Hallo Readers,

Every day some hapless Minister of the Crown is designated to do the rounds of the morning TV and radio programmes, there to explain how the Government’s Covid 19 strategy is going absolutely swimmingly. Although everyone with one eyeball and/or a working eardrum knows that it has not gone, and is not going, swimmingly; unless by swimmingly they mean that, like the Titanic, passengers have had to jump ship and take to the water. One day you might get Frank Spencer look-and-sound-a-likey Gavin Williamson, the Education Secretary. Another day you might get duller-than-ditchwater George Eustice, theAgriculture Secretary. Smoothie Nadim Zahawi, the Vaccines Minister, has been having some good run-outs recently, as the inoculation programme seems to be the only thing in the UK that is working. And very often you get the Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

Readers, you might think that the man who has presided over 130,000 deaths, pro rata the highest in the world, who has had 800 healthcare workers die while doing their job, who has handed out PPE contracts to all manner of weird and wonderful people and companies, and of whom the High Court said only last week failed to comply with procurement regulations, might, just might, have been willing to show a degree of contrition. But Readers, you would be wrong. Hancock does not do contrition. And not only does he not do contrition, but he bristles at the very suggestion that he should do contrition. And not only does he not do contrition and bristles at the very suggestion that he should do contrition, but he also upbraids those who raise these matters, because they should be thanking his team for procuring PPE and saving lives (apart, of course, from the 130,000 lives they did not save).  There may have been local shortages of PPE, but there was no ‘national outage’. No national outage, save that in many parts of the country which form this nation, medical staff and carers were wrapping themselves in bin bags and plastic aprons and reusing them and their masks again and again. For which apparently, we should be paying homage to Mr Hancock and his team. Perhaps he would like a hospital named after him? Or a peerage? 

Meanwhile we have still to discover how people and companies with less experience of PPE than WTF has of neurosurgery came to be awarded gigantic contracts to manufacture PPE. WTF has written about some of these contracts before, like Ayanda, an offshore finance company linked to a man who advised Secretary of Trade Liz Truss. That was worth £252 million. Now we have heard about Clandeboye, a company  in Northern Ireland that made sweeties, and which landed a gig worth £108 million. Not to mention Pestfix, which had previously killed pests, but which received at least six contracts worth a total of £345 million, despite having assets worth only £18,000, and whose first batch of face masks proved defective. We need to know about the system that allowed people recommended by Ministers to be ‘fast tracked’,  whether they had practical experience or not, and who stood a 1:10 chance of success, as opposed to everyone else, who stood only a 1:100 chance. All of these contracts were meant to be be made public within 30 days, but they weren’t, as Mr Justice Chamberlain noted in his withering judgment last week. However, Hancock saw nothing to apologise for because he would not have done anything different. He and the procurement team were too busy saving lives. Apart from the ones they didn’t ….. Thank you Mr Hancock.  Thank you. Oh and thank you all the people who worked and still work paid and unpaid to help the NHS do its job.

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We start our view the week’s fashion flops with celebritee and cosmetics tycoon Kylie Jenner, wearing an outfit by Tyrell.

If Kylie wants to indulge in a bit of frontage against the wall, that is up to her and her 213 million Instagram followers, but why does she need to do it in a see-through skirt with an inexplicable poke-hole and a top suggesting that members of the St John’s Ambulance Brigade have been practising First Aid on her?

As we have observed before, the apple does not fall far from the tree. Here is Kylie’s momager, Kris Jenner, wearing Dior. A lot of Dior.

WTF does not know whether Kris is practising to be a high wire artiste or is developing a new yoga pose which involves consuming cocktails when balancing on one leg, like a stalk out on the lash.  But either way, this is an excruciating mega-luxe-logo’ed excrescence constructed from “Technical Taffeta’. The cagoule costs £2,700 and the matching trewsies are a snip at £1,700, while the sneakers are a giveaway for £690. Which, whatever way you look at it, is a lot of money to pay to look stupid. Kris would have done better buying a clown’s outfit’s from the local fancy dress store.

To Paris, where we find actress Charlotte Gainsbourg wearing Jeremy Scott. She was great in her guest appearance on Call my Agent, by the way.

Jeremy, himself a distinguished former winner of the coveted WTF Summer Stinker award, designs both for Moschino and under his own name because it is more fun to take the piss under different labels. Here, he has put the lovely Charlotte in zipaway leather salopettes. If Peter Fonda in Easy Rider had dipped his head in a bucket of strawberry juice and had then been mauled by a malign coyote, this is what he would have looked like.

Now we find ourselves in LA with actress Phoebe Price going to CVS, a large drugstore chain.

Phoebe is an actress, although she seems to spend most of her time wandering around Los Angeles with parts of her person hanging out and her nether regions insufficiently covered. If anyone walked into Boots in the UK dressed like Supergirl’s gran,  the pharmacist would be dialling the local mental health authority before you could say stark raving bonkers…..

And next is transgender You Tube sensation and makeup artiste, Nikita Dragon.

Titsy, tacky and tawdry. And then some.  Nikita love….the Flintstones called. They want their outfits back.

And finally, we have singer Billie Eilish wearing items from her new clothing collection called The World’s A Little Blurry. I’ll say.

Everything is organic, apparently, except the socks. Billie’s hair looks very organic, because it is the colour of mould, and that position suggests that she has hanged herself. Fortunately, she is alive and well and flogging ugly shoes  like nefarious persons put on you before they drop you in the Harbour…..

“Try thinking of this as a totally immersive performance art installation.”

This week’s It’s Got to Go comes from WTF aficionado Louise from Islington, supported by WTF herself,  who is beyond appalled at the BT Sport set which she spotted whilst watching the (terrific) Arsenal victory over Benfica in the EuroRubbish Cup.

What in the name of all that is Holy is this???? It’s like the Wizard of Oz staged in the foyer at a Vue cinema. It’s vile. It’s nausea-provoking. It’s Got To Go.

OK Readers, that’s your lot for this week. Keep those comments coming in as they keep WTF chipper, and don’t forget your splendid suggestions for It’s Got To Go. Let us meet again on next Friday. Be good and stay safe.