According to today’s papers, Sven-Goran Eriksson, England’s awful ex-manager, was madly jealous of his girfriend Nancy Dell’Olio, whom he suspected of sleeping with Tony Blair.
That gave rise to speculations along the lines of ‘did they or didn’t they?’ Well, if they didn’t they should have done — should still do it for that matter. They are a perfect match, twin emblems of our soulless, mindless modernity.
When Nancy broke with her priapic boyfriend for having played away from home, she said she no longer needed him. ‘I,’ she declared, ‘can become a celebrity in my own right.’
Now a celebrity being by definition someone I’ve never heard of, achieving this status these days requires no real achievement. All one needs is a couple of friendly reporters, a good PR flak, an effortless ability to mouth New Age platitudes and a prurient public willing to listen.
So Nancy has been as good as her heavily accented word. She has indeed become a celebrity, appearing on Strictly Come Dancing and putting on her garter belt the notches of such A-Listers as Sir Trevor Nunn. In short, she is the signature type of our time: an important nonentity.
Her once (or future) friend Tony is the same. His scale was grander, but the qualities he brought to the task of becoming a celebrity are similar to Nancy’s: the Nordic male equivalent of her sultry menopausal charms, intellectual vacuity, lack of any noticeable principles and a gift for self-promotion.
That elevated him to the honour of becoming arguably Britain’s most destructive PM ever, and the list of aspiring candidates is long (Dave Cameron, call your office).
But now he’s between jobs, he does what Nancy is also good at: staying in the news, charging huge fees for speaking much and saying little (who in his right mind would pay to hear Tony run off at the mouth?) and lobbying for whomever can pay the ticket.
So if this isn’t a tryst made in heaven, I don’t know what is. Sorry, Cherie, even you must see the two are made for each other.