2 Wednesday February 23 2022 | the timestimes2
H
istoric England is
offering grants of
up to £25,000 to
protect council
houses and preserve
“working-class
heritage”. “The
histories of castles
and great houses and their inhabitants
are well documented,” the chief
executive said, “but we know far less
about our everyday heritage.’’
Hear, hear. I’m so excited that,
having grown up in a working-class
household, I humbly offer myself as
a consultant. No salary required: they
can pay me in tins of Princes Fruit
Cocktail in syrup and a five-pack of
Woolworths knickers that “pucker”
and ride up at the back. Just my little
joke. There’ll be no stereotyping here.
I’m so keen that,
tactfully, I won’t even
mention the irony that
in certain parts of the
UK, aka “the North”,
£25,000 could buy you
a dilapidated terraced
house with enough left
for an Argos hot tub.
Lips sealed.
The most important
thing, obviously, is
attention to detail.
So the living room
(not “lounge”) must be
small and contain too
many people plus at least one
mongrel (not “mixed breed”) dog,
with everyone crammed on the
leather-look settee (not sofa) and
matching pouffe in a fug of smoke
watching the snooker on a TV
rented from Rediffusion.
Look, this is just personal
experience. Don’t accuse me of
generalising! I’m not even being paid,
except in chafing knickers and cheap
tinned fruit. To continue, the gas fire
must be on full blast so that everyone
has tomato-red faces and if it’s
Christmas, festive cards must be
displayed on a sagging piece of string
Sellotaped at each end to the
anaglypta wallpaper.
This mini-museum must smell of
Glade air freshener and someone must
be flicking through the Kays catalogue
saying: “Do you think these peg
trousers would suit Darren?”
But hold on: this isn’t fair. Historic
England may be preserving statelyMy job
application
to Hooters
Here’s some news that
may make you wonder:
“Hmm, is it 1988?”
A Hooters bar has
been granted a licence
to open in Liverpool.
Yes, despite opposition
from feminists
and the mayor, the
“breastaurant” chain
in which ample-chested
waitresses wear skimpy
shorts and tight
T-shirts is apparently
recruiting.
I’m sorely tempted to
apply if only so I can
enjoy accusing them of
“ageism and saggism”
when I get my carefully
worded rejection.
The joke is that when
women apply for work
here they’re handed
a large bra and told:
“Fill this in.” Hilaire!
Astonishing that in
the age of “woke”
something that feels
from the Benny Hill
era is expanding.
But while Hooters
may have its knockers
(oh please, I’m allowed
one), breasts do sadly
pull in the punters.
I’m told of a “topless
fish and chip shop” in
Redcar, Teesside, which
reportedly opened
briefly in the late 1980s
to massive queues.
One woman, in her
fifties, served chips
topless behind the
counter helped by two
shirtless men “all
covered in fat burns”.
Phwoar. The name of
the enterprise? “Fish
and Nips”. Suddenly,
Hooters seems vanilla.Just look
what’s in
aisle three
selling clothes.
Huddling my non-
Hooters bosom, I said
this new-fangled
nonsense would never
catch on because no
one wants to throw a
new silky nightie into
a trolley on top of the
brillo pads and
Pedigree Chum.How wrong I was. But
now Tesco has dialled
things up a notch by
agreeing to stock a
range of sex toys by
Lovehoney, which won
a Queen’s Award for
Enterprise (yes, really)
including the “Rabbit
Love Ring” in about
250 of its stores.What an erotic
shopping list. “Bleach,
milk, kitchen roll,
Pleasure Balls.” I
wouldn’t want a hand
with packing at the till,
would you? And where
will Tesco put them? It
sure puts a terrible new
meaning on: “Clean-up
needed on aisle 12.”I’m old enough to
remember when
supermarkets beganhomes and working-class heritage, but
what about the middle class of which
I’m now, undeniably, a member?
I know because I have written vexed
emails about my Ocado Smart Pass
and, God forgive me, may even have
uttered the words: “I mean, is it even
worth bothering with an Isa these
days? The only way to make money in
this country is to put it into property.”
Yes, if Historic England is to be
properly inclusive it should also buy
up a nice semi with parquet flooring,
place a Volvo estate on the path, a
veg patch in the garden next to a
log-rack for the wood-burning stove
that heats the water for the slate-tray
shower in the wet room, which is
sometimes leaky but “we wouldn’t be
without it now”. (Like I said, absolutely
zero stereotyping here.)
In the grey marble
kitchen with its
pull-out larder there
will be air fryers, a
Nutribullet and the
retro-style radio set
to Radio 4, lest
Money Box has any
handy tips about
letting the second
home “bolt hole” in
Suffolk (“Honestly,
it’s tiny, practically
a hut, but sometimes
you just need to get
out of London”).
For true historical accuracy the
curators will need to convey the white
rage that greeted Waitrose yesterday
scrapping free newspapers for loyalty-
card customers, five years after it
ended the free coffee, the queues for
which were described as looking like
a “middle-class soup kitchen”. “The
paper with the My Waitrose Saturday
shop has been the cornerstone of our
family’s weekend for YEARS! Not
happy with this at all” raged one
customer on Twitter. Mate, your
weekends sound wild.
