By Abigail Pennson, our reasonable, plain-speaking middle-class columnist slightly to the right of Hitler
SINGERS, yes plenty of them. Actors? The usual surfeit. But there was not one single ordinary working-class Boris supporter at the Concert for Ukraine.
Where were the taxi drivers? Turned away at the door. Where were the hot dog vendors? Left manning their booths. Where were the bouncers? Locked, heartbreakingly, just outside.
What did we have on stage instead? Prancing, preening so-called celebrities, whose number one cause is always self-promotion, making millions from war.
Ed Sheeran? A flame-haired clown cartwheeling around the stage caterwauling pitying nonsense about a homeless cocaine addict?
The Manic Street Preachers? The Compulsory Official Communist Band of the People’s Socialist Republic of the South Wales Valleys?
Camila Caballo? A Cuban straight from the movie Scarface? Anne-Marie, that pink-haired punchy prostitution-promoting princess who married the late Tom Jones for his money?
I had a few gins to fortify myself through this BBC wokefest broadcast on ITV, but I’m pretty sure I saw Billy Bragg with Woody Guthrie, the Red Army Choir and Marlon Brando on bass limping their way through We Shall Overcome.
And how much did it raise? £12 million? That’s barely an oligarch’s jetski.
Perhaps if they hadn’t aimed for an audience of teachers, social workers, diversity consultants and gender studies lecturers they might have made a little more for their ostensible cause.
Nigel Farage can’t hold a tune but he can draw a crowd. Lawrence Fox is one of this country’s greatest Shakespearean actors. Morrissey – post-political awakening – talks simple, plain good sense.
Nor need they be stars. What about the bedrock of this country? The hunt supporters, the City brokers, the honest bigoted man in the street. Why not let them hold a concert?
Even Vladimir Putin himself – who packed out the Luzhniki Stadium last month – would be less sickeningly self-righteous. And he’s got friends who know how to put their hands in their deep, deep pockets.
Let him organise the next one. And begin it by every single performer at this one being sent to the gulag for life.
Apart from Paloma Faith. I quite like her, apart from her speaking voice.