I am not averse to taking some vicarious glory when fellow King's alumni distinguish themselves. So for every Desmond Tutu I suppose I have to acknowledge that we have had our share of wrong-uns. In May 2021 Martin Bashir was (to no one's surprise) officially confirmed as one such. He had deceived that flawed but (to many minds, though not this one) saintly personage, Diana, Princess of Wales. I have often wondered about what sort of social death-wish I have incubated. My first serious ambition was to be a journalist and only after I had failed in that sphere did I decide instead to be a lawyer. No one likes us - we don't care. Is this not, in a small but important way, the best explanation of what it is like to be English?
As I trawl through last year for this thread, I am perhaps hoping to account for how, by year's end, I had become a different person. Changed, not massively, but changed nonetheless. I have become happily resigned to the certainty that even minor eminence has eluded me - only as this desire has ebbed to nothing do I understand how it fed my insecurity for all those years. How silly. Do you think Bashir may have been the same?
June. John Bercow joined the Labour Party. John, son, nobody gives a shit any more. You were a preening pillock as Speaker. May you grow to be as big an embarrassment to your fellow travellers as you were to your erstwhile Tory bedfellows. Your recession into the background of public consciousness has been a delight.
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