Daily Mail, Tuesday, March 3, 2020^ Page 19
ittlejohn
So that’s what they
mean by going viral
[email protected]Kevin and Catherine
Lo r r y m a n , f r o m
Snaith, east Yorkshire,
will have to demolish
their bungalow after
the River Aire burst its
banks. They are under-
standably heartbroken.
Their home is almost
totally submerged. Only
the roof is visible,
complete with solar
panels. More heavy rain
and flooding is forecast.
i suppose they could
always use the solar
panels as a life raft.t h e i r W i m b l e d o n t e n n i s
championships, all rolled into one.
Out come the hi-viz jackets, the
f a c e m a s k s , t h e t e n t e d
decontamination units.
With each day that passes, the
drama is cranked up another
notch. Yesterday, the P rime
Minister chaired a Cobra meeting
to discuss the Government’s
response to the virus.
Cobra sounds like something
out of a disaster movie, conjuring
up images of West Wing- style
hotlines, war games and giant TV
screens linked by satellite to a
high-tech bunker on some remote
Pacific island.
The reality, as Boris pointed out
last week , is more mundane.
Cobra actually stands for Cabinet
Briefing Room A. If they held it in
Cabinet Briefing Room C, for
instance, they’d have to call it
something less exciting. GivenBoris’s Churchillian sense of show-
manship, I’m surprised the Gov-
ernment hasn’t relocated for the
duration to Winston’s old war
rooms under Horse Guards Road.
And yet. If Ralph thinks I should
steer clear of his surgery, even if
t h e c h a n c e s o f c o n t r a c t i n g
coronavirus are remote, there
must be something in it.
But how should we react? How
can we assess the potential risk?
I’ve read all the Q&As and I’m still
none the wiser.
We’re told to avoid crowds, but
on Sunday I went to what we used
to call White Hart Lane along with
60,000 others. The only people
wearing face masks were South
Korean tourists, who had travelled
halfway round the world to see
their national idol, Son Heung-
min, who plays for Spurs. Unfortu-
nately for them, Sonny is spendingtwo weeks in self-isolation after
returning from South Korea, where
he had surgery on a broken arm.
You couldn’t make it up.
We’re also advised not to travel
on public transport. But how
else am I expected to get to a
meeting in Central London, given
the gridlock caused by Mayor
Sadiq Khan’s hideously expensive
road ‘improvements’?M
AYBe I should pull
o n t h e f u l l H u r t
Locker kit before I
venture onto the
Piccadilly Line. Now that we know
surgical masks are virtually useless
at preventing the spread of the
disease, how long before Tube
ca r r i a g e s a r e p a c k e d w i t h
commuters wearing gas masksand frogmen’s suits, like Dustin
Hoffman in The Graduate?
People will inevitably follow the
lead of celebrities like Gwyneth
Paltrow. When I saw her wearing
that designer mask on a plane to
Paris, I assumed she must have
just fired up one of her intimately
scented candles.
Yesterday, the Government
upped the ante still further, with
never-knowingly-understated
health secretary Matt Hancock
unveiling plans to quarantine
entire cities.
Have you also noticed how
t h e y ’ v e s t a r t e d c a l l i n g i t
COVID-19, to make it sound even
more menacing?
Coronavirus is probably a little
too cuddly, suggesting it might
h a v e m u t a n t s t r a i n s c a l l e d
vimtovirus and fantavirus. Of
course ministers and NHS chiefsare right to take sensible precau-
tions. The problem is there’s no
joined-up thinking here. Schools
are closing across the country, but
on Friday thousands of kids were
allowed to play truant so they
could huddle together in Bristol
to hear that preposterous Greta
child screeching about how the
earth is on fire — oblivious to the
torrential rain which turned
College Green into a quagmire.
She even got a police escort in
an electric car, for heaven’s sake.
What if one of those children was
a ‘super-spreader’ carrying the
coronavirus? Then we’d have a
real epidemic on our hands.
Look, I’m not suggesting that we
ignore the threat, even though my
natural inclination is to ridicule
the predictable knee-jerk reaction
to these health scares.
