Hugo Rifkind Hugo Rifkind

Shared Opinion | 22 August 2009

Rudeness at someone else’s wedding is worse than segregated seating

issue 22 August 2009

Rudeness at someone else’s wedding is worse than segregated seating

Is it possible for Jim Fitzpatrick, the Labour MP for Poplar and Canning Town, who so recently stormed out of a segregated wedding, to wear underpants? I don’t see that it is. I can’t see how he’d get hold of them.

Imagine going with him to a shop. He and his wife Sheila seem pretty inseparable, so she’d probably have to come too. Look Jim, you’d say. Voluminous stripy boxers, just the sort you like. Shall we get you some? ‘Never!’ he’d have to declare. ‘I shall only buy pants where my wife can also buy pants!’ Principles, eh? So off the three of you dutifully slog, to the lingerie section, to find him something frilly and plus-sized. But he has to try them on, and they won’t let him into the changing rooms, and so off he storms. Pantless. Forever.

Swimming pools can’t be easy, either. No problem getting there — he could wear his unisex leotard from home, under his clothes. Indeed, that would solve the pants problem rather nicely. But then, after he’s swum, where does he go to towel off and get dressed again? The men’s locker room is out of the question. So either they let him keep hold of Sheila’s hand, like a toddler, or he has to go home all sopping wet. And what if he gets pneumonia? What if there isn’t a spare bed in a mixed ward?

Sheila, I read, is a GP. That’s got to be tough too, hasn’t it? What with her beliefs, I mean. Some chap comes to see her with problems down below. He’s elderly. Maybe the old chap would rather get out his old chap in front of another old chap.

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