Harry and Meghan named world’s most influential icons

It’s still some months until awards season gears up but Mr S is happy to announce this year’s winner of the Steerpike ‘Slurp Prize for Sycophancy.’ In a tough field, full of the usual deferential dross, slimy pseudo-babble and glutinous grovelling, one entry has today blown away all competition to clinch the gong, with an entry so obsequious it would make Uriah Heep cringe.

Step forward José Andrés with his fawning submission to this year’s Time magazine list of the ‘World’s 100 most influential people.’ The Spanish chef has prepared an appropriately nauseating entry on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, replete with a suitably airbrushed front cover which has them staring vacuously into the distance. The pair topped the ‘Icons’ section of the list with a tribute worthy of the Soviet organ Pravda. It begins thus:

There’s a famous TV interview of Harry, the Duke of Sussex, when he was an Apache helicopter gunner a few years ago. He’s sitting close to an airfield in Afghanistan, commenting on some royal news, when there’s a bang and a group of soldiers scramble behind him.