I especially enjoyed a letter in
the Daily Telegraph from a reader
who said he’d drunk so much
Corona when he was young, he
was probably immune.
Another columnist wrote that
her husband had stockpiled 100
toilet rolls, just in case they
are forced to Netflix and shiver
in splendid self-isolation for
a fortnight.
If the fear factor keeps on rising,
a supply of adult incontinence
pants may come in handy, too.
Here in Britain, we associate the
Corona brand with fizzy pop
r a t h e r t h a n t h a t o v e r p r i c e d
Mexican lager you’re supposed to
drink from the bottle with a slice
of lime in the neck.
In the U.S., it’s been claimed that
drinkers are boycotting Corona
beer because they think they’ll
contract the virus.
And if that sounds daft, on
Saturday night I went for a curry
at our local Indian, Tandoori
Nights. It was heaving.
The owner told me that business
was even brisker than usual
b e c a u s e c u s t o m e r s w e r e
frightened to eat in the Chinese
restaurant a few doors down.
It’s an ill-wind...
Meanwhile, I must wait a few
more weeks for my medical. No
great inconvenience. Let’s hope
I don’t catch coronavirus in
the meantime.T
HIS morning I was due to
h a v e m y a n n u a l m e d i c a l
check-up. Having read in the
Sunday papers that, because
of coronavirus, the over-60s
s h o u l d a v o i d r o u t i n e v i s i t s t o
surgeries, I emailed my doctor to
confirm the appointment.
Naturally, I assumed this latest piece of official
advice was alarmist nonsense and my MoT
would go ahead as scheduled.
Ralph, my GP, is a level-headed chap and I
expected him to tell me there was no reason to
put it off. So you can imagine my surprise
when he replied that it was probably wise to
postpone things for a few weeks, just to be on
the safe side.
My default position on all these health scares
is weary scepticism. We’ve been here before.
Sars, Mers, ebola, Bird Flu, Swine Flu...
All passed — in Britain, at least — without the
catastrophic death toll the so-called ‘experts’
confidently predicted.
With the advent of coronavirus, the usual
suspects have come over all Hilary Mantel.
Bring Up The Bodies!
The most absurd scaremongering so far is the
suggestion that London’s Hyde Park will have
to be turned into a open-air morgue.
What next? Will someone propose piling the
corpses onto giant funeral pyres, like they did
with millions of healthy cattle during the foot
and mouth panic?
What you have to remember is that pandemics
are their World Cup Final, their Six Nations,A nice bit of posh from Burnham...
The empty plinth on Trafalgar
Square has played host to an
assortment of eccentric sculptures. The
latest is a huge dollop of whipped
cream, topped with a cherry, a fly and
a drone.
Mail reader Chris hey, from Smethwick,
thinks it’s time for a more dignified
monument. he suggests a statue of war
hero Lord Bramall, a permanent
reminder to the police and the establish-
ment of their disgraceful behaviour
towards innocent men caught up in the
Paedos in high Places witch hunt.
Better still, Chris, put the nonce Finder
General in the stocks, so we can throw
rotten fruit at him.eSSex tourism chiefs
a r e trying to give the
county a makeover after a
decade of being associated
with downmarket reality
show TOWIe.
They want to cast off the
fake tans and debauchery
and emphasise the beauty
of Constable country and
historic towns such as
Saffron Walden.
As a native son of essex, I must
confess that I probably played aminor role in helping to
tarnish the county’s image.
Long before The Only Way,
I co-wrote The essex Girl
Joke Book with my friend
Mitch Symons, under the
pseudonyms Ray Leigh
a n d B r e n t Wo o d. O u r
essex Girls made the
women in TOWIe look like
demure debutantes. A few
of the gags were mildly
filthy, others downright disgust-
ing, and some would no doubt bytoday’s standards be considered
a hate crime. Mind you, Ian Dury,
the Bard of Upminster, didn’t do
the reputations of essex Girls
any favours, either.
Who could forget Joyce and
Vicky in Billericay Dickie? Not
to mention Janet, from the Isle
o f T h a n e t. A n d t h e n t h e r e
was Nina...
Had a love affair with Nina,
in the back of my Cortina.
A seasoned-up hyena could
not have been more obscener...