US President Joe Biden’s blink-and-you-miss-it visit to the UK is over, with little to report except the usual bluster and occasional blunder.
Including holding a cue card reminding him to breathe in and out when he met with Rishi Sunak in the garden of Downing Street this week.
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OK, maybe not.
But it did have a scribbled list of suggested topics of conversation, including F-16s, Turkey, the Atlantic Declaration and AI.
Thank goodness my lunch invitation got lost in the post.
In a bid to quash the accusations that he’s “anti-British” he also mumbled something along the lines of, “our relationship is rock solid,” even though the meeting was over and done with in a swift 42 minutes.
Later on, he headed over to Windsor Castle in a fleet of five helicopters to discuss, er, climate change with King Charles where, perhaps because there were no cue cards on etiquette to hand, he repeatedly broke royal protocol by placing an unprompted hand on the back of our monarch.
But according to a source at the Palace, King Charles didn’t give a flying fig (or words to that effect) about the supposed faux pas.
“His Majesty the King is entirely comfortable with that kind of contact — and what a wonderful symbol of warmth and affection it was between both the individuals and their nations,” they declared.
Quite right too. After all, this is the 21st century, not Edwardian times.
And from a meritocratic perspective, we have a man who, believe it or not, was democratically elected to his vaunted position as “Leader of the Free World”, and one who was simply born to his role in a country where, according to a recent poll by the National Centre for Social Research, public support for the monarchy is at an all-time low.
So why on earth should either of them treat each other as anything but an equal?
Surely, the days of bowing and scraping sycophancy towards the royals are well and truly over?
No, my issue with Biden is that the man who metaphorically has his finger on the red button seems, to put it kindly, increasingly fragile.
Or to put it bluntly, doddery and erratic.
Deeply concerning
There are many octogenarians who remain sharp as a tack.
But the US President’s behaviour of late suggests his faculties are a little blunted.
It’s the stumbling, the mumbling, the mistakes (“God save the Queen”) and the cue cards that Rishi Sunak managed to do without.
Biden is already the oldest President in history.
But he recently announced he will re-run for election next year — making him 86 if he wins and lasts to the end of the second term.
It beggars belief that America has a population of nearly 332million people yet, as it stands, the potential frontrunners for the next Presidential race are Democrat Biden and Republican Donald Trump, whose behaviour is deeply concerning for vastly different reasons.
It makes our lot in the Westminster bubble look like grown-ups.
WHILE reading that a cervical cancer trust had advised referring to a vagina as a “bonus hole” in a bid not to offend the trans community, I glanced to the top of the page to check it wasn’t April Fool’s Day.
What a ghastly description. It sounds like something on a crazy golf course.
I look forward to an equally ludicrous metaphor for a penis.
Penalty pole?
Food for thought if you’re eating at celeb hotspots
ELVIS star Austin Butler is a handsome, single young man who has been dating Cindy Crawford’s daughter Kaia Gerber for around 18 months.
On Wednesday, they were spotted in popular Paris hangout Costes, and on Friday they were dining at London’s uber- trendy restaurant Chiltern Firehouse.
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Yet when they left, Kaia donned dark sunglasses and Austin tried to go totally incognito by pulling his hood over his head.
Why all the subterfuge?
After all, they’re gorgeous, they’re in love, and your average passer-by wouldn’t have a clue who they were anyway.
And if privacy is that important to them, may one humbly suggest they opt to dine at one of a squillion less high-profile restaurants?
NEW research has found that in the UK we have to wait an average of 12 minutes while trying to speak to a customer service agent.
Lucky them.
A couple of weeks ago, I spent 45 minutes on hold to one multi-national company, only to be told by whoever answered that their department couldn’t deal with my enquiry and I would have to be put on hold to speak to someone else.
I had celebrated two more birthdays by the time I got through.
MINISTERS are reportedly resisting demands from civil servants to work from abroad – dubbed “work from beach”.
A source says: “Ministers are clear. Civil servants shouldn’t be sunning themselves abroad on the taxpayers’ dime but focusing on delivering for the country.”
Quite. Particularly as, given the massive delays in getting anything done, they’re clearly failing to do much “work” from home or the office either.
Bubbly over balls
AUSTRALIAN tennis umpire John Blom made headlines after saying to the crowd: “Ladies and gentlemen, please, if you are opening a bottle of champagne, don’t do it as the player is about to serve.”
Bouji or what?
Still, at least they’re actually watching the action.
A step above some of the freeloaders in the corporate marquees who quaff champers all day long without ever even seeing a ball being hit.
JONATHAN HODGSON, 36, from Barnsley, has shed an impressive 22 stone after giving up takeaways and going to the gym more.
Well, well, well.
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The key to weight loss is eating less junk food and doing more exercise.
Who’d have thought it?
Who is tango lady?
IF you went to central casting and asked for an “activist”, chances are you’d end up with a Swampy lookalike.
Which is probably why the mystery orange-confetti chucker who infiltrated former Chancellor George Osborne’s wedding slipped under the radar.
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Grey-haired and wearing a floral frock with comfy shoes (in hindsight, presumably for a quick escape) she might hitherto have been mistaken for someone who had arranged the flowers in church.
Or even the vicar’s wife.
But no. She was an enemy in the camp and, astonishingly given the political heavyweights in attendance, she managed to get close enough to Osborne and new wife Thea Rogers to chuck orange confetti over their heads.
Just Stop Oil says she’s not one of theirs, so who the hell is she?
The head of marketing at easyJet? One of a countrywide flash mob hired to promote a forthcoming resurrection of the You’ve Been Tangoed ad campaign?
Someone must know who she is, so watch this space for an explanation.
In the meantime, if it is in the name of activism, time for a strategy rethink.
Trying to disrupt someone’s big day because the groom said something you didn’t like about climate change ten years ago is really not on.
Happy recipe
SUPERMODEL Naomi Campbell has become a mother for the second time, at the age of 53.
Her first child – a daughter – is now two after being born via a surrogate, and now she has a baby brother.
Naomi says: “My little darling, know that you are cherished beyond measure and surrounded by love from the moment you graced us with your presence.”
And that, right there, is all a child needs for a happy life.