Villains
Celebrity chefs, most of whom are unbearably smug these days, says Camilla Long in The Sunday Times. “Scan cooking programmes now and you won’t see a single one worth watching… Instead you will find a strange collection of talentless gargoyles who mostly can’t cook and don’t know anything, participating in dreary contests where everything is built around personal journeys and their ‘relationships with food’.”
Hero
The UK, which is sending four million Pfizer jabs to Australia so it can speed up its vaccination programme, with the first batch of 292,000 doses due to be shipped shortly. “Thanks Boris, I owe you a beer, cheers,” said Aussie PM Scott Morrison at a press conference.
Villain (or just doofus)
Pope Francis, who was asked for his views on Afghanistan and said he would respond with a quote from Angela Merkel: “It’s necessary to stop the irresponsible policy of enforcing [the West’s] own values on others without taking into account historic, ethnic and religious issues, and fully ignoring other people’s traditions.” The only problem? He was inadvertently quoting Vladimir Putin.
Villain
Matt Hancock, who is scrimping on an £87-a-night hotel in the Swiss Alps with his lover and former aide, Gina Coladangelo. A reporter for the Daily Mail peeked into the couples’ room and found twin beds pushed together. It’s almost certainly a downgrade for Coladangelo, whose husband, Oliver Tress, is thought to be worth £12m.
Villain
A German Green party volunteer, who placed a campaign poster over a light sensor, leaving the street lights in Gross Berssen, a village near the Dutch border, blazing for five days. The poster read: “There’s no getting round the climate target.”