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September 15, 2005updated 22 Nov 2022 4:47pm

Nicola Smith

By Press Gazette

Rory Bremner’s
excellent parody of Tony Blair reached new heights on Sunday night
(Bremner, Bird and Fortune, Channel 4, 11 September)n when he
incorporated Catherine Tate’s schoolgirl character into the sketch.
Bremner’s uncanny likeness to Blair made this all the more amusing as
Tony said, “Look at my face, am I bovvered? Are you Kofi Annan, are
you?” I was rolling in the aisles.

Minette Marrin’s column in The
Sunday Times (21 August) caught my eye. She commented on the “extreme
condemnation and extreme punishments”

handed out to Hannah Grice,
the 32-year-old mother of two found guilty of an affair with a
14-year-old boy. Grice was sacked, sentenced to 15 months in jail and
put on the sexual offenders register. In Marrin’s view the punishment
didn’t fit the crime. I agreed with every word she said, including the
fact that the law has been a “bit of an ass and a bit of a misogynistic
prig as well”.

On a lighter note, I enjoyed Carole Cadwalladr’s article in The Observer’s Escape section (14 August).

Cadwalladr
visited Club 55, St Tropez’s beach hang-out for the beautiful. Her
observations on this species who, she notes “look vaguely like people
in that they have ears, eyes, opposable thumbs etc” gave me a right
chuckle and, while the piece was tongue in cheek, it was clear how much
was unadulterated fact. Cadwalladr came to the conclusion that the
beautiful people had ugly little lives “that no amount of gloss can
disguise”.

Finally, thank God someone has stuck up for Man
United’s muchmaligned striker Alan Smith. After England’s debacle
against Denmark last week, Smith’s namesake, Giles Smith dedicated much
of his page in The Times (20 August) to supporting Smith’s decision to
play for United’s reserves instead of pitching up as Sven’s
sixth-choice striker. He voiced the sentiments of any self-respecting
England fan when he likened the team’s fixture to a “mid-week minibreak
in Denmark” entailing “between 20 and 60 minutes of utterly
consequence- free football in an international shirt”. That said, the
mocked-up poster of Eriksson as Kitchener, saying “Your country needs
you (now our sixth-choice striker is injured)” was too close to the
mark to be funny.

Nicola Smith
freelances for titles including The Times, Trip and Hockey Sport. She
is writing a book for Breast Cancer Care called The Uplifting Book of
Breasts

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