The British Dream

”IN America,’ says Tory leader Michael Howard, ‘they talk about the American Dream – the ability of someone born in a log cabin to make it to the White House.

Just desserts for Mrs McPudding

‘As it happens, in America this is the exception, not the rule. In Britain, it does actually happen. We should embrace it. We should celebrate it. I want everyone to live the British Dream.’

And so it is this morning that we ask you to join us at Anorak and whole of the tabloid press in celebrating the rise of a little blonde girl from a care home in Liverpool to become Queen Of The Jungle.

[We would happily embrace her as well but such is the size of her chest that we couldn’t get near enough.]

Of course, Mr Howard is only partially right – we can’t all make it to the White House, although if he got his hands on the NHS it’s quite possible that we would all be born in log cabins.

And for every Bill Clinton, there has to be a Michael Dukakis or a Barry Goldwater. For every Kerry McPadding, there’s a Jennie Bond and a Peter Andre.

But who, apart from Linda Barker’s bank manager, cares who came second? Yesterday was about Kerry – or ‘Special K’, as the Mirror’s headline calls her.

‘Kerry, the honest sweet singer who loves her husband and adores her kids, was neglected as a child and was nice to everyone, wins,’ the paper coos.

‘In this increasingly nasty world, we say: Good on you girl.’

It is a sentiment we at Anorak wholeheartedly endorse – in fact, Kerry’s ability to last 10 days in a prefab jungle calls to mind the achievements of some great explorers of yesteryear.

Sir Francis Drake, Captain James Cook, Dr David Livingstone, Robert Falcon Scott, Ernest Shackleton, George Mallory, Kerry McFadden…

Kerry’s face may look as blank as President Bush’s most recent brain scan when she surveys the other names on the list (although she thinks she remembers seeing Robert Falcon Scott on Top Of The Pops when she was a kid), but winners they are to a man…and a woman.

[Apart, of course, from Scott, who got beaten to the South Pole by a Norwegian. And Mallory, who never made it to the top of Everest. And Drake, who lost three years in a row to David Bryant in the final of the World Bowls Championship.]

‘Never in a million years did I think I’d win,’ an excited McPudding exploded after the result was announced. ‘I’m numb. It feels like a fantasy.’

And it is a fantasy that, according to the Sun, will earn the mother-of-two millions of pounds, with a flood of offers expected for TV work.

Anyone who has seen Elimidate might ask why TV bosses expect Big Mc to be any better in front of camera second time round, just because she’s eaten a couple of maggots.

But that only shows how little you understand TV. Kerry’s a bona fide celebrity now – and it doesn’t matter that she’s the most wooden thing on the screen since Muffin The Mule.’

Posted: 10th, February 2004 | In: Tabloids Comment | TrackBack | Permalink