JAN MOIR: How I wish I’d been in Row C with a rotten cabbage in my bag when those eco clowns stormed Les Mis
Do you hear the people sing, singing the song of angry men, it is the music of the people who will not be slaves again… BOO! GERROFF you idiots. MORONS. GET OFF! BOO! Boo! Someone call the cops!
Just Stop Oil protesters disrupted a performance of Les Miserables in London on Wednesday night and, honestly, how I wish I had been there. Pass the popcorn. What a drama!
Photographs taken of the stage invasion show such expressions of pious and noble — yet also somehow deeply, deeply smug — sufferance on the faces of the protesters that surely the Olivier Awards are in the bag? Best Actress In A Self-Appointed Role. Leading Phoney In An Ongoing Farce. Clown Of The Year. I could go on.
The disruption came as the cast were singing Do You Hear The People Sing?, a rousing call to arms that foreshadows the barricades and the rebellion to come. Devotees of Les Mis — like me! — know that it comes just before the interval, a stirring moment as the cast begin their doomed bid for freedom.
In the film version, Eddie Redmayne, as the rebel Marius Pontmercy, makes his eyes bulge and juts his jaw with revolutionary zeal. Or perhaps he just has early-onset digestive problems from the cholera which swept through Paris in the 1830s, who can really say.
Just Stop Oil said their protesters were ‘locked to the stage of the French-revolution-themed show’
Anyway, JSO protesters Hanan and Noah were clearly thrilled as they padlocked themselves to the scenery, faces shining like the little kids always cast as sheep in the Nativity play suddenly finding themselves centre-stage as Mary and Joseph.
The audience went predictably nuts — not fired with activist fervour to join their cause, but royally fed up because they’d paid for the tickets, the hotels, the dinner, the train travel and the interval drinks only to have their night out ruined by these lunatics. ‘How dare you?’ shouted one outraged punter.
How I long to have been in Row C, with a couple of rotten cabbages in my handbag, ready to cannonball at the stage.
Yet this was a Just Stop Oil publicity dream; I mean, just think of the optics, Felicity. For once the protesters were professionally lit, with an obliging backdrop of lightly smoking civilisation.
In a statement, JSO said that ‘Hanan, a student, took action because the UK Government, by approving new oil and gas, has shown total disregard for their wellbeing, while Noah, a theatre lover, took action because he knows there’s no future for the arts if society fails under the pressures of climate collapse’.
L ater, another JSO protester called Hannah Taylor said that Les Mis begins with a man stealing a loaf to feed a starving child and so ‘how long before we are all forced to steal loaves of bread? How long before there are riots on the streets?’
How long? HOW LONG? The riots can’t come quickly enough for me, just not in the way that Hannah thinks. Certainly, it is no secret that tempers are fraying on all sides of the barricade as people become increasingly fed up with these indulgent histrionics.
On Nick Ferrari’s LBC radio show yesterday, a JSO spokeswoman called Zoe told listeners that there is no cultural event that is not worth disrupting, absolutely none.
‘So what about a theatre production,’ she scoffed, ‘what about the 10,000 people swept away in Libya?’ Things got so testy that the normally serene host called her madam (‘let me speak, madam’) as the row about the end of the world roared on.
Zoe, Hannah, Noah, Hanan — is there a pattern developing? Almost all JSO protesters seem to be the type of middle-class loafers who are well-insulated against the problems of life; the students, the retirees, the malcontents and demi-anarchists who are all watermelons — green on the outside, red on the inside, full of pith.
On LBC, Zoe said the ends justified the means because JSO were in the news again. Yes, but the media are not writing or broadcasting about the issues JSO are protesting, but reporting on the protests themselves and the insufferable antics that inconvenience ordinary people instead of governments or oil companies.
JSO say Les Mis was a legitimate target, but surely there are others more fitting in the West End? Just down the road at Mamma Mia!, a young woman on a Greek island flies in all her friends on gas-guzzling jets — plus her putative three fathers — to her wedding. This musical celebrates international air travel and leaves a disgustingly large carbon footprint, JSO! And when Peppa Pig’s Fun Day Out opens at the Royal Haymarket next month, surely the oinktastic activities of this puddle-splashing factory-farmed methane-producing enslaved female is more worthy of protest?
Whatever JSO do next, it will not further their cause. They have made their point over and over again, but the new oil and gas licences have been issued, production is going ahead, the Government is not listening and the public is against them. No one really believes in gas genocide or that the end of the world is so, so nigh that we’re all going to be fighting in the street over a Waitrose sourdough by next year.
So what is the point, Zoe and Hannah, Noah and the gang? Why don’t you give it up and leave the rest of us in peace? Not just because we dreamed a dream in time gone by, so different from this hell we’re living.
Musk has more cash than sense
Claire Boucher, better known as Grimes, has gone to court in an access dispute with former partner Elon Musk over their three children, named X Æ A-XII, Exa Dark Sideræl and Techno Mechanicus, known as Tau.
