Good on Suleika Dawson for not pulling the #MeToo card, says JENNIFER SELWAY
Another grim week. So thank you to Suleika Dawson (not her real name) a woman in her 60s who has published her kiss-and-tell memoirs about a scorching affair with John Le Carré (not his real name either) who wrote The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Night Manager.
John le Carré on his novel ‘Agent Running in the Field’ in 2019
Pragmatically, she waited until both Le Carré and his wife Jane were dead. He died in 2020 aged 89 and Jane died a few weeks later.
Suleika’s book, The Secret Heart, is riveting stuff if you like detailed accounts of passion, adultery, jewels, flowers, chocolates, caviar and champagne. And I must say I do.
I also like the way she refuses to play the poor-little-me card which is now the done thing when women speak out.
Rather than complain that she (around 25 years his junior) was his victim, she points out that she generously gave up two other lovers to accommodate Le Carré.
Their affair began in the 1980s when he kissed her (without permission) after they had had dinner in Piccadilly Circus.
This goes against the #MeToo rulebook which (as various commentators have pointed out with icy disapproval) regards such behaviour as sexual harassment. Suleika’s response? “It must be very boring being young today.”
Quite. The thing with kissing is that if you melt at the touch of the person who is doing this unexpected kissing, you do not tend to mind that they did not ask permission first. Correct me if I am wrong.
Anyway, on with the plot. When they ate out Le Carré liked to order everything on the menu which is one area of excessive behaviour that I have never quite understood.
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Eating your way through five mains and the pudding trolley is hardly a precursor to wild sex. But it seemed to work for these two crazy lovebirds.
They had oodles of sex, described by Suleika as “sex that only the hero and heroine can have – sex for the cameras, sex for the gods”.
And there is more. Le Carré, who not only wrote about spies but had worked for the intelligence services in real life, carried on as though their affair was a dangerous spy operation. Such fun!
He paid for their excursions out of what secret agents call a “reptile fund” which is what we civilians call “cash”. Cunningly he also recorded her postcode as NW3 in his contacts book when in fact is was SW3. No wonder MI6 is second to none.
It is all wonderfully old-fashioned stuff – stolen nights, sobbing and screaming, a willowy blonde mistress and a powerful and rich older man.
It is not the new way of dating which involves more consent and negotiation than a branch meeting of the RMT.
But there is something irresistible about finding the “love of your life” – even if it does not make you happy or well-behaved. Better to have lived and loved? Oh probably I think. On balance. Do you not?
Unhinged out in force
Was there not something a little unhinged about the sheer venom of protesters who mobbed delegates at the Conservative Party Conference last week?
There was more of the same in Britain On The Brink, a TV debate hosted by Jeremy Vine on Channel 5. This was when nurse Miranda Hughes said that: "If you voted Conservative you don't deserve to be resuscitated by the NHS."
What a monster. But hang on. I would like to have pressed Miranda on this point. Would she withhold treatment from someone who is, say, a floating voter?
Good luck if you see Nurse "Ratched" Miranda with her clipboard as you are wheeled into the operating theatre and she asks for your voting history.
"Tory, did you say? In 2015 and 1992? Sorry, no surgery for you and I'll just take that intravenous catheter too."
The odd thing is that Miranda was also in the audience on Question Time not so long ago, giving an anti-Brexit rant. Just one of those ever-available loudmouths who - let us face it - TV producers love.
Guardian needs to take a chill pill
When she gave her speech to the Conservative Party conference was Liz Truss channelling the evil, far-Right politician played by Emma Thompson in Years And Years, a BBC One drama by Russell T Davies which was on more than three years ago?
The Guardian was very excited about the discovery that Truss's burnt orange dress was almost identical to Thompson's scarlet version.
It probably was identical. The Karen Millen "Forever" dress has become a wardrobe staple for many women, including Liz Truss and the Princess of Wales. It is smart, high-street and sufficiently officey without being unfeminine.
Until Liz storms out in jack boots and a Herr Flick-style trench coat I think we can stick to criticising her politics rather than her clothes. The Guardian needs to take a pill and have a lie-down.
Vardy not going down without a fight
Say what you like about Rebekah Vardy but - following her humiliating defeat in the Wagatha Christie libel trial - she did not retire under the nearest duvet in embarrassment.
Ordered to pay £1.5million in legal costs to her adversary Coleen Rooney (on top of Vardy's own £2million legal costs) she came back fighting with another dig about how she hopes Coleen will "put your money where your mouth is" and give it to charity.
On Instagram, Vardy added mysteriously: "It's always the ones with the dirty hands pointing the fingers."
Is it though? Do people with dirty hands do more pointing? I am not convinced.
But well done to Mrs Vardy for inventing a saying which is as memorably nonsensical as Fleetwood Mac's "thunder only happens when it's raining".
Meghan at it again
Oh hello Meghan. Back again with another finger-wagging podcast. This week she turns her sorrowfully disapproving gaze on the "trope" (what would the woke do without tropes?) of the "over-sexualised or aggressive" Asian "dragon lady". As an example she cites the giggly Japanese twins in the Austin Powers film Goldmember.
Give me strength. Look, the entire point of Austin Powers movies is that they mock the stereotypes in 1960s spy movies which, yes, often included characters like the twins.
If the Duchess of Sussex does not get that then I am concerned she is not as bright as she pretends to be...
Love is in the interest rates
Ourtime, a dating service for the over 50s, has conducted a survey about what makes someone a good "catch" at that age. No surprise that our old friend "a good sense of humour" tops the list of desirable attributes.
But I fear the survey must have been done before the recent economic upheavals as "you've paid off your mortgage" only makes it to 25th place. Meeting someone for whom the phrase "variable rate" did not cause palpitations would now easily trump "you have your own teeth" (10th place) and "you recycle" (15th place).
Invisibility cloak? Already got one!
Dumbledore gave Harry Potter an invisibility cloak, a garment which so delighted Steve Tidball of Vollebak, a "futuristic clothing brand", that he has created a "Thermal Camouflage Jacket" which will make wearers invisible (do not ask me how).
Alternatively if you want to know what it really feels like to be invisible, just try being a middle-aged woman for a few days.
