Claire Black: “Don’t give Pete Doherty a pedestal; give him a hard slap and a bar of soap”

THERE’S something a bit fishy going on. Are people really this thick? Is it just Americans (only some of them, obviously; the entire nation can’t be made up of gullible rednecks) or is humankind as a whole really just not that bright?

Remember the film based on the play The Madness Of King George III by Alan Bennett? It had to be renamed for US audiences just in case the poor saps got confused and thought it was a sequel.

“It was all right,” they might have drawled on leaving the multiplex, “but it wasn’t a patch on the first two.”

Then last month the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention felt the need to make a very serious announcement.

Zombies are not real.

Did you hear that people? It’s OK. You can stop stockpiling those tins of hot dogs and beans and bottled water after all. Like, phew.

Perhaps the CDC only had itself to blame. It was, after all, the agency that had issued spoof “zombie apocalypse” warnings. How they had laughed. Then they kind of stopped, following freak attacks in which the perpetrators, high on bath salts, started acting a bit like – well – zombies.

“CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead (or one that would present zombie-like symptoms),” it stated.

Lightening the tone somewhat, it added: “If you are generally well equipped to deal with a zombie apocalypse you will be prepared for a hurricane, pandemic, earthquake, or terrorist attack.”

OK, so you can keep those hot dogs after all.

Now we have an official announcement from the National Ocean Service, assuring us that, actually, mermaids don’t exist either.

It felt moved to make the statement after a television show about the mythical creatures proved so darned realistic, US audience thought it was real. “No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found,” it told confused viewers.

It’s telly, you eejits. Get a grip. The Grinch didn’t steal Christmas, Bobby Ewing wasn’t abducted by aliens and Scientology will never, ever make any kind of sense. Honestly, you couldn’t make it up. Except that’s exactly what they did.

WHILE I’m on a jingoistic rant, what is it about the French and Pete Doherty? I thought I was hallucinating when I saw a collection designed by the grubby old rocker in The Kooples. Then Jean Paul Gaultier unveiled his collection at Paris Couture Week which was, he said, inspired by the “decadent dandy”.

Yuk. Doherty needs the oxygen of publicity like he needs another syringe full of heroin. There is nothing glamorous or exciting or seductive about this sleazy little oik. Don’t give him a pedestal; give him a hard slap and a bar of soap.

HOW do you like your boobs? Society seems 
to find them perfectly palatable in those tiresome media reports 
of WAGs on their jollies, romping on the beach 
in four tiny triangles of Lycra.

But when one mother dared breastfeed her child in a Bristol cafe she was told by the waitress: “Don’t ever come back with your tits out again.”

She did. Her friends came too, forming a lactivist flash mob, all breastfeeding as one. It made the national press. Bet the waitress feels a right tit now.