12:37pm Wednesday 10th February 2010
By Sharon Griffiths
DON’T you just love Pauline Prescott? She is always so wonderfully glamorous and very much her own woman.
She supported husband John when he went to college but since then has been proud to be a stay-athome wife and mother back in the constituency. In the identikit world of London Labour luvvies, she didn’t fit in – something of which she should be very proud.
But this woman was no dutiful little wife, doing what her husband told her. When he revealed his affair with his diary secretary and told her they’d have to leave their house in the middle of the night to escape the encircling press, she refused to go – because she’d done nothing wrong and had nothing to hide – and instead sent him packing on his own.
Great stuff.
Anyway, the builders were due the next day and she had her priorities.
She also refused to take her husband’s calls or speak to him at all for weeks, until the couple’s sons acted as intermediaries and pleaded on behalf of their dad. What a woman.
You know, really, that she would never have kicked John out permanently.
A fling with a girl in the office wasn’t worth throwing away 45 years of marriage for. But if she was going to take him back, she would do it on her terms.
And now, she reveals in her autobiography, she has the upper hand.
She is “a little stronger” and he is “a little bit softer”.
She can’t forgive him, she says, because that would be to condone what he did. Instead, he’s on a sort of permanent probation, knowing that one false move and he’d be out. That’ll keep him on his toes.
Told you she was a wonderful woman.
DARLINGTON MP Alan Milburn has blamed the £11,000 he has been forced to repay on his over-claimed expenses on “careless administration”.
Fair enough. We all know how things can just get muddled, confused or forgotten in a busy life.
But just try that excuse yourself when you’ve not paid your tax in time, claimed too much benefit, failed to renew the car insurance or organise the MOT.
For those of us in the real world “careless administration” is a luxury we can’t afford.
Next time you’re caught out – just tell them you’re an MP.
EMMA WATSON has become the best-paid actress in Hollywood. Yes, that nice Emma Watson who plays Hermione in the Harry Potter films. She made two of them last year and earned nearly £20m.
Which means – at only 19 years old – she has outearned glitzy celebs such as Cameron Diaz, Angelina Jolie and Sarah Jessica Parker.
And, as far as we can tell, she lives a life of blameless innocence. No disgraceful behaviour, prima donna antics, steamy love affairs, confessions or addictions. She even seems quite restrained over handbags and hasn’t yet adopted a foreign baby. Instead she is studying diligently at university in the US and designing a fashion range for an ethical clothes company.
Now we read what a strain it is to be a WAG – constant perfection, terrifying beauty regime and shopping routine, not to mention half a dozen wannabe-WAGS seducing your chap just while you’ve nipped to the loo – maybe here is a new role model for young girls.
Emma is talented, well behaved, modest, hard working, ethical – and very, very rich. Now that sounds like something to aspire to.
PEOPLE of Newsham, you have my sympathy... The village is being plagued by a rogue pheasant, pecking people and even attacking them. Most of the coverage has made it seem like a great joke.
I know it’s not funny at all. But, in fact, very frightening.
Some years ago I was stalked by a mad pheasant which would lie in wait for me down the lane. It was bad enough when it attacked my ankles but then twice it flew with great force straight at my head, frightening the life out of me and leaving me streaming with blood. If that was funny, then I’m afraid I didn’t see the joke.
The good news was that the pheasant was so stupid – as most of them are – it eventually attacked the gamekeeper’s Jeep, got flattened and went instantly to pheasant heaven. Hooray.
I wish the same fate on the Newsham pheasant as soon as possible.
ON the 6pm BBC TV news bulletin one day last week, over a picture of Lady Margaret Thatcher, business editor Robert Peston referred to her, rather bluntly just as “she”.
By 10pm he had revised that to “This former prime minister”.
That’s better. Sounds as if someone had told him to mind his manners.
Or his granny had rung in to say “Who’s she? – the cat’s mother?”
WHEN jazz great Sir John Dankworth died just before a concert he’d arranged to mark the 40th anniversary of his music venture at Wavendon, his wife, Dame Cleo Laine, and their children Alec and Jacqui, went ahead with the concert as planned, see above, not telling the audience about Dankworth’s death until just before the final number. What theatre!
The ovation at the end apparently nearly took the roof off. Which is a fantastic tribute from his family, a great memory for all who were there – and an absolutely stonkingly great way to mark the passing of a jazz legend. Perfect.
Dear Sharon,
I FULLY agree with you about the misuse of the word bob. To suddenly change the meaning of a word to something quite different is unreasonable and stupid.
Even more stupid was the change in the meaning of billion from a million million to a thousand million; this was doubly stupid because there is a perfectly good word for a thousand million, a
milliard. When the authorities made the change there was a lot of confusion.
James Middleton, Durham.
Dear Sharon,
I AGREE with your article on fuel poverty. The same item was shown on the Politics Show on Sunday and I sent an email saying if the family was so cold, why were they not wearing woollen
jumpers?
Beryl Huntington (by email)
Dear Sharon,
MY husband and I are pensioners and have spent most of the winter in many layers of clothes in a bid to keep the heating costs down. The Government’s heating allowance doesn’t go far We also try to
keep busy around the house as just sitting still makes you even colder. We have spent this morning making marmalade so we and our kitchen are now nice and warm and we have pots of lovely marmalade
to keep us going. Our modern bungalow was built without a fireplace. It would make a lot of sense if every house had at least one fireplace so that people could keep warm using all the old wood
that is otherwise just thrown away.
Mary Gregory, Bishop Auckland.
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