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Monday
It’s the start of the G7, guaranteeing us a week of either serious commentary or hot mic moments that may, in their way, prove more revealing than all the thousands of words of analysis. Previous summits have delivered a steady flow of off-the-cuff remarks from world leaders, including President Obama, at the G20 in 2011, grousing to the then French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, about Benjamin Netanyahu (“You may be sick of him, but me, I have to deal with him every day”), and Jacques Chirac, who, at a European summit in the early 2000s, said of the UK: “You cannot trust people who have such bad cuisine. It is the country with the worst food after Finland.” Rude!
So far in Évian-les-Bains no one has dropped much of a clanger, and all the evidence suggests that, despite being thoroughly sick of him, world leaders are still rolling in the aisles at the slightest hint of a joke by Donald Trump. At the summit opening, the US president cracked everyone up by entering a meeting room with the words: “I’m the boss!” – which will get ’em every time. Meanwhile, the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, has been boasting about how she quit smoking in May, and Keir Starmer offered some World Cup punditry on Cape Verde’s shock 0-0 draw with Spain – “quite remarkable, I have to say”, said the prime minister, inoffensively – before being overheard asking: “Are they having a meeting?”
This question from Starmer was, I believe, asked in reference to the temporary absence of leaders including Trump, Emmanuel Macron and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and it’s hard to resist imagining him asking it in a wounded, beseeching voice, which hurts my heart a little – another reason why I’m not a political analyst.
Tuesday
I’m still processing the mega-piece that ran in the New York Times Magazine at the weekend, telling the story, in impressive detail, of Jeffrey Epstein’s last weeks in prison leading up to his death. It’s an absolute corker of in-depth reporting, and I would urge everyone to read it for the eye-opening detail about Epstein’s state of mind after his arrest at Teterboro airport in 2019, 35 days before he took his own life.
The Metropolitan Correctional Center, which was closed in 2021, was a notoriously badly run and underfunded facility that hosted, among others, Bernie Madoff and John Gotti, and where, on being booked in, Epstein is reported to have said: “Oh, this is bad. This is really bad.” In the first few days, before anyone recognised him, he was placed in the general population, where someone immediately tried to extort him; he was then moved to the high-risk unit.
To win as much time out of his cell as possible, Epstein conducted hours-long meetings with his lawyers, during which he discussed what information he might give to prosecutors to reduce possible jail time, including dirt he might have had on Donald Trump. As the magazine puts it: “Jotting on a legal pad, he returned to the president again and again, trying to dredge up anything to offer prosecutors. But his scribblings – ‘Trump is a total con artist – smoke & mirrors’ and ‘Never had money’ – suggest that he could come up with little that wasn’t already known.”
Here’s one conspiracy theory the piece tries to nix: for a while, Epstein shared a cell with Nicholas Tartaglione, a quadruple murderer and a seemingly suspicious pairing given Epstein’s high profile. But, experts explained to the reporters, convicted murderers who have yet to be sentenced are considered a safe pick as cellmates because they’re highly incentivised to avoid doing any more crimes while awaiting sentencing. Who, as they say, knew?
Wednesday
A useful tip as the World Cup unfolds: if you can schedule your minor accident to drop during an England game – when the pubs are full and everywhere else is empty – you may find yourself enjoying a significantly lower wait time at A&E.
That is according to NHS England, which has felt duty bound – one imagines through gritted teeth; there goes the vanishingly rare chance for a cup of tea and a sit down – to urge patients not to delay seeking medical care until the final whistle blows, but rather, if injured, to egress straight to their nearest hospital, where staff will tear themselves away from the match to treat them.
On past evidence, compared with average numbers, up to 17,000 fewer people visit A&Es during big England games, summoning images of people in pubs in various states of collapse, arms on the floor, heads hanging by a thread, while barking a line baked into the national character: “Just a flesh wound!” In the immediate aftermath of England matches, meanwhile, visits to A&E by patients experiencing what the NHS describes as “trauma … consistent with falls, assaults and other injuries” jump by 10%. God we’re predictable.
Thursday
Brooklyn Beckham’s advert for DoorDash joins a niche canon of commercials in which celebrities try to “own the joke” by making cryptic references to whatever it is that got them into trouble on the basis that it will win audiences over via clever, meta self-mockery.
That’s the theory. And I have to say, in the case of Brooklyn, filmed smirking at references to his complicated family situation before the World Cup, the ad sort of worked for me. I mean what’s the guy supposed to do? He’s never had a proper job. All he has is his name, his ability to be famous by association, and what one assumes is his baked-in understanding that the only way to solve a problem is through the press. Although he was roundly mocked for the ad, I thought he seemed as likable in it as he ever has. (Admittedly, it’s a low bar.)
Other examples in this genre that have worked for people: Winona Ryder, posing with security guards in an ad for Marc Jacobs after being nicked for shoplifting in 2001, and Charlie Sheen, playing up to his reputation for instability in a TV commercial for Fiat. One assumes Gwyneth Paltrow’s team are, as we speak, frantically brainstorming hilarious send-ups owning her disastrous decision to lend her name to luxury penthouses in Israel; by flogging timeshares at the Somme, perhaps. Good luck with that.
Friday
There’s something going on with bees – have you noticed? Every walk to and from school this week has been interrupted by a need to stop and help a large, fuzzy bee on the pavement, usually stranded on its back, legs waving in the air. My children can’t ignore bees in peril, but equally, these bastards can’t always be helped; you flip them and they flip right back again. How many times must one flip a bee before giving up?!
The sheer numbers, and the fact that many of them seem to be malfunctioning, makes me feel as if we’re in the opening scenes of a disaster movie, when the birds start flying into buildings and the animals respond to signals we can’t see. Perhaps, finally, something I’ve been talking about for decades and no one else ever wants to talk with me about – magnetic flip! – is about to occur, in which case hang on to your hats and just remember, the bees (and I) called it first.
Digested week in pictures
