Orangutan grooms terrier, regrets it
28 April 2018, 20:55 | Updated: 28 April 2018, 21:00
I don't know what was more vomitous this week – the sight of Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron holding hands and kissing, or the massed ranks of the toothless flag wavers waiting outside the private hospital where Princess Wotsit went for a hair-do and make-up.
If they are indicative of the royal fan base, it doesn't bode well for the future of the House of Windsor. It looked like a flag shop had thrown up on a freak show.
Was the circus in town?
I wouldn't let that lot within three miles of a baby, royal or otherwise. Most of them looked like they should be in a secure facility.
When the new-born was held for the inspection of the press, writers cooed about how marvellous it was that the mother looked so fantastic after such an ordeal.
It's amazing what having an unlimited amount of money does to the appearance.
The clouds of attendants and stylists and baby wranglers didn't hurt either.
The next day, Wills was pictured falling asleep during a church service. The usual royal hem-sniffers of the commentariat noted that being a new dad, he was probably up all night.
He probably was – up all night choosing the staff that will be doing all the baby stuff.
He won't be able to do it, he has a full schedule, what with all the smiling and the waving.
There was much of that in evidence when the Bromance Across the Atlantic got going in the Whitehouse.
Donald Trump gripped onto Theresa May's hand when she popped over because he is frightened of, among other things, ramps and stairs and had to negotiate a small example of the former without falling over, so he held on to her like a toddler holds his mummy's hand to cross the road.
Why Trump held onto the hand of the French President is less obvious. Maybe because Melania won't let him hold hers and hookers are off the menu for the moment, so he craves the personal touch.
Macron let him do it because he didn't want to make a scene, I assume.
The French President did not appear to enjoy Trump announcing that Macron had a dandruff problem and that the leader of the free world was going to pick it off for him, like a dominant gorilla picks fleas out of a subordinate's fur.
Trump called a press conference for the two, wherein the US President declared that: the Paris climate accord was the worst deal ever and the Iranian nuclear pact was the worst deal ever and there was no collusion and I never paid a porn star hush money I mean do I look like I need to pay of course not I can tell you that and it’s a real witch hunt and a disgrace everybody says so.
Or something like that.
Macron addressed the room in what was for him a foreign tongue, and he spoke better English than his host.
Trump tweeted “Busy day planned. Looking forward to watching President Macron of France address a Joint Session of Congress today. This is a great honor and seldom allowed to be done...he will be GREAT!”
Either he lied about looking forward to it, or he had no idea about the publicly expressed beliefs of the man he was promoting.
In his speech, Macron said that we must resist “closing the door to the world” and retreating into nationalism in the face of threats from globalization, terrorism and criminal states.
He said, "I believe facing these challenges requires the opposite of massive deregulation and extreme nationalism. Commercial war is not the right answer".
Macron derided Trump's withdrawal from the Paris Accord, his clinging to old fossil fuel technology and that when it comes to climate change, “there is no Planet B”.
He criticised nationalism and isolationism as a temporary remedy to our fears.
Basically, he took the hand that picked the “dandruff” from his jacket, twisted it up behind Trump's back and gave him a spanking. On television.
Trump's Twitter account went strangely silent after the French President had finished speaking.
So that's how you get him to shut up.
