CHARLIE Dimmock, a gardener, is one of the many people Britain was briefly enamoured with for reasons that escape it now. Nobody is willing to admit to their passion for all these:
Kirstie Allsopp
Kirstie does have something about her, like a sexy chipmunk, albeit a chipmunk with a honkingly upper class accent and questionable taste in dresses. But is the Location, Location, Location presenter a bona fide sexual fantasy? It’s possible she’s accrued extra attractiveness due to her association with rising property prices. It’s been such an obsession for Britons since the 1990s it’s surprising there aren’t cases of people trying to have sex with actual houses. (You could use the letterbox.)
Charlie Dimmock
Like some powerful pagan deity, Charlie reconnected city dwellers with the primeval forces of nature, transforming pokey suburban gardens into pastoral idylls with the judicious use of raised plant boxes. Also you could see her nipples. Unfortunately, if her popularity was largely the result of nipples it suggests men are little more than slavering beasts. And female nipples aren’t that hard to come by, surely? Did men in 1997 – when Ground Force started – go to bed with a woman and delightedly exclaim: ‘Oh wow! You’ve got them too!’
Benedict Cumberbatch
A heartthrob but ‘not conventionally handsome’ was the consensus on Mr Cumberbatch, in a classic example of confusing being famous with attractiveness. Is that too harsh? Not really – imagine Benedict working in a pub or a newsagent’s. Now he looks a bit weird, doesn’t he? A bit shifty. The sort of person who might have a frighteningly large collection of unsavoury porn. No wonder they cast him as Doctor Strange.
Zara Phillips
At some point in the early 2000s the Daily Mail decided Zara was posh totty, and we’ve been paying the price ever since, with endless dull articles about her competing in some horse thing, or going on holiday with her pet morlock Mike Tindall. Obviously she deserves credit for being a world-class equestrian, but how many of us got the chance to find out if we were good at it as children by hopping on a horse in the back garden? If, as we suspect, her appeal is all some creepy Daily Mail posh-girl-in-jodhpurs fetish, avoid the tedious articles and wank yourself senseless over Jenny Agutter in The Eagle Has Landed.
Ross Kemp
Kemp was supposedly sexy in a rough-around-the-edges way, but looking back it’s easy to see what he was: a trial run for Jason Statham. The ‘hardman’ persona, the bald head, the ‘intense’ stare – he’s unmistakably a prototype. Having cracked the basic genetic code, scientists refined it, making a slimmer version that could do quips. They sold the new Statham to the Fast & Furious franchise, and whenever he dies in a stunt gone wrong they grow a new one in a test tube.
David Baddiel
If you are very old, like Gandalf, you’ll remember when comedy was ‘the new rock-and-roll’, largely due to Newman and Baddiel playing Wembley Arena. Therefore try-hard dweeb Baddiel was, temporarily at least, a rock star. Unfortunately what women meant by fancying ‘them’ was that they fancied Rob Newman, and David benefitted only by association. He did manage to do a passable impression of a ‘lad’ in the lads’ mags of the time, but they were written by wankers as well.
Myleene Klass
You can never truly escape Myleene, like the malevolent entity in It Follows. After Hear’Say were bolted together by the pop act production line show Popstars, the media decided Myleene was not only incredibly sexy but also highly intelligent due to playing the piano. Back in 2014 she was even invited on a politics show to witlessly harangue Ed Miliband, where she demonstrated that her true skill was being annoying. Even now she’s a regular in the Mail, either modelling bikinis or just walking around. It’s all a bit baffling. Who signed us up for an infinite amount of Myleene? And can we cancel the contract?
