OMG! American celebs have been caught paying people to get their marginally average children into top-flight colleges so the celebs can enjoy the vicarious vanity of ‘my daughter’s at Stanford, akk-cherlaay’, or ‘my son’s at Harvard, innit’. And I only care because one of the ‘guilty’ is Felicity Huffman. Who is not just really funny and clever and great, but she’s married to William H Macy who I just love, just like she does. He had me at Fargo and has never let me down. And now, of course, it has descended into the typical American drama. Because if you add A-listers to dodgy deals, sprinkle in some White House (because ALL of Hollywood is Democrat) for some barbs and venom, that equals HEADLINES!!!!

Apparently they have recorded phone conversations of Felicity agreeing to pay some college coach or other lots of cash to improve her daughter’s test scores. As if that’s a crime. That’s called ‘BEING A PARENT’. Ok, well maybe that’s called ‘BEING A STINKING RICH PARENT OF NOT TOO BRIGHT PROGENY AND PANICKING ABOUT THEIR FUTURE’. Morally I can see a few issues with the whole process. Just a few.

But the British press are having a field day with it. Because over here in egalitarian Britain, you simply can’t just ‘buy’ places for anyone anywhere. It’s not cricket. In our country one has to simply earn one’s place in life on pure and simple merit.

Unless you are a Lord, a Duke, a Prince or some other Arthurian type anachronism from the dark ages, whose daddy happened to go to Eton by virtue of a strip of land given to his great, great, great… great grandfather by Ethelred the Unready in 1237, along with a title which enabled him to rob all the poor people in his vicinity of all their food crops and valuables for all eternity. Then, young (let’s call him) Rupert, thick as two short planks, a minor speech impediment, hare lip, who spends his leisure time pulling the legs off dragonflies one-by-one, breezes into Eton on a full scholarship, even though daddy is worth 8.7 trillion by virtue of that strip of land which happened to sit on a goldmine. But that’s fair.

I’m not saying its right, but lack of the ‘high horse’ reporting would be appropriate for Mr & Mrs H Macy, I feel. Even though they’re goin’ darn.

Amazingly, four English teams have made it to the last 8 of the European Champions League. Or the English Champions League as it should be called after March 29th. The other four are one (almost) Spanish (depending on the current status of Catalonia), one Italian (Christiano Ronaldo), one Dutch and one from Portugal.

It’s ours for the taking.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx