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Spectator
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Emma Thompson is wrong about sex
I watched most of Good Luck to You, Leo Grande when it was on TV some months back. I wondered whether to write something about it. But I can't write about every representation of sex that offends me. Who am I – Mary Whitehouse? Thankfully Dame Emma Thompson, the star of that film, has now handed me an opportunity. Can I first say something about her? I can't stick her. Is she a good actress? I don't know. I can't tell – it seems to me that she leaks her personality into every role. In Sense and Sensibility it seemed she was merging the character of Elinor Dashwood with the character of Emma Thompson, the famous self-righteous know-it-all celebrity, and I did not want such a merger. Actors are meant to get their own personalities out of the way, aren't they? I can't think of any other roles except for the sad wife in Love Actually, a film I greatly despise. So, in Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, an annoyingly named film, Emma merges her personality with that of a retired teacher who, though married, has never been sexually satisfied, and so engages a young male prostitute. She is oh so English, oh so awkward, oh so middle-class, and oh so brave for pursuing her desires despite the cultural weight of repression. Her dialogue is full of sub-Alan Bennett stuff about wondering whether she should be shopping at Waitrose – a distraction from the fact that the prostitute is about to have sex with her. The young man, by the way, is a paragon of modern sensitivity – a male tart with a heart, even a sort of gentle Jesus figure for our day. At one point she calls him a 'sex saint'. Maybe the film is written by Richard Curtis – I can't be bothered to find out. Whether or not is it, Emma has been, in a sense. Meaning that her screen persona is a product of his claim to portray the English soul in a modern way. It is a bogus claim – but I am making enough enemies for one day. It is excruciating to watch this woman being very polite between bouts of sex – but not excruciating in the edgy way the film intends. It is excruciating because one is being preached at by thickos. The message is this: sex is just sex, it's a human need like having a good dentist – but more profound. So we should ditch the moralistic idea that sex belongs in long-term relationships, that casual sex and paid-for sex are somehow wrong. Emma herself has now underlined this message. At a screening of the film – presumably for some 'charity' event – the dame explained that sex is very good for one's health and wellbeing: 'It should really be on the NHS. It should. It's so good for you.' She claimed that some of her older, lonelier friends had started to hire escorts, just like the brave lady in the film. She added: 'We need to learn about our own response to: 'What if when you're unwell, you can't make connections, but you need sex?'' Therefore, she said, sex-workers should not be stigmatised: they are 'just like accountants – sex workers are doing a job'. She is oh so English, oh so awkward, oh so middle-class, and oh so brave for pursuing her desires despite the cultural weight of repression OK, deep breath. And apologies if you have heard this before from me – in relation to Lily Phillips or some smutty reality show on Channel 4. Sex is quite complicated. In fact, it is two things. It is a strong human appetite – one that we notoriously share with lesser creatures, in fact. And it is also the almost-opposite of this: an act of commitment to one person, with whom one enjoys great psychological intimacy – for whom one forgoes the anarchic-appetite side of sex. We could call this sex in the full sense. The duality is difficult and confusing. People like Dame Emma – and whoever wrote the film – who very strongly assume themselves to be very intelligent, are advised to tread a bit more carefully. Am I saying that casual sex and paid-for sex are 'wrong'? Not quite – but I am saying that they are different from sex in the full sense: sex accompanied by long-term psychological intimacy. Casual sex and paid-for sex are ambiguous at best; only sex in the full sense is worthy of celebration. The fault of the film, and of Dame Emma's remarks, is that the boundary is blurred, and its message is muddled. The film implies that it is psychologically healthy and liberating to detach sex from commitment – to treat it as a mere physical need. But on the other hand, it places a lot of emphasis on the therapeutic nature of the encounter – on the young man's sensitivity, on the woman's sense of gaining a sort of enlightenment as she at last tastes carnal pleasure. So it is subtly disingenuous: it implies that an emotional and even spiritual connection is part of 'good sex', even as it preaches liberation from boring old relationships. Our culture needs to think about sex more.
Times
14 hours ago
- Lifestyle
- Times
Why does summer bring out all the smug couples?
