WHEN Sleb Safari was a young’un, top 1980s soaps Dallas and Dynasty were strictly prohibited. No sooner had the opening bars of either theme tune begun than she was packed off to bed before her delicate eyes could be seared by any bedroom shenanigans.
Except… there was one glorious night when her dad fell asleep on the sofa and she managed to stay up long enough to watch top Dynasty enemies Krystle Carrington (Linda Evans) and Alexis Morell-Carrington-Colby-Dexter-Rowan (Joan Collins) have an amazing fight in a lily pond.
The shoulder pads! The voluminous dresses! Alexis’s giant satellite dish hat! Sleb Safari longs for the days when two gals could have a good old fashioned punch-up on TV – and all without smudging their lip-liner.
Since that heady time, there’s been an aching void where two ladies in giant earrings once stood.
But we need wait no longer, for there’s two new enemies in town.
Step forward – professional nice lady Holly Willoughy (Krystle) versus ‘I’m a diva’ Gemma ‘the GC’ Collins (Alexis).
Gemma’s Alexis credentials were already strong, if only because her mum is actually called Joan Collins. She did Alexis proud during her first appearance on Dancing on Ice, dressed in the sort of gold lame two-piece divas wear when throttling lesser rivals at black tie functions.
The GC showcased hair so big that it looked as though a large family of field mice could happily live on her scalp without even her knowing.
But all was not rosy. Shortly after the second show, Holly and annoying-uncle-that’s-always-going-on-about-his-new-gadget Philip Schofield revealed the whole Dancing on Ice studio had been waiting for the GC to begin a dress rehearsal – before they found her taking a nap.
"I love Gemma, I’m a big fan of hers and I love her on the show,” Holly said in a tone that suggested the exact opposite.
“But I do think there has to be a bit of professionalism that comes into any work you do, just a bit of pride in your work.”
Can skating around a rink very slowly really be considered work? No matter, the GC was reportedly fuming at Holly’s outrageous attack on her integrity as a professional contestant on reality TV shows.
Speaking to her loyal public on Instagram, Gemma let her feelings be known via the medium of capital letters.
The GC said she and her skating partner Matt Evers are “all for the pantomime and the laughs but our hard work will not be questioned ..... this was always going to come along at some point, it’s a competition and WE WILL NOT SABOTAGED”.
This isn’t a fight that’s going to end easily. With such bitter slights there’s only one way to settle this… Get your giant dresses and satellite hats ready and prepare the lily pond.
'Wellness' aficionados make Goop seem sane
How do you like to start your mornings? If you’re anything like the terrifying people who contributed to a recent ‘wellness’ article in The Times, you meditate under a ‘near-infrared light’ (no, me neither), take a supplement made of plankton, test the pH of your urine and shine a ‘Human Charger’ into your ear ‘to give you energy’ – and all before 8.30am.
Proving that having no fun doesn’t make you live longer, it just feels that way, one of the people featured endlessly banged on about the life-changing benefits of hyperbaric oxygen chambers.
To which Sleb Safari says, come back Gwyneth Paltrow, all is forgiven. Her website Goop might sell a few charcoal sticks for the low-low price of just £13 and give advice on how to ‘heal your aura’ but that sounds much less exhausting than dragging yourself out of bed to examine your wee and shine a torch in your ear.
I don’t know about you but Sleb Safari likes to begin each day picking the remains of last night’s Coco Pops from her hair and writing uplifting affirmations including ‘at least you don’t have shingles’ in the Moomin colouring diary she got for Christmas. Getting into work before 9am is a win in itself. No need to worry about plankton supplements.
Danny Dyer does history
A few years ago cartoon 'hard man' Danny Dyer discovered on BBC series Who Do You Think You Are? that he is a descendent of King Edward III.
The news seemed as unbelievable as Theresa May announcing she's leaving politics to train as an Olympic gymnast or Nigel Farage to announce he loves the European Union.
But now the BBC has decided to capitalise on this royal link by giving Dyer a new show - Danny Dyer's Right Royal Family.
And if the trailer is anything to go by the series will be a true delight.
We can look forward to watching the star of Danny Dyer's Deadliest Men dress as a medieval knight, pretend to play a lute and have an underling shout "welcome to your castle".
He seems to be enjoying it a bit too much. "We can all get regaled out of our brains," he said in one clip. You don't get dialogue like that in Wolf Hall.
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