The latest topical insight from Aberdeen musical sketch comedy team, The Flying Pigs.
Ron Cluny, official council spokesman
Watching Dominic Cummings’ performance in the Commons Select Committee this week has served as a reminder that there are few sights in politics quite so glorious as when a trusted lieutenant goes rogue.
Better than George Galloway turning up on TV dressed like the baddie from a 1950s western; more thrilling than a tweed-clad Liam Kerr being photographed measuring potholes; dearer to me even than the smell of a freshly baked buttery is a proper political “et tu, Brute” moment.
And michty, this was one of those. Cummings didn’t take the hatchet to Boris Johnson and Matt Hancock so much as strap on a suicide vest and try to hold them in a headlock while he detonated it with his teeth.
Dominic himself is a thickie who should never have been anywhere near the levers of government. Sad that this should come to him only six months after he left, but there we are.
Dom always had a thing for buses, whether he was putting dishonest slogans on the side or throwing his colleagues under them
Boris is unfit for the job, a bluffer and a buffoon who is interested only in himself and his profile. Again, just a pity this revelation did not occur to Dominic until after Boris had secured a handy working majority and got Brexit done.
And Hancock should have been sacked 15 or 20 times for lying to the prime minister and cabinet. Thoughts of pots and kettles come to mind. As a poster boy for probity, Dominic Cummings is no Ted Hastings.
I wonder what Dom will do with his time now. We live in uncertain times but a return to politics does not seem likely. His political bridges have been not just burnt but incinerated, swept up, packed with explosive, blown up, collected again and fired off into deep space.
Perhaps a career as a bus driver awaits. He has always had a thing for buses, whether he has been putting dishonest slogans on the side of them or throwing his erstwhile colleagues underneath them. I just hope he passes the eye test.
Shingles, showbiz correspondent
O. M. Actual. G! I was so excited that Friends was coming back for a special one-off reunion episode, and when I tuned in I got totes emosh, because almost everyone looked exactly as I remember them.
I say almost because Joey looked a bit greyer than he’d been back in the day, possibly due to the trauma of doing Top Gear, and there was a bit more of him than I remember, too. I’m not one to judge, but it did look a bit like he was still wearing all of Chandler’s clothes.
It was amazeballs to see the gang walk nostalgically around the old sets. Some of them were moved to tears. Or at least I think they were, it’s hard to tell as some of their faces don’t really move anymore.
They all seemed genuinely affected, though, and so was I when I read that they each got around £2 million for appearing and I had to fork out to restart my Sky subscription to watch it.
What a perfect part for James Corden, and lovely to see he’s finally getting some work again
I was excited to see they had a new character, a sort of annoying interviewer being played by James Corden. What a perfect part that is for him, and lovely to see he’s finally getting some work again. He totally disappeared off our screens after Gavin & Stacey.
It did make me feel nostalgic for the old days when I shared a flat with a gang of 20-somethings. Me and my pals used to dream about how brilliant it would be to have an unfeasibly big apartment in a building with a coffee shop on the ground floor.
Our flat was about the size of Monica’s lavvie and the only things on the ground floor were old pizza boxes and a tramp who used to poo behind the front door. Then again, they were in Greenwich Village and we were in Urquhart Road.
Of course, me and the cast of Friends go way back, especially Ross. I first met him at the Gielgud Theatre in London in 2005. The show had not long finished and he was making his West End debut, while I was already well established as supervisor in the stalls bar.
We both arrived at the stage door at the same time one day and I couldn’t resist raising an eyebrow and asking: “How YOU doin’?”
I’ll never forget what he said to me.
“That was the other guy.”
Could there BE any wiser words from a true gent?