I'm scraping the barrel this week
by Damian Thompson
Where does Rowan Williams stand on gay marriage? He keeps giving out contradictory signals. Last week I went round to Lambeth Palace and asked him straight out "Are you in favour of gay marriage?" and he replied "That's sweet of you, Damian, but we can only ever be good friends." This is not the sort of moral leadership we expect.
It's in contrast with the Catholic Church. When I asked the Pope the same question, he threw a bucket of holy water over me and kicked me out of the Vatican. No messing about there!
Paxman, not afraid to ask difficult questions
As Chloe Smith discovered this week, Jeremy Paxman is something of a blood-crazed ferret, and does not hesitate to ask badly-briefed girls difficult questions about government policy, such as "Do you ever think you are incompetent?" Of course he would never ask such a question of someone really useless who might fight back, such as a Prescott or an Osborne.
I met him recently in the showers at my health club, and asked him "Do you have the balls to take on a real heavyweight?" He hastily covered himself with a towel and ran away, but not before I had seen more than I wanted to.
Vicar! Put thy clothes back on, we implore thee!
My colleague Tom Chivers has written a blog posting mocking the use of the words "Yes" and "No." These are the sort of words one associates with Jane Austen, and he is right to point out that in contemporary usage the forms "Yeah" and "Nah" are considered to be more correct. The sort of person who would say "Yes" is almost certainly an atheist or, worse, a Protestant.
I phoned up Rowan Williams and asked him "You would never say 'No,' would you?" and he replied "Damian, I told you, we can only be good friends." Sometimes his pronouncements are a little hard to understand.
Perhaps Damain misheard and ++Rowan said 'Live and let die'?
ReplyDeleteI once chanced upon Rowan Williams naked in Madame Anastasia's Russian Dungeon for Norty Men With More Money Than Sense, in Surbiton. He skillfully hid his private parts with a copy of Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment". By chance, Damian Thompson was there also, whipping moderators.
ReplyDeleteI don't know what they normally charge in such places, but I had a prescription from my doctor and I cannot praise the NHS too highly.
Gordon - had you been eating too many cupcakes earlier? Why has Doctor Thompson stopped writing on cupcakes?
DeleteI'm just a girl who can't say "No". Anyway, that was a nice sting in the tail of your article, there, Eccles - I didn't see it coming.
ReplyDeletedarling eccles, if you are scraping the barrel, perhaps Damain should scrap it? xx Jess
ReplyDelete