They said it couldn’t happen but here we are, talking about a Lib Dem policy

I’m sure that for many this will be a moment to pause and reflect. In the normal, noncelebrity world, there has always been a huge cohort of people who have found parties anxiety-inducing. And I think we — for I am one of them — have always presumed that this was because, to be brisk, we are not Naomi Campbell.

In other words: we are not staggeringly beautiful; we will not turn up, in a limo, in gifted, exquisite couture; we do not have a “glam squad” to take care of our hair and make-up; and we will not have the whole room desperate to come over and hang on our every word, because we are — just to reiterate — not Campbell.

To learn that even if all these fabulous prerequisites are in place parties are still awful is sobering news indeed. Indeed, one has to ask: if Campbell isn’t enjoying parties, who is? Apart from the drunk people? Is the entire Met Gala full of people who just want to go home? If there was a fire alarm ten minutes in and everyone was evacuated, would it generally be held to be the best Met Gala ever? What is this high-glam gulag that Anna Wintour is shipping everyone off to every year?

In the meantime, I guess we — the humble Muggles, reading about it all in the papers the morning after — should try to enjoy Campbell at this year’s Met Gala. Her last. For, next year, her place will be taken by another impossibly beautiful, glamorous, popular woman in a fabulous dress who is also dying of resentment at being there. Man passes on party misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Meghan Markle

To Headline of the Week, and for reasons I cannot quite fathom, the following has made me laugh for four days straight now. “Inside Meghan Markle’s animal kingdom! The Duchess of Sussex ‘loves
rescuing’, and now owns two dogs, 100,000 bees, and a chicken that once belonged to Ellen DeGeneres”.

Is it the jump from “two dogs” to “100,000 bees”? Is it imagining how confused the chicken is? Is it the idea she’s counted the bees? Is it wondering how you rescue 100,000 bees? Because that’s, like, a vanful. You’d only be able to put a seatbelt on, like, 90, tops. If they sat in a really straight line.

Cillian Murphy

There can be no doubt that Peaky Blinders fever is a real and observable thing. In one of those twists you never see coming, it turns out that what the world wanted, all along, was a TV series about people in Birmingham, in the olden days, being really unpleasant to each other, wearing flat caps. Had I known this, I would have pressed on with my 2010 screenplay The Balsall Heath Hat Bastards — set in 1982.

However. As a mark of how popular Peaky Blinders is, this month a suit worn by Cillian Murphy in his role as Tommy Shelby is being auctioned to raise funds for charity. The estimate is £1,000, but, given the global appeal of the show, it will surely go for much more.

Of course, while the auction of this suit will be a big deal to fans of the show, it is but a mere bagatelle compared with a future event we must presume is in the pipeline: the auctioning of one of Shelby’s flat caps.

It can barely have escaped your attention that men — not usually given to the kind of fashion hysteria that so commonly overtakes the womenfolk — have lost their minds over Shelby’s cap. From Berlin to LA, the heads of men across the world pay tribute to just how exciting they find Shelby’s hat. Temu do them for £2.90, Dolce & Gabbana do them for £235, and if at least one male member of your extended family hasn’t bought one of them, you are clearly the Rees-Mogg family and sticking to your toppers.

• Cillian Murphy: ‘I hadn’t made a film in Ireland or an Irish story for a really long time’

As a cap actually worn by Murphy would be regarded as the progenitor of this worldwide craze — the hat begetter, if you will — should one come up for auction, it would be like having the opportunity to bid for, say, the first ever pair of bollock-stranglingly tight black skinny jeans worn by a contestant in 2018’s Love Island; or the piercingly blue suit, worn with loafers and no socks — the other two big “fashion moments” that seem to have captured the hearts of young men.

The man who owns A Genuine Cap of Shelby would be like a ring-bearer in The Lord of the Rings: a god within his own social circle. Imbued with impossible power and status. Of course, even as I say all this, I’ve just realised who would bid for, and win, such a hat: Elon Musk.

Conclave

As the sad news of the death of Pope Francis last week spread across the world, one small section of society had a very different reaction to everyone else. For while the world’s 1.39 billion Catholics mourned, and everyone else said, vaguely, “He seemed to be quite a nice guy? Can’t believe JD Vance killed him! So rough!”, movie-industry people were having a very different conversation.

“The jammy bastards,” the WhatsApp conversations began. “I can’t believe Conclave — the Oscar-winning movie about the mysterious process of choosing the next pope — is streaming at the same time a conclave must be summoned to engage in the mysterious business of choosing the next pope! That is incredible marketing! What a deal! What a coup!”

• Who will be the next pope? The candidates who could succeed Francis

The mood was, let us say, envious. However, this week the streaming figures came in for Conclave
— and they were up by only 283 per cent. Of course, 283 per cent sounds like a big number — but compared with the publicity? The word “conclave” has been on the front page of every newspaper in the world.

The Pope’s funeral was attended by Joe Biden, Donald Trump, Emmanuel Macron, Prince William, Keir Starmer, Volodymyr Zelensky, and that Argentine leader who looks like he was in the pub-rock band Darts. In sheer brand-awareness terms, Conclave should be doing Barbie business; A Minecraft Movie business.

