Table Talk

‘WE have to confess that we at Anorak Towers were unsure which way to vote in Thursday’s European elections until we received this week’s copy of Hello!

Hello!’s chief political correspondent

We had listened to the blandishments of the europhile Liberal Democrats, the rantings of the eurosceptic Tories and the sophistries of the euro-pragmatic members of the Labour party.

Should we embrace the euro-federalist project, should we draw a line in the European sand or should we make only those concessions of national sovereignty required to make a 25-member community work?

We couldn’t make up our minds…until we happened to stumble upon an article by Hello!’s esteemed political correspondent, a Ms Joan Collins.

The pressure of time, space and Joan’s lawyers prevents us from reproducing the whole article, but the main thrust of it can be summarised thus.

Joan’s not a conformist - she used to have a fringe while all the other Hollywood starlets had their hair swept back. She also lived with Warren Beatty when they weren’t married.

The European Union is all about trying to foist a one-size-fits-all continent on us.

Ergo, the only way to avoid having to wear your hair brushed back or having to walk up the aisle with Warren Beatty is to vote UK Independence Party.

The logic was flawless - and we were instantly sold. But Joan was just getting into her stride.

‘An insidious anti-English plot has been hatching for years,’ she warns, ‘ever since it was deemed somehow immoral to refer to oneself as English.’

Joan, you see, is not British. She is English - even if she does live for most of the year in the United States.

In the same way, Sean Connery (resident of Spain) is Scottish, Catherine Zeta Jones (resident of the Bahamas) is Welsh and Liam Neeson (resident of New York) is Irish.

But it is not her hair, Warren Beatty or the denial of her Englishness that is Joan’s primary concern - it is her after-dinner conversation.

‘I cannot imagine having anything to discuss with someone from mainland Europe,’ she says.

‘What do you say to a citizen of Slovakia, Slovenia or Estonia after you have discussed the weather?’

Pass the port, perhaps…’

Posted: 9th, June 2004 | In: Media Comment | Follow the Comments on our RSS feed: RSS 2.0 | TrackBack | Permalink