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RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: It's football hooliganism for Guardian readers...

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A grieving nation: There have been echoes of the Diana lunacy over the past week, ever since the passing of Margaret Thatcher was announced

The last time I felt like this was when Lady Di died. Who are these people? Where have they all come from? Has the world gone stark, staring bonkers?

On the eve of the funeral I ran away to Majorca.

It was like the last plane out of Saigon, with fugitives from the sobfest metaphorically hanging off the wings to escape the madness.

London was carpeted with cheap floral tributes bought from petrol stations and teddy bears pinned to the railings as the nation appeared to succumb to mass hysteria.

I can remember writing in the Daily Mail at the time that I felt like a visiting alien, marooned on another planet. Was it me?

Soon it became apparent that I wasn’t alone.

Readers wrote in droves to say that they, too, were utterly bewildered by the emotional incontinence apparently sweeping the nation.

It wasn’t enough to grieve, everyone had to be seen to grieve. One bloke in Hendon was beaten up for the heinous crime of washing his car on the morning of the funeral. Not showing enough ‘respect’, you understand.

There have been echoes of the Diana lunacy over the past week, ever since the passing of Margaret Thatcher was announced. Only this time, instead of teddy bears, some people are carrying Thatcher dolls strung up from little nooses.

The age of self-indulgence ushered in by the insane reaction to Lady Di’s premature death has now reached full fruition. Thanks to Squitter and so-called ‘social networks’, everyone is living in their own movie.

As Ray Davies wrote so presciently in Celluloid Heroes:

Everybody’s a dreamer,

Everybody’s a star,

And everybody’s in showbiz,

No matter who you are.

Yes, you too can be a celebrity. Fire up your mobile phone, slag off someone famous on the internet and in five minutes you’ll be invited on to a rolling news channel to share your pearls of wisdom with a grateful world.

  More... Let's start a conga! bawled one plummy voice. The angriest turbo-Trot would've had to admit it was a pretty feeble protest: Robert Hardman joins the Trafalgar Square party 29 football fans arrested after hooligans run wild at Newcastle derby as police post happy snap of Bud the horse who was PUNCHED by a yob Speaker's wife Sally Bercow to snub Thatcher's funeral because 'last time I looked, it's the 21st century and I don't have to accompany my husband'

Teenage television researchers, who have no idea what they are talking about, invite historians who pretend they know what they are talking about on to discussion panels so they can prove they don’t know what they are talking about.

There have been some brilliant analyses of Mrs Thatcher’s political career and the irrevocable impact she had on this country. But there’s also been an equal amount of lazy, pig-ignorant drivel.

For instance, I read somewhere that no one in Britain had a fridge in the Seventies.

And if I hear another pundit describing Thatch as ‘divisive’ I shall scream. Divisive is what politicians do.

The other night I even saw some sour-faced Scouser blaming Thatcher for the Hillsborough disaster.

'Divisive': There have been some brilliant analyses of Mrs Thatcher's political career and the irrevocable impact she had on this country. But there's also been an equal amount of lazy, pig-ignorant drivel

There’s no doubt Hillsborough was an appalling tragedy and it has taken three decades to discover what really happened.

But attempting to project the shocking deaths of 96 football fans on to Mrs Thatcher is beyond grotesque. It was Thatcher who forced football to clean up its act so that another Hillsborough could never happen again.

Still, why let the facts get in the way of naked hatred? We all know Mrs Thatcher ordered the SAS to pitchfork babies in mining villages, don’t we?

Others have pointed out that most of those taking part in the Thatcher death celebrations weren’t even born when she became Prime Minister.

Robert Hardman’s brilliant dispatch from Trafalgar Square in yesterday’s Daily Mail showed up these gormless ghouls for what they really are: a bunch of inebriated, inchoate inadequates.

The anti-Thatcher demonstrations are simply football hooliganism for Guardian readers. A convenient excuse to get stoned, show off in public and taunt the police

What's the difference between punching a police horse because your team has just lost 3-0 and throwing missiles at the police because of your hatred for a woman who was PM when you were still in nappies?

What kind of sick parent takes along a four-year-old child to spit on the grave of an 87-year-old grandmother? Sounds like a job for social services. Except that the parent in question probably works for social services in one of the barmier London boroughs.

There’s no real point to any of these protests. The anti-Thatcher demonstrations, such as the Stop The Cuts marches, are simply football hooliganism for Guardian readers. A convenient excuse to get stoned, show off in public and taunt the police.

Some of you will have seen that photo yesterday of a bloke in Newcastle punching a police horse in a hi-viz jacket.

The horse was in the hi-viz jacket, not his assailant. I assumed this was another Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead rally, perhaps a former Durham miner still enraged over pit closures. On closer examination I discovered it really was football hooliganism.

What is the difference between punching a police horse because your team has just lost 3-0 at home to Sunderland and throwing missiles at the police because you are consumed with self-righteous hatred for a women who was Prime Minister when you were still in nappies?

