Jennifer Arcuri sounded the bell on Round Two of what promises to be an increasingly entertaining punch up between herself and Boris Johnson
This week the bell rang for Round Two of what promises to be a thrillingly addictive punch up between Boris Johnson and the mad scientist’s splice of Baby Spice and Kerry Katona that is his alleged ex-paramour Jennifer Arcuri.
Consider me fully draped in Team Arcuri livery, sitting in the front row with a blood-spatter shield in one hand and a large box of popcorn in the other, for this one.
The 34-year-old American’s first foray into public life a few weeks ago was apparently in reaction to his cessation of contact with her – apart from the one time he picked up her call and then, she claims, promptly handed the phone to someone who mysteriously began speaking in a Chinese accent.
In response, Arcuri came out swinging with the tale of how a ‘magnetic energy’ around the then mayor of London drew her to introduce herself to him in 2011.
This encounter apparently led to several years of him speaking at events for her IT company, her companionship on three of his mayoral trade missions – in between ‘tech lessons’ at her flat – and the award of £126,000 in public grants to her business.
This time around we were gifted an entire documentary and follow-up interviews in which, with the delicate touch of a skilled torturer, Jennifer tightened the noose one utterance at a time.
Her final words in the documentary were delivered straight to camera.
‘You know I’ve been nothing but loyal, faithful, supportive and a true confidante of yours,’ she said, quivering like Julia Roberts in Notting Hill just asking her boy to love her, yet managing to maintain a basilisk stare down the lens throughout. ‘I have kept your secrets and I have been your friend… And I’m terribly heartbroken by the way that you have cast me aside, like I am some gremlin.’
A bit of a left-field choice of word at the end there, but I like it. It reminds viewers (one in particular) that things could veer off in unexpected – and even worse – directions any time.
The next day the gloves slipped a little further off.
But the question I am most intrigued by is this: what did Boris think was going to happen? Because you don’t need to be a sophisticated reader of human nature to guess Arcuri wasn’t a woman likely to take being dropped and humiliated lightly
‘Is this the price of loyalty?’ she asked Victoria Derbyshire on her TV show. ‘To be hung up on, ignored and blocked?’ And then – ‘Why would I remain silent if you can’t even speak to me?’
Why indeed? I await the answer with no little interest. But the question I am most intrigued by is this: what did Boris think was going to happen? Because you don’t need to be a sophisticated reader of human nature to guess Arcuri wasn’t a woman likely to take being dropped and humiliated lightly.
But then the answer comes to me – nothing. Boris thought nothing was going to happen because that is what he wanted to happen. And because, if you are a creature born of privilege and suffused with narcissism, what you want is generally the thing that happens.
So you find a woman, enjoy her companionship and her technological know-how, and you assume you can continue in this vein for as long as it suits you and then stop, without consequence. Because everyone knows that you don’t then give a man – an Eton-educated, Balliol-buffed man! – a hard time, right?
To imagine otherwise would require you to be able to place yourself in others’ shoes. To have an understanding of people and sense of judgment about the world that extends beyond your own ambitions and urges. To appreciate that it does not, despite all appearances, revolve round you.
Arcuri is clearly a piece of work. But true nemeses are rarely perfect themselves. It requires an extra something to bring about a reckoning.
And it looks to me like, in every sense, Arcuri has the goods.
A neat bit of hypocrisy
Tiny decluttering expert Marie Kondo, whom I had vaguely thought had been laid away in a tissue paper-lined box to recover from her exertions presenting her Netflix series Denude Your Life And Home Of All Its Memories And Delights, has in fact been busy setting up shop.
Now that she has got us all to clear out our homes, she wants us to fill them up again.
With – but of course! – her stuff. So, hurry yourself along to the internet and avail yourself of such essentials as Marie’s £19 crumb brush or £93 oil diffuser.
Talk about putting the Con in Kondo.
HRH Alan Partridge
I’m glad I watched Prince Andrew’s interview, even if I did have to pause it every 30 seconds to re-gather my emotional troops and look to my reserves.
Because, if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have believed it.
In fact, part of me remains convinced it must all have been a malarial dream – or footage from an abortive Prince Alan Partridge spin-off they just couldn’t quite get to work.
I’m glad I watched Prince Andrew’s interview, even if I did have to pause it every 30 seconds to re-gather my emotional troops and look to my reserves
The profits at undertakers Dignity are down 30 per cent because fewer people are dying. I like to imagine management consultancy firms around the country praying that they don’t get the call to come in and find a way to improve business.
My mother saw me in red lipstick for the first time a few days ago. ‘Very nice!’ she said after a moment. ‘It makes you look like something you’re not.’ I will be unpicking that one for years.
MY beloved ginger cat Harfa has taken to pulling out the fur from his tail.
The vet says he’s depressed because a new cat has moved in next door. ‘Old boy like this, doesn’t like new arrivals, doesn’t like change, full stop.’
I knew he was my soulmate.
No, Mr Expert, I DON’T want 128 gigablumpfs
I have to buy myself a new computer.
I do so only when absolutely unavoidable, about every seven years, because when I say ‘I need something I can type on and browse the internet with for as little money as possible’ to the person in the shop who is supposed to help me, he will insist on saying something like: ‘This one’s got 128 gigablumpfs of memory, video graphics, seven USB ports and twin carburettors for eleventy billion pounds, keyboard and screen extra,’ and we must negotiate from there.
I want a typewriter with a browser.
I have to buy myself a new computer… I want a typewriter with a browser
Why make this so hard?
Tuesday was International Men’s Day. I’m afraid to say that I carried on oppressing my husband regardless, by doing two loads of family laundry, renewing the car tax and the house insurance, cleaning stray spots of wee on the loo that are deposited there by some mysterious cosmic force that renders them invisible to the male eye, and changing the bed. I’m clearly a monster.
I went to look for a pair of jeans in a shop that shall remain nameless and, standing adrift in a sea of options, was approached by a saleswoman who gently turned me round, looked at me from behind and directed me to a particular range ‘designed for people carrying a little extra body’.
I felt both cared for and massively insulted at the same time…
‘The more I see of Jo Swinson, the more I dislike her,’ is what the pollsters tell us the great British public is saying about the Lib Dem leader. Maybe. But, past the age of 30, isn’t that how we all feel about everyone?
Trans activists are objecting to the – ahem – smoothness of the new gender-neutral Barbie dolls, despite the fact that this is the traditional Barbie (and Ken) state. But, apparently, genitalia are needed on someone somewhere to demonstrate non-binary status. I feel as if I have missed many, many memos. Too many to ever catch up.
