Congratulations, Rob Ford: you’ve finally made me despise you

The first thing you see after leaving the baggage carousel at Toronto’s Pearson airport is an enormous photograph of Mayor Rob Ford. In it, the former high school football coach grins in his blingy regalia, teeth yellowed, one eye squinting in a semi-wink. His scalp is flushed and shiny through a receding blond hairline and his excessive girth spreads well beyond the frame. The overall effect is of a bloated albino lab rat on the wrong side of a thyroid drug trial. I always felt a bit sorry for him looking at it. Not any more.

Last week details of a video emerged that features the mayor, shirt unbuttoned, apparently smoking crack cocaine. In the 90-second film he reportedly sniggers, pants, catches his breath, calls Justin Trudeau, leader of the federal Liberal party a ‘fag’, declares himself ‘fucking right wing’ and proceeds to light up a glass pipe and get high as a Georgia pine.