OPINION – VANESSA FELTZ: Quite literally the last thing we need.
Andy Burnham. (Image: PA)
Andy Burnham once called a mansion tax the “politics of envy”. Now he is said to be raring to slap one on anyone with a house valued at £1.5 million. In London and parts of the South East, a nondescript three-bedroom semi could easily set you back £1.5 million or more. Residents, many of whom are struggling with crippling mortgages, are far from rich. They don’t have lashings of dosh stashed in high-interest accounts. By the way, the property bubble has well and truly burst down South. Sellers report zero interest.
When no one can shift their properties, ‘value’ becomes nothing more than notional. King of the North Burnham must be careful that ‘levelling up’ doesn’t quickly come to feel like a vindictive, malicious attack on Southerners.
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Now THAT’S value for money!
Big ticket international stars usually ration their on-stage presence. Backing bands and filmed inserts mean the opportunity to bask in their company is fleeting. Often you depart feeling short-changed. Not so Mr Jeff Goldblum. Sliding into my seat for Jeff Goldblum & the Mildred Snitzer Orchestra at the Albert Hall at 7.23pm for a 7.30pm start, what did I witness?
Jeff was already on stage, shooting the breeze, name-checking pals and telling stories, for all the world as casually as if he were at home in his own front room. Reluctantly, at 7.30pm he prised himself away. “I’d better get going. They need to announce me, and I need to walk on.”
He sang, danced, played the piano con brio and in the second half welcomed his Olympian contortionist wife Emelie, 30 years his junior. She leaped aboard his Steinway and turned herself into impossibly graceful knots, at one point seeming to balance on nothing more than an eyelash.
Talk about value for money. Talk about a 73-year-old performer who relished every single second of interacting with his audience. Talk about pumping out charisma and feel-good factor. What a rare and magical man.
I’ve been head over heels in love with him ever since he reclined beside me on the Big Breakfast bed in 1996, with excellent reason.
Nuptial notes
You’ve heard of nominative determinism. A boy called “Baker” grows up to head a chain of delicious patisseries. Master Farmer tills the soil. Your name dictates your destiny. Was it good judgement or nominative determinism that prompted Taylor Swift to stage a voluminous nuptial extravaganza that was over and done with in just one day?
Instead of the usual prolonged affair, stretching over the best part of a week and imposing innumerable outfit changes and hotel nights on guests, T&T managed to have the whole shebang done and dusted sharpish.
Guests – and I know a handful – pronounced themselves thrilled to the marrow to have been invited and delighted to the core to be heading home the next morning in their comfy tracksuits with the whole delicious experience well and truly over.
Fervently in favour
The Wegovy ‘fat-busting’ pill is now available in the UK, unfortunately too late for me. My timing has been way out of whack. I had a gastric band fitted in 2010, followed by a gastric bypass when the band embedded itself in my liver in 2019. If I hadn’t resorted to bariatric surgery, I’d have been the perfect candidate for fat jabs/pills and would have snapped them up with acute relief.
Eating less and moving more remains the preferred weight-loss method but, for some of us, trapped in a cycle of yo-yo dieting, shedding pounds is tough, but keeping the weight off afterwards is downright impossible. I would have loved to be rescued from intrusive ‘food noise’ by the jabs. Everyone I know who has been prescribed them is slimmer, more positive and grateful. If the pills help more people stabilise their weight, enhance their health and enjoy their lives I am fervently in favour.
Never in doubt!
If any of us ever doubted that the Prince and Princess of Wales are deeply in love, the pictures snapped when Kate reunited with William after completing the exhausting Three Peaks Challenge to raise cash for the Royal Marsden Hospital where she was treated for cancer, confirm their closeness.
The couple embrace fervently, with every fibre of their being. She clasps him. He envelops her. Their body language vividly signals their joy at being back together, pride in one another, physical closeness and a million guarantees of genuine care and regard that are impossible to fake.
We have been trained to be suspicious of staged ‘photo opportunities’. This warm, sincere, whole-hearted, full-bodied embrace is most definitely not one of them.