2 V2 Friday May 27 2022 | the times
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Girl Power
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Staying with
Hollywood, and
one of the smash
hits at the Cannes
Film Festival is
Triangle of Sadness
by the acclaimed
director Ruben
Ostlund, of Force
Majeure fame. After
its screening,
Triangle of Sadness
received an eight-
minute standing
ovation, which
redoubled my already-
keen desire to see it
until I read that it’s
apparently a “dark
comedy” about Woody
Harrelson being invited
on a luxury cruise for
the ultra-rich — and not,
as I’d presumed from
the title, the first movie
to fully explore the
issue of cystitis.As detailed last week, the Wagatha
Christie trial — in which Rebekah
Vardy, wife of the England footballerer
Jamie Vardy, is suing Coleen Rooney,
wife of the England footballerer Wayne
Rooney, for libel in a full-on clown-car
legal circus — came to a close, with
Mrs Justice Steyn due to deliver her
final verdict
in a week or so.
Estimates for both
parties’ legal bills come
in at a staggering
£3 million and
there is no one
involved who will
not have found
the whole
processes
stressful,
humiliating
and generally
no fun. This
is why a
suggestion
by Gary
Lineker
deserves more
consideration:
“The Vardy v
Rooney case
should be settled
by a family
penalty shoot-out.
Cheaper and
way more fun.”
Especially
if the kicks
are taken by
Rebekah and Coleen.
Over the years,
there have been
various fallings-
out with various
members of
the Spice Girls.
Victoria
Beckham,
née Posh, has
eschewed most
of the band’s
reunion tours.
In this week’s
Closer, we learnt
the moment
that Posh
started to
distance
The model Caprice has explained that,
to have “the it” with her husband, the
improbably named Ty Comfort, she
pays her two eight-year-old sons to
scram, so they can get sexit done.
“We give them a few pounds and tell
them to get lost,” she told readers of
Closer. Caprice even shared the
dialogue she uses: “Right — Mummy
and Daddy are doing smoochers!
Nobody bother us for an hour!”
Putting aside the fact that
“Smoochers — with Ty Comfort”
sounds like a line of podiatrist-
approved slippers, I see a few
problems. 1) The quickest way to
explain this scheme is with the words
“I pay my children to have sex” —
which is a screaming nightmare of a
situation. 2) Kids are wily. By the time
they hit ten, they’ll start jacking up
their prices because they know they
have their parents over a sex barrel.
And 3) An hour of smoochers? Come
on: be honest. You’re actually paying
your children for 20 minutes, tops, of
smoochers — and the rest is going on
watching Better Call Saul.Gwyneth Paltrow’s
online woo-woo superstore,
Goop, has been advertising its
latest insanity: $10 luxury
nappies. Or, as Goop described
them, “Meet the Diapér.
Our new disposable diaper
lined with virgin alpaca wool
and fastened with amber
gemstones, known for their
ancient emotional-cleansing
properties. Infused with
a scent of jasmine and
bergamot for a revitalised
baby.”
A pack of 12 — which you
could get through in five
hours on a bad day — comes
out at $120. Even though Goop
has previous on this kind of thing
— these are the guys who brought
us the $650 tablecloth and $15,000
gold-plated vibrator — the outrage
was instant: “OMG fancy moms need
to be even fancier and out of touch!”
“You’re effing kidding me!”
Paltrow let the outrage boil for an
amusing 24 hours, then revealed that
the nappies were a political stunt:
nappies are taxed in 33 US states,
averaging out at $120 a year, per
family, and the “luxury” nappies
were a satire on this inequity.
“Diapers are the fourth-highest
household expense among low-
income families,” Paltrow wrote
on the updated website. “Help
change the tax.”
All very admirable and I hope
her campaign succeeds. What
I really want to know, however,
is how many “fancy moms”
actually tried to put in an order?
I’m pretty sure I know two who did.However, I’m not
finished with hulkery yet. For it is
notable, that while the world’s only
man hulk is “the Incredible Hulk”, the
world’s only lady hulk is just, well,
“She-Hulk”? No “Incredible” for you,
lady-hulk; even though having a
medical condition where you burst out
of your underwear is clearly going to
be more of a challenge for a woman
and there are, at present, no green-
toned foundations. This is a dangerous
nominative logic to pursue. For, if
rolled out across all their lady heroes,
Supergirl would be just “Girl”, Wonder
Woman merely “Woman”, and the
Invisible Woman would be... well, par
for the course, to be honest.Caitlin
Moran
Celebrity Watch
John Lydon, né Johnny Rotten, has in
his old age undergone something of a
political volte-face — as you do.
Despite being the vocalist on one of
the “naughtiest” songs of all time —
the Sex Pistols’ God Save the Queen —
it turns out that, now in his sixties,
Lydon quite likes the Queen after all.
“I’m actually really proud of the
Queen for surviving and doing so
well,” he said. “I applaud her: that’s a
fantastic achievement.”
Of course, Lydon’s pro-Queen
switcheroo does suggest he has some
unfinished business, lyrics-wise. The
original, “naughty” God Save the
Queen came out at the same time as
the Queen’s Silver Jubilee and ran
thus: “God save the Queen/ The fascist
regime” etc.
With the Platinum Jubilee
imminent, it feels the time is right for
Lydon to release God Save the Queen,
rewritten in the light of his new,
pro-monarchy stance: “God save the
Queen/ That is a thing I mean” etc.UP
CapriceUP
GwynethPaltrow
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HulksUP
Hulks
UP
Cannes Film
FestivalUP
John
Lyd o nThe Incredible Hulk is a main
character in the Marvel Universe, and
so they are expanding the franchise
— with a woman! In a new Disney+
series, Bruce Banner is not the only
hulk on Earth: Jennifer Walters has
hulkified, and we will follow her
adventures in She-Hulk: Attorney at
Law. That’s right: this hulk is a
lawyer. But not one available for
private hire, just witnessing legal
documents. In other words, don’t
make her notary. You wouldn’t like
her when she’s
notary. Thank
you. Thank you
for listening
to my joke.4
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ow’sJ
hherself from Melanie B, née Scary.
“The fivesome had flown to Hawaii
on a bonding holiday.” Good, good.
“But the trip turned sour” — oh dear
— “when Posh was outraged after
watching Mel’s holiday fling go for a
poo on the beach and rinse himself
off in the water.” What? “A furious
Posh reportedly told her bandmate:
‘Doesn’t he know what a toilet is? It’s
disgusting!’ Their relationship was
said to never be the same again.”
And so it was that the Spice
Girls, the most successful girl
group of all time, broke up over
a man who wasn’t
toilet-trained. “Girl
power” was destroyed
by “man poo-er”. It’s
a metaphor for, well,
everything.