Between the births of their first two children, Musk also fathered twins with Shivon Zilis, an executive at his company Neuralink. Grimes and Musk never married, their relationship was never stable and they had their children both traditionally and by surrogate. Musk has been divorced three times, and has fathered at least 11 children.
Musk has got all the money in the world, but not a drop of sense. It’s X Æ A-XII and the unpronounceable gang I feel sorry for
If he lived on a council housing estate in the UK, he would be on the social services register. These freaky people, for whom having children seems to be a sideshow, are deeply worrying.
Musk has got all the money in the world, but not a drop of sense. It’s X Æ A-XII and the unpronounceable gang I feel sorry for.
Apology is just patronising
Scotland’s crisis-hit NHS is to begin a ‘programme of reparations’ to Jamaica and Africa in a bid to ‘make amends’ for the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh’s slavery links dating from the 18th century.
Dear God, no! I’m afraid so, yes. The board of NHS Lothian have signed an agreement aimed at improving health in modern- day Jamaica.
But what about improving health in modern-day Scotland, where life expectancy has not only stalled but — in poorer economic groups — has actually decreased?
It is just a load of the usual fashionable nonsense, where people who were never slavers are being asked to compensate people who were never slaves, all to make some virtue-signalling corporate box-tickers look good.
While the reparations are not expected to involve direct repayment of the estimated nearly £40 million owed — WHAT? — the NHS board are making a formal apology and commissioning artwork dedicated to victims of slavery.
An apology! Paintings! How patronising. The only people who are going to feel better about this are the misguided do-gooding dolts at Lothian NHS.
It’s not the uniforms they should be changing
Ozwald Boateng has designed the new androgynous uniforms for British Airways. The outfits look a bit Crimplene and dull, to be honest, but Boateng says it was an opportunity ‘to redefine such a known British brand’.
It certainly was. British Airways went from flying the flag and being one of the best airlines in the world to a company with a reputation as one of the worst. I was a devoted customer and a card-carrying loyalty member until they morphed into one of the least dependable and the most expensive. That was my experience anyway. No natty new neckties or gender-inclusive kick pleats can change that.
Ozwald Boateng has designed the new androgynous uniforms for British Airways. The outfits look a bit Crimplene and dull, to be honest, but Boateng says it was an opportunity ‘to redefine such a known British brand’
In the new four-part Beckham documentary on Netflix, Victoria tells how she fought for her marriage after allegations that her husband David had an affair.
Coleen Rooney faced much the same kind of battle after her husband Wayne’s infidelities. Both these mothers and wives have four children each. Can I just say that I don’t think they are weak for forgiving their husbands and rebuilding their family citadels?
On the contrary, I admire them both hugely. Splitting up in adversity is easy, it is the staying together that takes tremendous courage, sacrifice, belief and guts.
Men are idiots of course and not all mistakes can be forgiven. However, the rewards of clemency can be worth their weight in happy-ever-after gold.
Numbskull renting rules
According to new statistics, England has become the most difficult place to rent a home. Properties are wildly oversubscribed, pushing up rents. There are many reasons for this, but one main cause has to be government interference in the relationship between landlord and renter.
Laws have skewed so much in favour of the rights of the latter, that many thousands of small-time landlords have been totally discouraged from renting out their second properties. Far better to let the homes sit there empty and accrue value, than rent them out.
Why? It’s just not worth the hassle. The risk of having no claim over a bad tenant who doesn’t pay rent is just too much. The situation is just as troublesome in Scotland. Two friends of mine spent thousands on legal fees evicting tenants who had trashed their flats and not paid their rent for well over a year. It is an all-too-commonplace story.
Then along comes someone like Michael Gove who, as Housing Minister, gave even more rights to tenants, including the legal right to keep an animal in the home, even if the landlord had a ‘no pets’ rule.
Honestly. It is numbskull policies such as this that lead to rental shortages, not greedy landlords.
Forget dad Bono! It’s all about Eve
In the new film Flora And Son, a young Irish actress called Eve Hewson plays the role of a downtrodden, impoverished single mum from a deprived area of Dublin known as The Flats. She’s an incredibly talented actress. She is terrific in the role. But not everyone is pleased.
‘There’s something very uncomfortable about watching Bono’s daughter playing a working-class, single mother from The Flats,’ moaned Irish actor Joseph McGucken.
In the new film Flora And Son, a young Irish actress called Eve Hewson (pictured) plays the role of a downtrodden, impoverished single mum from a deprived area of Dublin known as The Flats
Nepo-babies always get a hard time — rightly so in most cases — but Eve is a genuine talent and she is going to be a big star
She managed to live down her daddy all by herself because it is not about Bono — it is all about Eve
His chief beef seems to be that the daughter of the U2 frontman, whose estimated personal wealth is around £575 million, has no right to play anyone poor. It’s called acting, Joe! From her film appearances and her roles in television series such as Bad Sisters and Behind Her Eyes, 32-year-old Hewson has never not been impressive.
Nepo-babies always get a hard time — rightly so in most cases — but Eve is a genuine talent and she is going to be a big star. She managed to live down her daddy all by herself because it is not about Bono — it is all about Eve.
Good luck to her.
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