A weekly column reproduced from the Bristol Evening Post

Page 2 of 2

Who’s in charge of talent-spotting for the Royal Family? I ask, because we appear to have let a cracking prospect escape.

Mette Marit Tjessum Hoiby married into the Norwegian Royal Family at the weekend. She’s a 28-year-old single mother with a troubled past and a history of drug abuse. She’d have waltzed into Windsor like a natural.

With William and Harry still to marry off, we can’t afford to let talent like this slip through our fingers. Come on courtiers, get a grip.

I’ve said it before, but the time to really start worrying is when the authorities adopt policies first suggested in this column. After the Government pinched my ideas on the legalisation of heroin, the city council in Bristol has now nicked my ground-breaking strategy for dealing with beggars, ie. give them a bottle of cider, a one-way train ticket and send them to Cambridge.

They’ve dressed it up a bit, by saying they’ll only look after rough-sleepers with some local connection and will simply “encourage” others to leave, but the principle is the same. Stand by for squeals of indignation from the massed ranks of Guardianistas as the first lot of out-of-town scroungers are rounded up and herded onto the cattle trucks.

I can’t wait. It’ll be the most fun I’ve had since that afternoon I superglued a pound coin to the pavement in the precinct and sat back to watch.

The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of anyone who doesn’t want to batter one of those Broadmead charity canvassers to death with their own clipboard, of anyone who finds the thought of Sally Webster and Martin Platt playing Hide the Sausage even remotely erotic, or of anyone who thinks that John Inverdale actually enjoys presenting Britain’s Strongest Man. What on earth has he done to deserve that?
— BARRY BEELZEBUB

Back to the Barry Beelzebub Index