This and That

Diana: a Nation Remembers

Diana, Princess of Wales, that is. Not Diana Dors. Interesting that both Diana and her arch-rival Camilla should have three syllables in their names.

One of the curious things about celebrities is our propensity for taking sides. In this case, the nation very quickly divided into the "Charles camp" and the "Diana camp". I myself found myself in the Charles camp, quite honestly for no good reason whatsoever. Perhaps somewhere down the line a feeling for the underdog, which Charles must definitely was as far as the press was concerned? Perhaps a feeling that Diana’s much vaunted beauty was a little overstated? To paraphrase Dr Johnson : « I thought she was a queen among beauties but I discovered that she was only a beauty among queens ».

Nicolas "value for money" Sarkozy

Will Nicolas Sarkozy go down as a great president? Only time will tell. But on the strength of a few months in office, at least we can say that we are getting our money’s worth with him. Indeed, one has to ask what on earth his predecessors François Mitterand and Jacques Chirac got up to. They disappeared from public view for weeks at a time without anyone bothering to ask what they were doing. Mitterand was presumably writing his books and visiting his mistress at the taxpayer’s expense, and Chirac was probably doing much the same except that books weren’t really his line. I think a glass of beer was more his cup of tea.