The world moves along at a pace.

In 1974 I met my first photocopier. We called them ‘Gestetner’ after the cousin of the man who invented it. Probably because the actual inventor was either in prison for war crimes or hiding out in Argentina. And, obviously, the first thing I did was slap my penis on the plate and make a photocopy. You had to. Then drop your pants and sit on it. A right of passage. In this case, the back passage. No employer would give you a proper contract until you’d photocopied some naughty bits and pieces.

And you’d show the print copy to your mates and laugh. Yes, a group of men laughing at your penis doesn’t do great things for your confidence, but for making people laugh, no price is too high. I’d very rarely hand copies out to women on tube trains.

I didn’t show the copies to any gay men, because gay men weren’t invented until 1979. Prior to that the entire population of the world was heterosexual.

Then flash forward (pun very much intended) to 2024 and you’d no more have a photocopier than you would a fax machine. Instead you have a phone. Which is in fact a massively powerful computer which can handle bank transactions securely, photocopy any document, count your daily steps, monitor your heart rate and play every song that’s ever been sung. And it can send things. Messages, documents and, of course, photographs.

And thus that stupid, puerile, pathetic need to display your genitals to others has the perfect vehicle for dispatch.

Thus did William Wragg, a ‘senior Conservative politician’, one of the people charged with running our entire nation, chose to send a picture of his nob to some geezer he’d never met, on a gay dating app. Said picture was then used by Mr Anonymous to essentially blackmail poor Willy (nothing is ever better than a nob joke). If he didn’t provide contact details for a whole bunch of very important ministers, Willy’s willy would be on the front page of the… Mail? Mirror? Sun? Daily Penis? So he gave the horrible man some contact details of various top MPs. Some of whom then received photos of other people’s genitalia. Male and female. So poor Willy had to confess to his compliance. And make himself the ‘victim’ of this cybercrime. Thus getting himself off the hook.

But a ‘senior politician’ sending pictures of his dick? Really? How ‘senior’ do you have to be in the Conservative Party to realise that is probably never a good idea?

Happy Saturday

A xxxx