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West on the Week: “I’ve now been likened to Katie Hopkins…”

Does the BB star and broadcaster think that's a good or bad thing? Read on...

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I’m A Celebrity… Get MEH Out Of Here!

I’m A Celebrity Get Me A Career is about to roll into its 16th season and, just like a 16-year-old, the reality TV megalodon has become a bit petulant and sulky, booking – in my humble opinion – a slightly meh gang of celebs.

Fantastic to see that the handsome pensioner dad off of Gavin and Stacey is going in, as well as my red carpet pal Joel Dommett. He confided in me the other day that when the going gets tough he likes to hang back from the angry crowd and play the wimp.

So we can expect to see him watching a rice-related barny from the safe distance of his hammock.

Then there’s Sam Queck, a Liverpudlian hockey player. Who? At least she’ll be able to whack away the critters with her stick.

But the most intriguing camp mate is a blonde woman who looks like she might one day be Carol Vorderman. Carol, you look absolutely stunning for a woman in her 80s! She’s my tip for the top spot because she’s a brainbox and no wimp at all. Yo go Vorders!

Mimi sent him Packer-ing

The UN has declared that the plight of Syrian refugee children is now secondary to a far greater humanitarian crisis. Never has humanity witnessed such tragedy…

Across the Western world, people are filling shoe boxes with toys and tins of baked beans for Mariah Carey after the modern day Moses was forced to trek from New York to Los Angeles with only hundreds of millions of dollars, a phalanx of minions and a helicopter to help her out.

No wonder the singer is asking her ex-fiance James Packer for a $50 million settlement for “emotional upheaval”. Not money grabbing at all. If he wasn’t before, James must now be certain that he was right to tell ‘Mimi’ to Packer bags.

Scoping out Schofe

I had an exclusive interview this week with Phillip Schofield and, let me tell you, it was fascinating! Was it? Yes!

I wanted to ask him why we hadn’t seen Katie Hopkins on This Morning for such a long time, considering the fact that every time she popped up on the sofa like an opinionated verruca the whole world clicked, shared and liked in a frenzy of gleeful outrage.

Phillip rolled his eyes and told me there was a perception that she had turned from offensive/funny into offensive/nasty and as a team they all decided not to book her anymore.

I doubt the Hopkinator minded very much. By this point she was already the country’s most loved goblin.

Interestingly enough, I was attacked online last week for writing an article which asked a tongue-in-cheek question about gay guys perving on straight guys in the gym, and loads of people slammed me for trying to be like Katie.

I don’t take this as an insult but it’s an interesting sign of the times that anyone who offers a slightly edgy view these days is instantly likened to her. It shows how rare original, challenging, contrary thought is on social media.

Pluck off, John Lewis

You know it’s Christmas when you get the bleating, tweeting masses going crazy over the annual heart-string pluck from the cuddly retail giant John Lewis.

Yesterday I personified the shop just so I could fold my arms and tut at him. “Oh, John, why so cynical?” His adverts have become so laughably predictable and so disturbingly cloying and manipulative that they send a Jack Frost chill down my spine.

Imagine the highly paid marketing Millicents and Marmadukes wiggling their ironic brogues in anticipation as they colour in their storyboard with last year’s faded felt tips…

A cute kid in bed who ends up running into the garden. Fluffy animals doing something a bit anthropomorphic (they should have used a megalodon). A couple checking the kid has gone to sleep. An average house with a random BT telephone box on the other side of the fence? Did BT pay towards this nonsense? Look! A badger on a trampoline. #Love #cute #commercialism.

Best to Bublé and his brave boy

I was walking through Soho the other day with my agent and I noticed a handsome man loitering in a lost, forlorn kind of way, by the corner of a backstreet. It was only when I got to the other side of the road that I realised it was Michael Bublé.

I was tempted to rush over and ask him for a selfie (I have no shame) but there was something in the way he was standing that made me carry on walking and leave him be.

I have no idea whether the awful news that his son has liver cancer had anything to do with that. The poor boy and poor Michael. I’ve helped someone I love through cancer but I can’t imagine for a moment what it must be like to see your own child fighting such a horrible disease.

Best wishes to you Michael. It means so little I know, but our thoughts are with you.


Kaggie Hyland
Editor-in-Chief