I love everything about summer, even the school run. Getting my daughter dressed and out of the house feels easier in the sunshine, and the walk past the duck pond to her primary school is positively bucolic. However, this summer — the first since the break-up of my marriage — the school run comes with a cost. I'm spotting smug couples everywhere. Morning sunshine seems to be a magnet for WFH couples to walk to school en famille then do something smug-coupley before starting their working day. The other morning I noticed one couple holding hands like maniacs as they dropped their child at the gates. Another couple breezed off for a walk around the woods, chatting away, while a few minutes later, I spotted yet another couple grabbing a morning latte at the local posh café-hotel. 'Go away,' I thought to myself, like the summer Grinch, as I marched home on my own. • Read more expert advice on sex, relationships, dating and love My grudge isn't just confined to the school run. Suddenly smug marrieds are everywhere. It hits me without warning when a friend complains about her husband's 'irks': 'Oh he's in Waitrose again, he's cooking a roast for dinner. I keep telling him it's not roast weather now, but he insists.' Or when another friend drops into conversation that it's been their wedding anniversary. 'Super low-key, we didn't want to make a big fuss for 16 years, so we just went out for steak and chips.' Coupley things that have never irked me before now feel like someone is prodding me with a needle when I least expect it. I feel pangs of uncontrollable envy, and annoyance at my situation. Here I am, aged 47, living solo without my kids for half the week. The things that my friends consider normal, and I once did too, now seem far away and fantastical. I'd love someone else in my house to be doing the shopping, especially fronting a trip to the supermarket (I can no longer afford Waitrose). I'd love to be going out for a 'low-key' meal for two to celebrate my anniversary (steak and chips is my favourite). This week was my 20th wedding anniversary. In another lifetime we would have thrown a big party or have organised a holiday around it, but in reality, I've barely mentioned it. Twenty years! It's a biggie for sure and since we're not yet divorced, I feel it still counts. I also felt it was important to celebrate: it's a wonderful achievement to have three children and to have come this far. Mostly the marriage was happy, it's just the last — ooh — five years that have been a little rocky. Now we're living apart and emotions are still raw, however, it's been a tricky subject to navigate with myself let alone with my ex. But we did do something on the day. In the end, he made me lunch (burgers) at his new home and we rewatched the video from our Ibiza wedding from June 23, 2005, which I had finally had digitised from the DVDs. It had dated! It was beautiful! It brought on some tears, at how young and happy — and yes, smug — we once were too. • No, we single women are not desperate for a partner My ex and I got together when I was 23, so I've existed my entire adult life as a couple, doing all the things that couples in love do. We've held hands like maniacs, grabbed morning coffee together, gone off on walks and weekends away, hosted dinner parties that showcase all the things that I now regard as 'smug' when other couples get up to them. The things that irk me now are the things I used to do quite naturally. I used to be the woman joking about my husband's niche trips to the supermarket or nonchalantly talking about my anniversary plans. I wonder how many people I accidentally annoyed by my smug coupledom in the process …@mollyjanegunn
Spectator
a day ago
- Business
- Spectator
M&S, please stop playing with your food
Maybe it was when M&S began selling chicken katsu sando-flavoured crisps, or launched its Plant Kitchen range with its inedible alternative to chicken, or began slathering 'green goddess sauce' on already clammy ready salads. Or maybe it was the thousandth time I traipsed, freezing, through the tightly packed rat run of a station M&S Food – there are no fewer than three in King's Cross – in search of something that I never found. Namely: something nourishing and delicious, rather than a freezing piece of over-marketed randomness. At any rate, many of us in the more high-falutin' bits of the middle class fell out of love with what was once the high-water mark of grocery. M&S Food now feels less like an emporium or supermarket or even a nice sandwich shop, and more like a cramped maze round the most unwholesome end of postmodern consumerism. It is certainly a supermarket in a great hurry. M&S is relentless. It never rests. Waitrose quietly introduces staples from Ottolenghi's cookbooks and online health trends – thanks to the latter, avocado oil, pistachios and spicy Korean gochujang sauce are all frequently sold out. But there is nothing quiet about M&S's approach to keeping up with the influencers. Hence its weirdest offering yet. M&S is now selling a strawberries and cream sandwich inspired, completely incomprehensibly, next to the sweet sandos of Japan. Sweet sandos, for those who haven't been subjected to such things, are fruit sandwiches, formerly sold only in luxury fruit shops in Japan, but now sold across the whole country. Why? Why? Why would a British consumer accustomed to the cherished traditional summery treat of strawberries and – on its own, or in jam form on scones – want to grab a quick strawberry sando from M&S and guzzle it on the packed train home? It's beyond weird. After