Shut Up?

Alan Sugar tells Katie Hopkins to shut  up. Why, hello Mr Pot, meet Ms Kettle… I mean, when it comes to professional loud-mouths, they were made for each other, surely? Thing is, though…

Sir Alan, who is just as outspoken when he needs to be, called her an idiot and told her to shut up after she said ‘When we show respect we have a minute’s silence. When slebs want to be seen showing respect, there is a deafening clamour #rushtogush’.

She has a point. The outpouring of gushing treacly mulch from various has-been slebs in the wake of Cilla Black’s death has been cloying, toe-curling, embarrassingly sycophantic and downright sick-inducing. Who can forget the image of the ageing, mummified (is he still alive?) Lionel Blair telling us she was just like ordinary folk and had the common touch. If I hear that one again, I’ll tear my hair out. Or Bruce Forsyth telling us she was just a kid. She was seventy-two, so no, she wasn’t. Indeed, there was a time when seventy-two was a fair age to pop one’s clogs.

Indeed, the outpouring of vomit-generating claptrap is pretty much what we hear every time a celebrity hangs up their top-hat and cane. Sure, the family and friends of the deceased are grieving and it is only right to leave them alone with their grief. For the rest of us, though, it is business as usual. Sure, it’s sad news and  for those of us of a certain age, we are reminded of the passage of time and our lost youth, but now let’s get over it and can we put the Dianaesque public hand wringing behind us, please. It’s undignified.

So, it’s Sugar who needs to shut up and Hopkins has it right. She is the epitome of the tactless person – she says what many of us are thinking.