We have always been a nation of curtain twitchers. But, who’d have thought nearly 200,000 people would report their neighbours for breaking lockdown rules?
That’s what a report from the police reveals — that to pass the time when they’re barricaded in their homes, battalions of Britons have turned informer.
There’s a word for these busybodies in my book — covi-snitchers.
All of us despise sneaks and tell-tales, we always have — they’re usually petty-minded people who have nothing better to do than make life a misery for others.
Support officers pictured patrolling Wimbledon Common Park and speaking to members of the public reminding them of the coronavirus lockdown rules
Of course, where there is genuine cause for complaint about people flouting the rules, a reprimand or call to the police is the right thing to do. We’ve all come across covidiots. The groups gathered on beaches and in parks having a sneaky ‘family’ barbecue with mates in the spring sunshine. The carloads of yobs racing by, playing loud music.
The shameless footballers who couldn’t care less. This week it was Everton’s £50,000-a-week striker Moise Kean, 20, who threw a lockdown party with lap-dancers at his luxury Cheshire apartment — and then posted it on Instagram (talk about cov-IDIOT!) And yet there is something deeply worrying about hundreds of thousands of people informing on their fellow Brits.
We have to keep things in perspective. I have a friend in a middle-class London suburb whose neighbour leans out of the window each time she leaves the house, shouting: ‘That’s two, or three, times today!’
Yes it is — once for exercise, once for her weekly shop and once to take food to her elderly mum.
As a democracy, we have freely given up many of our cherished liberties to control Covid-19.
Police officers tell members of the public that they are not allowed to sit and enjoy the sunshine on the grass, but are allowed to walk to take exercise, in London Fields park in east London
Most of us are trying to do the right thing. My experience of six weeks of isolation has been of the overwhelming kindness of my neighbours, which has at times brought me to tears.
The last thing we need is people reporting us for the smallest breach of rules, like dropping off paracetamol and home-made shepherd’s pie for a sick friend.
Please don’t let the lockdown turn us into a nation of snitches.
Legendary Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page’s girlfriend feels the need to explain her shame at their 46-year age gap in upmarket Tatler magazine.
Doesn’t matter, love. With 76-year-old Jimmy’s multi-million pound fortune and beautiful Gothic mansion, you’ve found your own Stairway To Heaven.
A Posh in the right direction
Victoria Beckham received a volley of vitriol on social media after she furloughed 30 staff at her luxury fashion business — while she and David are worth £335 million and were sharing family images in luscious lockdown on their Oxfordshire estate.
Friends say she was devastated about the backlash — and she has reversed the decision.
While it’s easy to take a pop at Posh, surely some praise is due? Unlike many millionaires who furloughed most of their staff, including Philip Green and Richard Branson, she has admitted her mistake and rectified it.
Victoria Beckham, who posted this Instagram picture of her ‘working from home’ set-up, has reversed a decision to seek a taxpayer bailout for her fashion firm by furloughing 30 staff
Marigold star Britt is bonkers and beautiful!
Recently, it has been easy to find Swedish blonde ex-goddess Britt Ekland vaguely ridiculous, not least because we can’t take our eyes off her collapsing cosmetic surgery.
Yet in BBC1’s The Real Marigold Hotel she is funny, self-deprecating and strangely beautiful. The 77-year-old has even come up with a motto to see her through life, as bonkers as it is suitable: ‘It’s going to be fabulous — until it’s not.’
Britt Ekland has come up with a motto to see her through life, as bonkers as it is suitable: ‘It’s going to be fabulous — until it’s not’
Ben’s deep love
With most Hollywood stars in lockdown, loved-up actors Ben Affleck and new Bond girl Ana de Armas are out kissing through their matching designer masks in the park.
She’s also been spotted wearing a Gucci boilersuit and diamonds, as you do, for a stroll.
Pure coincidence that they star together in their about-to-be released film Deep Water, which caused one critic to remark he’d rather drown than watch to the end.
Loved-up actors Ben Affleck and new Bond girl Ana de Armas are out kissing through their matching designer masks in the park
From his secret Los Angeles mansion where he, Megs and baby Archie are holed up in splendid isolation, Prince Harry delivered a mental wellbeing video message to British soldiers as some fight coronavirus.
‘When we talk about fitness, we don’t just mean how fast you can run or how much weight you can carry . . . this is about mental fitness, strength and resilience, not just while wearing a uniform,’ he said.
How hollow that collective ‘we’ from former Captain Wales must sound to soldiers in the UK delivering personal protective equipment and testing suspected Covid-19 carriers while wearing paper masks and flimsy aprons over their combats.
Westminster woes
+ For two days we have waited with bated breath to learn the name of the PM’s new baby. We all know Boris is obsessive about his personal privacy, for well-documented reasons. Yet he and Carrie have now taken longer than Harry and Meghan to reveal the happy news. Is it that after six or seven children, Boris has just run out of inspiration?
+ After yet another wooden performance from Labour’s new leader at PMQs, the crisply- presented, fifty-shades-of-grey Keir Starmer has topped my list of MPs most likely to iron their underpants.
+ Why is Jeremy Corbyn — 70 and in the coronavirus ‘vulnerable, stay home’ group — still attending PMQs? Perhaps he’s as oblivious to this infection as he was to the virus of anti-Semitism he allowed to infect his party.
AMANDA PLATELL: Why is Jeremy Corbyn — 70 and in the coronavirus ‘vulnerable, stay home’ group — still attending PMQs?
Covid shout outs
+ First and foremost to Bill Chandi, the postmaster in the village of Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire, who has cheerfully delivered more than 150,000 100th birthday cards to Captain Tom Moore, thousands each day with no end in sight, some simply addressed to Captain Tom, England.
+ My neighbour Gary, in his mid-70s, who is used to thanking the NHS after they saved his life in intensive care a decade ago. He found an old school bell and we stood in the rain on Thursday at 8pm, not to clap but loudly clang the NHS. My contribution was to pour us a very strong G&T snifter, six feet apart, of course. Am longing for the day we can stand side by side in the pub.
+ And thanks to the fashionista who informs us the de rigueur NHS-clapping outfit is silk designer PJs, large gold earrings, a blazer carelessly thrown over one’s shoulders, fluffy socks and Birkenstocks. Oh dear, my old leggings, muddy walking boots and North Face anorak must have been a bitter disappointment.
Despite a record 12,000 desperate, fame-starved singletons applying to be in the new series of Love Island, ITV bosses have all but cancelled the show, blaming it on not being able to get to an exotic sun-kissed island due to flight cancellations.
But surely they’re missing a trick? Given the calibre of some of the former contestants and their propensity for cuddling up to any old mutt, the obvious location must be London’s Isle of Dogs.