all, this is not – in fact – Japan. For one thing our trains are much worse. For another, we view processed bread as something of a downgrade for fine or fresh ingredients. We also see sandwiches as savoury, lunchtime or teatime food. It is true that in the whackier corners of food TikTok, fruit sandwiches make some viral appearances. I've seen strange things with watermelon (one vegan account I follow recently encouraged viewers to cook it in rectangular slabs as if it were salmon), and a fair few East Asian-inspired mango sandwiches. But such content is mostly viewed – by non-East Asians at any rate – with fascination or horror, as opposed to the more usual resolve to recreate the recipe at home. M&S runs the risk of becoming a novelty shop M&S runs the risk of becoming a novelty shop. Earlier this year it launched chocolates shaped as emojis, including the suggestive aubergine. Its Christmas ranges cause overwhelming bemusement; all British supermarkets go berserk at holidays, but M&S becomes downright deranged. This past Christmas saw chocolate and cinnamon tortilla rolls, white mulled wine and turkey feast dip. It's as if a room full of drunk and high teenagers were left in charge of a retail algorithm. M&S has leaned so far into trends that its website actually has a Top Ten Food Trends list for 2025, which predicts (in the way that anyone plugged into social media may predict) mushroom everything (a health trend, especially lion's mane), pistachio everything (courtesy of the vulgar Dubai chocolate obsession – a mix of pistachio cream, kataifi fried dough and chocolate) and hot honey cottage cheese. M&S boasts explicitly about how it has mastered TikTok – for instance, having created a viral cookies trend in 2024: customers 'couldn't get enough of' its 'hazelnut crème'. This may garner the chain some extra clicks online. But for the people – the boring old middle-aged, middle-class people who actually need food, like cheese, meat, bread, veg and fruit – it's becoming harder to shop at M&S. It's a shame, because the basics there are really rather good. Indeed, amid the exhausting experimentalism, there are still a few sane items left at M&S. If train station outlets are mostly snacks, various flimsy plastic containers of sandwiches and picnic-style items, the mid-sized ones – of which there is one near me – are aisles dominated by ready meals. The endless variations on coq au vin, chicken, steak and chips are probably all quite nice, and very sane, but a little depressing. Is this really the best the British middle class can do?
Fashion Network
3 days ago
- Business
- Fashion Network
High-end designer Sophia Webster links with Waitrose for £12 summer tote bag
British luxury accessories designer Sophia Webster is taking her signature style to the grocery aisles with the launch of a limited edition summer tote created exclusively for John Lewis sister brand Waitrose. Launching on 30 June in 315 of supermarket's branches across the country and online, the bag is described as 'a playful yet practical piece… set to be the must-have accessory of the season'. Available for a limited time and retailing at £12, the tote 'combines style and function… generous in shape and sturdy in build… designed for everyday use'. Tote bags have been a popular option for supermarket and department store retailers in linking with high-end designers as they offer an accessible and practical product at a low price with the halo effect of an upscale label. This one is made from recycled plastic bottles with a wipe-clean finish, the re-usable tote features an exclusive butterfly polka dot print and a 3D butterfly charm created especially for Waitrose. The bold colour palette teams one of Webster's signature pinks 'Raspberry Rebelle' as well as contrasting navy straps. Brand founder and creative director Sophia Webster said: 'I wanted to create a bag that would bring a smile to its wearer on a daily basis and elevate ordinary moments - whether that's a grocery shop, a walk to the gym, the beach or the school run. I'm a huge fan of Waitrose and was absolutely delighted to partner on this creative moment." Waitrose buyer Tim Shaw added: 'Welcoming Sophia Webster to the Waitrose community is an exciting way to bring fashion-forward, feel-good design into our customers' everyday lives and make it more accessible and fun.'
Fashion Network
3 days ago
- Business
- Fashion Network
High-end designer Sophia Webster links with Waitrose for £12 summer tote bag
Tote bags have been a popular option for supermarket and department store retailers in linking with high-end designers as they offer an accessible and practical product at a low price with the halo effect of an upscale label. This one is made from recycled plastic bottles with a wipe-clean finish, the re-usable tote features an exclusive butterfly polka dot print and a 3D butterfly charm created especially for Waitrose. The bold colour palette teams one of Webster's signature pinks 'Raspberry Rebelle' as well as contrasting navy straps. Brand founder and creative director Sophia Webster said: 'I wanted to create a bag that would bring a smile to its wearer on a daily basis and elevate ordinary moments - whether that's a grocery shop, a walk to the gym, the beach or the school run. I'm a huge fan of Waitrose and was absolutely delighted to partner on this creative moment." Waitrose buyer Tim Shaw added: 'Welcoming Sophia Webster to the Waitrose community is an exciting way to bring fashion-forward, feel-good design into our customers' everyday lives and make it more accessible and fun.'
