum knickers

and paint smeared over my

nude breasts?” Especially the

perennially in-the-knack

prawn-fancier Swinton.

I’m not even sure of the

value of getting one’s boobs

out as a form of protest

anyway. It always gets

headlines, sure. But isn’t it

top of the most-read lists

because people simply want

a cop of some naked Slav

boob, not to read about war

crimes in Kharkiv?

The yellow and

blue boobs had

Cannes green

H with envy

alfway through the Wagatha

Christie trial, I found myself

wondering, just what does

Rebekah Vardy get out of this?

Maybe she thinks she’s on

some vague “my body, my

bump”-style OK! magazine

crusade for truth and justice,

but after seven whole days of being

screamed at as a slut and a scheming liar,

it’s not really been worth it, has it?

Every single question from Coleen

Rooney’s barrister seemed gleefully

engineered to paint her as a gossiping,

deceitful, lazy wannabe. No one will

ever forget his first slut-shaming zinger:

why did she call Peter Andre’s penis a

“chipolata”? Just as Amber Heard is now

never not Amber Turd, Vardy is for ever

the “chipolata” shagger. It doesn’t

matter what the judge finds now — the

public have found against Vardy.

Over in America last week, as it

happened, Heard was also in the

witness box, similarly puffy and tearful,

and encased in a kind of felty Dr Evil

court suit.

It was the same thing: a harassed,

bewildered woman with struggling

updo/inadvisable plait offers up her

version of the truth, believing, stupidly,

that she is the victim, only to find out

that she is actually the witch in this and,

really, the person on trial.

Because make no mistake about what

we are seeing: these are witch trials,

complete with screaming crowds of

medieval misogynists and poisonous

hallmark of favouring the safe, the

powerful and the rich, no matter what

the evidence.

I have no time for Vardy, a woman

whose life is careless and petty (“I bet

because you had that cervical cancer

chat in The Sun she has unfollowed

you”), but why is it that people feel so

much safer rooting for the finger-

wagging Goody Rooney when, arguably,

Rooney has behaved far more

aggressively by screaming to millions of

people that Vardy is a “grass”? Not a

huge crime, as it happens, unless you

are a mafia don.

Scan any crevice of the internet and

you will see women also supporting the

wifebeater Depp, calling Heard a liar,

circulating videos of her being attacked

by Depp’s lawyers and supposedly

pausing to be photographed while

tearfully blowing her nose.

Again, I am no fan of this hammy

actress and global wind-up — she claims

Depp tanked her career, as if she needed

help in doing this — but if Depp shows

any hint of milking this trial as much as it

is said Heard is, it is seen as simply

amusing and diverting and part of his

meme-able charm.

Take, for example, the business of his

flirting — the actor has been upstaging

everyone by pawing, hugging, stroking

and giggling with his lawyer, Camille

Vasquez, in an apparent attempt to

create the illusion they are having an

affair. One body language expert

whinnied that their lingering goodbyes

were “a ritual reminiscent of DiCaprio’s

drift away from Winslet’s raft in the

closing scenes of Titanic”. Depp, many

gushing articles have concluded, has

turned on his dubious “Southern

gentleman” for her, pulling out chairs

and helping her with her phone charger.

This, in a trial for domestic abuse, of all

things — does anyone remember how

the “Southern gentleman” act ends?

Heard found out the hard way: for this

trial, in which Depp is suing her for libel

after she said she was a victim of

domestic abuse, she gave a virtuoso

18-minute account of their worst evening

together. Shaking with tears and anxiety,

she said he had smashed her head

against a door and ripped her nightdress

off before tussling with her naked across

broken glass. She said he hit her, slapped

her and pinned to a bar, sexually

assaulting her with a broken bottle.

We already know he also threw wine

bottles and “urinated all over” a house

they were renting, scrawling angry

messages in blood with the tip of a

severed finger, including daubing a

penis on a painting.

Some of her testimony was a bit

theatrical — at one point she screamed,

“I’m looking into his eyes and I don’t see

him any more,” like some drunk

Victorian medium. But you listen to

this evidence and wonder how Vasquez

felt about laying into Heard. Is she

aware that she too is being groomed as

one of Depp’s victims, co-opted into a

greasy circus of feints and fakery and

soap opera in which she will now only

ever be known as the woman who was

Is Depp’s lawyer

aware that she

too is being

groomed as one

of his victims?

Amber Heard, encased in a kind of felty Dr Evil court suit, giving evidence last week in the libel trial brought by Johnny Depp

groped by the star in an attempt to

ginger up a jury?

These women may give the

performances of their lives, but if there

is one thing we have learnt from all this,

it is that power naturally flows back to

the richest, most famous man in the

room, whether that’s Depp or Wayne

Rooney.

Depp himself, sporting a Cuprinol

ponytail, is treating the whole thing

like a press tour for Pirates of the

Caribbean circa 2006, arriving in a huge

car full of henchpeople, reggae blasting,

drinking in the screams of the women

waiting outside the court in Fairfax

County, Virginia.

The sheer number of people he takes

with him is part of the appeal: the bag-

carriers, house-managers, drug people

and money sharks, all paid hundreds of

thousands of dollars a month to enable

him. No friends, though.

But no matter how much he is

accused of, or how appalling the

evidence, the only thing we hear is how

hilarious he can be, while Heard is only

flawed — “not the perfect victim”, as

people are saying. Well, no — isn’t the

“perfect victim” actually dead?

STEVE HELBER/AP