Look at me! Sally Bercow, wife of Speaker John, has said she won't be going to Thatcher's funeral

There is no event too momentous or trivial, for that matter, which the onanistic Squitterati can’t make all about them. Any opportunity to give themselves an emotional enema in public.

Step forward the preposterous Sally Bercow, wife of Speaker John, to announce that she won’t be going to the funeral.

‘I am not obliged to participate in my husband’s public life. Last time I looked it was the 21st century!’ It’s the exclamation mark which emphasises: Look at ME!

Soppy Sally declared: ‘Margaret Thatcher wouldn’t have given a monkey’s whether or not I attended the funeral.’ Precisely, pet. So why not shut up about it?

Up pops the trendy Leftie Bishop of Grantham, complete with earring, to denounce the cost of the funeral. Oh, just go away. And they wonder why the Church of England is dead in the font.

Then we had Shami Wossname, from the civil liberties council, noisily criticising the police for daring to advise protesters how to behave themselves tomorrow.

What I find especially distressing is that there has to be such a high-profile security operation. Whatever you thought of Mrs Thatcher, she is entitled to a dignified send-off.

What kind of cretin can be bothered to travel into central London in order to start a fight at a funeral?

More to the point, what kind of country have we become when we can’t stage a funeral without a phalanx of riot police on hand?

Funny how those who shout loudest about ‘respect’ never seem to have the good grace to show proper respect to those with whom they disagree.

I know that we have long since ceased to be a place where gentlemen tip their trilbies to passing funeral corteges and traffic instinctively comes to a standstill.

But for once, just for a day, is it too much to ask that people remember their manners, swallow their hatred and show a little decorum?

  Mail reader Andrew Turner was on a train arriving at Euston station in London on Saturday when he spotted a girl aged about 14 carrying a broomstick made out of twigs.

It was wrapped in Cellophane and labelled: ‘Witch’s Broom.’

Assumptions: 'How dare you protest against our greatest Prime Minister when you are not even old enough to remember her?' As any wizard can tell you, things aren't always what they seem

Assuming she was one of the Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead mob, Andrew upbraided her. ‘How dare you protest against our greatest Prime Minister when you are not even old enough to remember her?’ he said.

At this point, the girl’s mother intervened. They hadn’t been to the anti-Thatch rally, they’d been to the Harry Potter exhibition and had bought the broomstick in the souvenir shop.

As any wizard can tell you, things aren’t always what they seem.

  Golly, Miss Holly, I couldn't make you up       More from Richard Littlejohn...   RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: When they said fight them on the beaches, Dave... 27/05/13   RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Toytown jihadists and a lack of political willpower 23/05/13   RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: The paying public are sick and tired of being ignored and patronised. So who are the real swivel-eyed loons? 20/05/13   The truth at last! Peter Mandelson admits Labour 'sent out search parties' to bring migrants here after losing the votes of the working class, writes RICHARD LITTLEJOHN 17/05/13   So that's why they called it an oil rig! 16/05/13   When did an 8-month jail sentence become eight weeks? 13/05/13   We're riding along the crest of a rave: How far is Julie Bentley prepared to go in order to make the Guides more 'relevant' to 21st-century Britain? 09/05/13   Arrest first - ask questions later: How dawn raids and ransacking houses became standard operating procedure 06/05/13   RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Proof no good deed ever goes unpunished 02/05/13   VIEW FULL ARCHIVE

Thanks to all those readers who have written wondering whether my spoof on the BBC’s dumbed-down funeral coverage might be too close for comfort. I’ll let you in on a secret. In the first version of Friday’s column, I had Holly Willoughby down as the lead presenter.

I’d never heard of her, but there was a feature on her in Thursday’s Mail.

After reading about Holly’s career as an underwear model and children’s TV show star I couldn’t think of anyone less suited to present a solemn outside broadcast such as Mrs Thatcher’s funeral. So in she went. Five minutes after I’d finished writing it, I had a call from the features editor. It had just been announced that Holly Willoughby would be presenting the funeral coverage on ITV.

The only thing I’d got wrong was the channel. So Holly was hastily replaced by the bird from Strictly Come Dancing.

You couldn’t make it up.

Holly will share presenting duties with the cerebral Phillip Schofield, last seen on live television waving a dubious list of alleged high-profile Tory paedophiles, downloaded off the internet, at the Prime Minister.

Bring on the bouncy castle. 

  Whoever was advising Tiger Woods at The Masters golf tournament called it badly wrong.

Woods had committed the cardinal sin of signing an incorrect score card, which in the past would have meant instant disqualification.

But a new loophole in the rules allowed him to stay in the match. That doesn’t mean he had to carry on. He could have walked away.

If Woods had disqualified himself, it would have done more to restore his tarnished reputation than winning another dozen majors.

 

A soft porn actress, convicted of criminal damage, has been spared an ankle tag because it would interfere with her work. Sophie Dalzell, from Cumbria, complained that producers would not employ her if she was forced to wear the tag.

Oh, I dunno. There’s every other kind of fetish out there on the internet, so I’m led to believe.

No doubt there are some men who would pay good money to see a woman having sex in an ankle tag.






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