Naturally, the toaster will have a
bagel setting and the kids will not even
know what white sliced is (“Will we
get an inflamed bowel, instantly if we
eat it, Mummy?”) although they will
have fashionable “allergies”, obviously.
Historic England could do worse than
frame this sentence on the splendid
“Overheard in Waitrose” page: “No,
darling. We don’t eat bread that comes
in plastic bags.”Carol Midgley
The relics of ‘middle-class
heritage’ we need to
preserve for posterity
The victims of
The women who
Jean-Luc Brunel
preyed upon tell
Lisa Brinkworth
how he abused
and raped them
V
ictims of the model
agent Jean-Luc
Brunel reacted with
shock and disbelief
as they received the
news that he had
been found dead in
his cell at the
French prison where he was awaiting
trial for the rape of minors. One of
those women is Virginia Giuffre, who
last week reached an out-of-court
settlement with Prince Andrew. An
investigation is under way into how
Brunel was able to take his life in a
prison two and a half years after the
suicide of Jeffrey Epstein, who also
killed himself while awaiting trial.
Brunel allegedly trafficked more than
1,000 women for Epstein. His dissolved
MC2 agency, which supplied models
for Victoria’s Secret runway shows, was
financed by Epstein and believed to be
a cover for a trafficking ring.
Messages from the victims flooded
my phone on Saturday, expressing
grave disappointment that they’d been
denied their day in court. They are
represented by the lawyer Anne-Claire
Le Jeune, who is also representing me
and 14 other women in a continuing
police investigation into another model
agent, Gérald Marie, also accused of
rape and sexual assault of a minor.
“My clients are devastated,” Le Jeune
tells me. “Confronting Jean-Luc Brunel
and being recognised as a victim of the
acts committed was essential for them.
This suicide appears to be an act of
cowardice, a desire to escape his guilt.
Like Epstein he left with his secrets,
which the victims bitterly regret.”
Thysia Huisman, a 48-year-old
author and TV executive in the
Netherlands, was the first to report an
allegation of rape to French police, in
September 2019. Brunel was arrested
in December 2020 as he tried to flee to
Senegal shortly after Epstein’s death.
“I’m still trying to process this,”
Huisman tells me. “I was the
whistleblower who spent the last two
and a half years fighting to get Brunel
to court. I had my mind set on a trial.
“It took me and others almost a
lifetime to come forward as we were
mostly teenagers when the attacks
happened. That’s been taken away
from us, but we do have one less rapist
in the world today.”
I met Huisman five months ago in
Paris, when we put our case, along
with other rape and sexual assault
victims, to senators, calling on French
lawmakers to reform their statute of
limitations so that old cases, as ours
are, could be reopened. Huisman told
me then of her frustration that if it
weren’t for the more recent victims
coming forward — Giuffre being one
of them — Brunel wouldn’t have stoodtrial at all. One consolation is that he
was behind bars when he died.
Huisman had just turned 18 when in
1991 she was sent by her Brussels
model agent, Marielou Eggermont, to
Brunel’s apartment in Paris. “I thought
I’d be safe there,” she says. “It was an
honour to be invited to his apartment.
He told me he’d take care of me. I was
in the capital of fashion, I felt proud to
be a part of that.”
When Huisman arrived at the
apartment she was struck by the
number of very young, mainly eastern
European girls there. “I asked Jean-
Luc, ‘Where can I sleep tonight?’ He
said, ‘Sleep in my bed.’ I told him, ‘Of
course not, are you crazy?’”
Brunel was insistent, but Huisman
ended up sleeping on the floor in a
tiny room with another model.
Throughout her six days there
Brunel kept telling Huisman that they
would have sex. He made his move
when she was in a walk-in closet
fetching her backpack. “Suddenly he
was in the closet behind me, blocking
my exit. He tried to grab me and kiss
me. I was much taller than him and
pushed him away. I started screaming
and ran out on to the street.” Huisman
wishes she had gotten away then, but
her belongings, including her passport,
were still in the apartment. Besides,
she had her first test shoot the next
day and didn’t want to leave Paris
without anything to show for it. She
had no option but to return.
That night Brunel took Huisman
and other models to a restaurant and
then to a club. They later returned
together to the apartment. “I wanted
to go to sleep but Jean-Luc gave me a
cocktail to celebrate the beginning of
my career,” she says. Huisman started
to feel sick and everything went blurry
and distant. “I said I had to lie down
because I didn’t feel well. Jean-Luc
took me to his bedroom. I didn’t have
the power to protest.”
She says the images are ingrained in
her brain. “I could feel him on top of
me, trying to kiss me. I had the feeling
that I couldn’t get air as he ripped my
shirt. He was touching my breasts and
holding my arms. Then he was
between my legs and penetrating me.”
Huisman blacked out and when she
woke in Brunel’s bed was naked except
for someone else’s kimono. She heard
Brunel in the living room and seized
her opportunity to escape.