End of the world, by other means; is Jonny Wilkinson the saviour?

Apocalypse – once it was carbon-pumping evil industry’s fault, now it’s down to lending by evil banks. The shift has been from climatic to economic, as represented by HBO’s new series Americatown, originally intended as a saga of immigration in New York, now repurposed as a musing on total US economic collapse and ensuing mass migration. (Think American Chinatowns in every far flung capital, can Britain be far behind? Imagine that, the British quarter in Paris – all greasy chip shops, booze-soaked bars and equestrian shops. I suppose the equivalent already exists across Spain, in the guise of expat communities.)

Britain, meanwhile, is ‘Broken’, according to both Noel Edmonds and The Sun (but not Gordon Brown). The second, smaller leg of Noel’s recent resurgence rests upon his various projects at Sky1, the parent company of which of course, owns The Sun – Broken Britain is clearly a common theme for both of them, and trips of the tongue rather nicely. ‘Slightly misshapen Britain’, ‘Sprained Britain’, or ‘Damaged Britain’ don’t work quite as well. One imagines these were thrashed through in short order at an editorial conference; the beauty of broken is its close association to fix (‘If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’), on which Noel and his redtop ally are both keen to wax. Even Richard and Judy are getting in on the act. In these troubled times, it’s nice to celebrate the nice; as long as no-one is exploited, who can argue with that?

So far left in the cold by Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper empire, a nonetheless resurgent British Conservative party has developed its own particular take on the problem – David Cameron pledged to mend Britain’s ‘broken society’. Similar, yet different. Whatever their aspirations to broad-based support, the Conservatives probably think themselves a little above alliteration. He was later forced to clarify, claiming that he only meant ‘parts of Britain’ were broken; akin to a human breaking an arm or a leg, perhaps – it would not naturally follow that the entire person was broken. Does Mr Cameron believe that partially disabled people are broken? Does he have an axe to grind against paraplegics? We should be told, certainly before the paralympics. Perhaps he has some horrible plan up his sleeve.

Amid all these differing versions of looming apocalypse and its varying solutions, there lies the path taken by Jonny Wilkinson – drifting between injuries once again, the once-prolific goalkicker appears to be beating the hippy trail, taking the path to enlightenment through Buddhism via quantum physics, and wearing his hair long. How long before he fronts a documentary explaining the discipline, or writes an illustrated pop-up book on the Large Hadron Collider? One for the Christmas list, that.

Land of the free? Outlook uncertain for molested mannequin

Things come in threes, goes the theory (why not quartets, quintets or sextets? Is it the Holy Trinity?), and such it seemed to be earlier in the week, when your correspondent spied the first of three jarring sights. Super-soaraway newspaper The Sun has taken to London’s streets once again, with human sandwich boards balefully holding front pages to entice readers with the splash. Next to these unhappy creatures are bins that resemble those that the capital’s free-papers live in (including cosmopolitan Sun stablemate thelondonpaper). But what’s this – 30p per copy? How many people just swoop in thinking it’s a free promotion? (They get used to it in gyms, hotels, airports etc.) How is the poor sandwich board supposed to handle that? Does he leave his bin to go on a mad dash for justice, or is 30p here and there considered collateral damage? The Times also does this, you wonder if the mistake rate there is quite as high.

More jarring was the sight of a woman yanking the trousers off a mannequin in the middle of Marks & Spencer – it seemed terrible indecent, although horribly telling inside a brand that increasingly appears to trade class for crass ruthlessness. Was the mannequin to be afforded no privacy? Could this woman not contain herself? (Or was she pretending to be Andrew McCarthy in the 80s?) Strangely, this is less odd in terms of a window display – there you expect it, and models occasionally pull stunts in them. So public, you almost expect the cheeks to blush.

Least jarring of all (and so this is a duo, not a trio) was the sight of ‘Jesus’ in the cat of a family from South Bend, Indiana. Sadly the good Lord would only reveal himself in a chance photo of the feline’s furry underside, and was not visible to the untrained eye. (At least with a pitta bread, he stays in one place.)