That’s me told… – At Home

A concerned lady reached out to me last week to suggest that I apologise to Boris Johnson. She said I had, “besmirched the prime minister’s good name” and that my comparing him to a dog was, “the worst type of gutter press opinion imaginable.”

She actually went on at some length quoting lines from a recent column I had penned where I had remarked that Boris was, “a rancid excuse for a pathetic pompous porcine panderer to the privileged peerage.” She said such an alliteration was “asinine to the point of perfection.”

The lady also took exception to a remark I had made about blood-sucking insects. To give you some context, I had previously written, “If Waffle (my dog) had a tick, I’d remove it using a tick-tool procured from a local pet shop. If the prime minister had a tick, I’d help the tick remove Boris Johnson.”

In response to this, she wrote, “The sad truth, Mr Devlin is that it is YOU who are a tick. What good have YOU ever done for the greater good? Boris Johnson is the leader of the United Kingdom and as such, his is an office which demands respect, even from YOU. To besmirch the prime minister’s good name in such a ghastly way (she actually used the word, ‘ghastly’) is dreadful. I would politely submit that you record, at your earliest convenience, a public apology for our prime minister as this is the least you might do after all the slanderous and offensive comments you have made.”

She went on, “I would also suggest, Mr Devlin, that if, in the future, you have nothing good or constructive to say about Boris Johnson, then you fall back on that time-honoured tradition of saying nothing at all.

“When all is said and done, your remarks have shown you up for what you are: A despicable and witless commentator with neither morals nor breeding. You think that you are funny? You think that you are entertaining? You are neither. You are offensive and you are crude. And your comments about the prime minister and his private life, were un-called for and frankly, libelous. Shame on you, Mr Devlin!!!”

That was me told. No less than three exclamation marks to punctuate her meaning!!!

At first I was tempted to ignore this lady altogether.

Her bile-soaked missive hardly merited a response. Then I considered pointing out that I had not, in fact, compared Boris to my dog but rather had suggested that my dog is a more honourable creature.

However I ultimately decided against engaging with her in this manner. It would only have, I suspect, fanned the flames of her ire and most likely she would have attempted to find out where I live so that she could picket in the garden. What I did do was look her up on Facebook and I knew immediately that I had found the right person. Apart from Boris Johnson himself, I’m fairly sure there aren’t too many other people of this lady’s name with a photo of the prime minister as their profile pic.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

Not much on the box this week. Maybe we should all go outside and play. However, if you insist on watching something, you could do worse than this lot…

First up, The Extraordinary Life of April Ashley (Monday at 10pm on Channel4)…

Documentary about the transgender model, dancer and restaurateur, whose life took her from the slums of wartime Liverpool to the height of Knightsbridge society. In the late 1950s, April became a dancer in an infamous Parisian nightclub, before travelling to Casablanca to undergo pioneering gender reassignment surgery. Returning to Britain, she became a model for Vogue before being outed by a tabloid newspaper. From then on, her life was a rollercoaster involving celebrity friendships, a landmark divorce trial and an MBE for services to transgender equality.

Alternatively, Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams (Tuesday at 8pm on BBC1)…

Freddie Flintoff is determined to prove anyone can play cricket whatever their background, so he sets out to turn a group of lively teenagers from his home town of Preston into a decent competitive team.

These lads have never picked up a bat before, yet in just a few weeks they will be facing teams who have been playing together for years. There is a lot to learn in a short space of time – but not everything goes to plan.