Showbusiness: it’s tough. Even if you’re lucky enough to have the amazing PR of a pope dying.

Andrew Garfield

Continuing with film news, and in a recent interview the actor Andrew Garfield — who played Spider-Man from 2012 to 2021 — stated his desire to don the Lycra catsuit once more.

“I would love to play the character again in some capacity,” he told the Middle East Film & Comic Con in Abu Dhabi. “But I think it would have to be very weird. I think I would want to do something very strange.”

Andrew! Andrew Garfield! If you are playing the Spider-Man, you are playing a teenage boy who is bitten by a radioactive spider and then develops the ability to crawl up the side of buildings thanks to mysteriously sticky hands and feet, and swing through the metropolis on threads of spider-silk jizzed out of his wrists in a way that has never been satisfactorily explained!

How much weirder do you want it to be? Do you actually want eight legs and a matching number of eyes? Do you want palps?

Still. Good attitude.

Ed Davey

Well, it’s finally happened. After years — no, decades — of effort, the Liberal Democrats have done it. They’ve come up with a policy that has genuinely got some attention.

No one really cared when they suggested pushing back the net zero target to 2045; introducing free personal care for those who need help with daily tasks; or bringing in proportional representation. Indeed, I think if you’d asked anyone, during last year’s general election campaign, what policies the Liberal Democrats were championing, there would have been a moment of puzzlement, followed by a vague, “Free paddleboarding for Ed Davey?”

The sentence “The Liberal Democrat policy everyone’s talking about!” has not been in frequent usage. It’s pretty dusty. Vibes-wise, they’re like the uncle who, every year, suggests that the next big family holiday should be everyone volunteering at a donkey sanctuary in Somerset — “It’s actually really rewarding! And fun!” — but always gets ignored in favour of Auntie Kemi murmuring, “We could all go down to Margate, get tanked up and start a fight with random strangers!”, or Uncle Keir dolefully pointing out, “It’s better to have a staycation. As in, just stay at home. We’re all very poor now.”

So: behold the miracle of a Liberal Democrat talking point! And it’s such a British talking point, I’m sure it will have its own float at the next lord mayor’s parade. What is it? “Lib Dems back ban on playing music and videos on public transport,” reported The Guardian: the sense of shock on typing the words “Lib Dems” into a headline palpable in every syllable.

Reading on, we learnt that what the Lib Dems were calling “headphone dodgers” — good coinage: carries the implication that they’re related to soap dodgers and, therefore, smelly — would be penalised by a fine of up to £1,000 for playing music loudly on public transport.

• No, I don’t want to listen to you talking to your mum on the train

To say that this has been a popular suggestion is something of an understatement. Within minutes of its unveiling, social media was alight with people venting their long-running personal frustrations with the kind of person who rocks up on a train and spends the entirety of their journey from Euston to Birmingham watching Fast & Furious 7 on their phone, volume nudged up to “able to offend over 200 people”, pausing only to take a phone call on speaker, allowing everyone in the carriage to know what they think about that girl they met in the club last night, what they think of their new trainers, and what they’re having for tea.

With grinding inevitably, those who are all for the Lib Dems’ “Jail the headphone dodgers!” policy were immediately met by an equal and opposite reaction: those who took to social media to say only FASCISTS would want to stop people blaring out Voodoo Ray on the 144 bus at 7am.

“It’s illiberal,” said the kind of liberals who clearly have £349 Bose QuietComfort noise-cancelling headphones, and so aren’t affected by the issue because they are busy listening to The Rest Is Politics and murmuring, “Quite right”, every time Rory Stewart says something about Kashmir. Or cashmere.

Either way, the Lib Dem policy has caused a lot of noise — paradoxically, given its original intent. However, in a revelation that will come as no surprise to longtime observers of British politics, within hours of the Lib Dem policy being announced it was quietly pointed out — by BBC News — that it is already illegal to “use equipment to produce sound without permission” on public transport, and you can already be fined £1,000 if you do so. The most the Lib Dem policy could hope for would be to draw more attention to this, and encourage beleaguered fellow passengers to remonstrate with the noisy, without fear of being punched, or stabbed.

Personally, I found a way to deal with this problem years ago. When some bright young thing starts blaring out their tunes on the bus, I go over to them and say, eagerly: “Wow. I’m a super-uncool 50-year-old mum in a DryRobe — but I love this! What’s it called? Where can I get it? Is it on the Spotifys? Show me on my phone — I can’t see it without my reading specs. Which button do I press? I have to be able to play this on the bus myself in the future! Everyone must know of this fabulous journey through sound — thanks to you!”

And then I start dancing, very passionately, right in front of them. So far, I admit, I’ve only done it with 13-year-old girls I’m not scared of. And, to be honest, they were really nice and told me it was Von Dutch by Charli XCX, and recommended a really good remix by Skream and Benga.

But now I know that Davey’s on my side, maybe I’ll give it a go at pub chucking-out time, on a Friday night — safe in the knowledge that all the Lib Dem voters on the bus will stand up as one and come to my aid if things get a bit tasty.

Because: the Lib Dems are now roaring! Roaring, “SHUT UP!”