The Times - UK (2022-05-27)

the times | Friday May 27 2022 V2 3

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Lego

2

Headline of the week
came — as it almost
always does — from
MailOnline, which had
a story about a spending
spree from a ne’er-do-
well: “Fraudster, 49,
faked up a bogus
transport firm for a £1
million VAT scam so he
could ‘feed a love of luxury
cars, top-of-the-range hot
tubs — and Lego.’ ”

Apart from the issue of

whether one could ever usefully

employ more than one hot tub in

one’s life — what are you

going to do with loads of

them: install them all in

a row and leap from one to

the next, like Gene Kelly in

Singin’ in the Rain? — I’m

glad the criminal world is

finally acknowledging

what parents have

known for ages. To wit:

if you’re serious about

buying Lego, it’s

kind of necessary

to have a second,

untaxable source of

income and a willingness

to engage in criminal

activity.

g

k

i

tttttttottttttttttttttt

56 other MPs for sexual misconduct,

according to The Sunday Times.

Notably, we’re still only three weeks

post-“SexTractorGate”: MP Neil

Parish’s “accidental” watching of

pornography in the House of

Commons, when apparently googling

tractors. Intriguingly, I note that

Parish — who resigned as

Conservative MP for Tiverton and

Honiton — for a while considered

standing as an independent MP in the

by-election for his old seat: “It is an

option for me and one I could

consider.” It seems he has already,

magnanimously, forgiven himself.

How kind. Of him, to him.

I know we live in an accelerated

age, but just over a fortnight in the

wilderness? A couple of episodes of

Gardeners’ World and you’re back?

After less than a month, surely any

halfway reasonable person should still

be in the very early, preliminary stages

of “being so mortified and ashamed

they have turned themselves inside-

out, like an octopus”, rather than

briskly shouting “Moving on!” and

planning a poster campaign instead?

And yet, given all the other sexual

investigations, I guess — as a dude

merely watching titty-flicks at work

— Parish had good reason to think:

“Comparatively speaking, I’m pretty

vanilla. I mean, look at those

other guys!”

And so, back to my original

question: is it impossible to do

anything without recruiting bad men?

In this case, form a political party

without a sizeable number of your

representatives also being sexual

deviants? Personally, as a strident-

yet-practical feminist, I find it

extraordinary that I would be labelled

as “extremist” or “man-hating” for

merely pointing out that not a

single female politician has been

accused of a sexual crime and

that it’s worth at least

considering imposing a total

ban on all men running for

positions of political — or,

indeed, any — power for a

while. As things stand, it

would be the simplest and

most straightforward way

of solving this particular

problem.

Because, in the absence

of any other solution, it

seems there is an answer to

my question. Yes: it is impossible

to achieve anything without

bad men. We expect to see

them in the corridors of power.

They’re just part of the deal.

We don’t intend to consider life

without them.

This week, I began to ponder a serious,
hitherto unaddressed question thus: is
it impossible to achieve anything
without involving bad men? If one is
doing “a thing” — running Miramax,
producing The Cosby Show, booking a
festival of stand-up comedy — is there
a point where you just have to put
your principles to one side, possibly
into a bin, and sigh: “Guys, much as I
would like to begin this business
venture on the basis of not employing
any male sexual criminals, it seems
that is, in reality, a massive pipe
dream. The world is so full of gonad-
carrying sex cases that it’s actually
impossible to do anything without
bringing on one or two of them.
Wherever you dip your net, there’s
always a couple that will wriggle in!
And at the end of the day, you just
can’t be too fussy. I don’t have time to
make sure I’m employing zero actual
sexual harassers, abusers or rapists!
Life is short, I’ve got to go with the
flow. We all just need to chill out about
it. Let’s face it: like death and taxes,
bad men are just an unavoidable part
of life. Ladies — you just need to be
on your toes!”
This question was raised as I
perused Twitter on Sunday morning
and noted a tweet from an account
called @CmdrJonty, written
presumably using just one hand:
“Here’s the thing with girls 22 or under
— they smell massively different to a
girl of 28. Girls 16 to, say, 23 have this
creamy, buttery, slightly sweet smell
that is unbelievably magnetic.”
I mean, it’s not an unusually
disgusting tweet to see on a platform
that often feels like a room labelled
“Hate women here!” — but, as the
person who retweeted it noted drily:
“This guy was a Tory council
candidate in Preston earlier this
month.” His real name is
Jonty Campbell and he has
since — understandably —
locked the account, so who
knows what other buttery
female smells he might be
analysing now, in the
privacy of his own Kleenex?
The tweet from
Campbell’s account comes
in the same week that a
still-unnamed Conservative
MP in his fifties was bailed
on accusations of rape
spanning 2002-2009; and
another unnamed Tory MP was
accused of “plying four men with
date-rape drugs”, with a fellow
Conservative MP saying he “woke up
to find his nipples being licked”. And
all this against a background of
parliamentary authorities investigating

UP

Tory sex cases

1

Neil Parish

The hot list

Your guide to the weekend

Pop

Nathaniel Rateliff &

the Night Sweats

This former dockyard

worker from Denver

has a nice line in retro-

leaning rock’n’roll soul,

even if his last album

was misleadingly called

The Future. Sometimes

he sounds like 1960s

Otis Redding, other

times like 1970s Bob

Dylan, and he injects

his own character

and passion into the

music throughout.

Roundhouse,

London NW1

(nathanielrateliff.com),

tonight, tomorrow

Visual art

Legally Blonde

Courtney Bowman,

centre, reinvents the

role of ditzy California

gal Elle Woods in a

glorious musical revival

directed by Lucy Moss.

Diverse casting pumps

extra energy into a

morality tale that is a

lot wittier and more

inventive than the

Reese Witherspoon

movie. A must-see

show. Regent’s Park

Open Air Theatre,

London NW1

(openairtheatre.com),

today, tomorrow. See

review, page 13

Classical

Madama Butterfly

The Hallé’s season

comes to an end with a

complete performance

of Puccini’s tearjerker

about a geisha

abandoned by her

feckless American

husband. Mark Elder

conducts a cast

including the Japanese

soprano Eri Nakamura,

right, in the title role.

Bridgewater Hall,

Manchester (halle.co.uk),

tomorrow

Theatre

Feminine Power

This exhibition

encourages us to

reconsider our attitudes

to women — deities

and demons, mythical

avengers and nurturing

mothers, seductive

beauties and killers.

Curators present eight

millennia’s worth of

depictions and you will

find yourself glancing

forwards and back as

you wander amid

Bolivian masks and

Tibetan cloth paintings,

Congolese stools and

Aztec statues, Maori

cloaks and Japanese

scrolls. British Museum,

London WC1

(britishmuseum.org),

today, tomorrow, Sunday

Supported by

Film

Top Gun: Maverick

“Trust your instincts.

Don’t think. Just do.”

That’s the new mantra

of the fighter pilot Pete

“Maverick” Mitchell

(Tom Cruise) in this

glorious sequel to the

1986 blockbuster that

made Cruise a megastar

and defined an era

of Hollywood film-

making. With cameras

inside cockpits and

strapped to wings and

nose cones, the director

Joseph Kosinski has

delivered a vertiginous,

pulse-quickening

monster of a movie.

See review, page 7.

In cinemas