Mandy, I am my own father....

November 22^nd –There’s a fair bit of nepotism goes on in life, y’ think? There’s the usual everyday innocuous sort, y’ know, where the father/mother wants to hand on the dynasty (billions or a handful of gambling debts) to the children rather than have the government snaffle it all up into their greedy little chicken claws (as is their wont) or the money lender come and break their legs with a claw-hammer as part-payment. Those sorts of things are what we would all like to be able to do (well, apart from the handful of gambling debts that is) and it’s only natural for us to put our children first. Where it can get shitty is when the nepotism starts to impinge on positions of power and influence, particularly when these positions of power and influence are handed on to a chinless, undeserving arse; such an instance was the dealings underhanded by our fragrant Lady Thatcher and that shit of a son of hers, Mark.

My dislike and level of contempt for Ms. Thatcher is well documented but there’s a special place reserved in my lexicon of dislike for her son. Never in the field of human nepotism has so much been deposited into someone so undeserving by someone so lacking in integrity. That anyone except another of his ilk could have had any faith in a person who’s mother praised Pinochet and rubbished Mandela has been proved beyond any doubt in his last, notable (but probably not final) brush with the forces of law and decency.

Along with a couple of other very shady characters he tried to orchestrate a coup in Equatorial Guinea in 2004 which, although it failed spectacularly, came close to netting him, his family and his cohorts a stake in a country rich in minerals and cheap labour. Mummy’s influence got him off relatively lightly and his plea bargain, blaming everyone else for the mess and pleading ignorance on the whole coup ideology, laid the pathway for a hefty fine and 4-year suspended jail sentence…and what does the establishment do with such a shady, slithey character? Why reward him, of course! He’s proved himself to be one of the gang and is now a Baron and uses that oxymoron of all oxymorons used by many in his position, the title of the Honourable… If there’s another on this planet who is less deserving of this title, I’d like to meet him. After the coup attempt it was suggested he should be stripped of his title…so, whadd’ya reckon…deal or no-deal…? The upper echelons of the ruling classes are riddled with such tales of nepotism of the most blatant kind and we all know damn well what would’ve happened had it been you or me or some other schmuck without contacts…seventy-billion years in a single hole in the ground with nowt but well-used toilet water and rats for company and food. So it’s good to read a tale that can at least raise a grin as to the outcome of nepotistic shenanigans.

On this day in 1990 Bill Wyman (remember him) informed the world’s press he was divorcing his third wife (of just 18-months) Mandy Smith (a sometime model – aren’t they all – and music performer of doubtful abilities…aren’t they all…but allied to people in the biz and in the know the sky’s the limit) who he’d been dating since she was 13…and by her admission having a sexual relationship with since she was 14…  He was 34 years her senior (so possibly enough life left in the old dog then) and his calling a halt to proceedings of a marital kind was probably urged on by Ms. Smith’s mother accompanying them on honeymoon; you’d think that was some strange kind of nepotism going on there…but it gets worse and now you really do have to stay alert…OK?  
It took £½mill to end the marriage and Mr. Wyman feels he was badly treated by the press over the affair (?) and, knowing how the red-Top press behaves that's probably true, but that’s not the codicil (and the possibility of nepotism of the very highest order) to it all. Shortly after the end of the affair, Mr. Wyman’s son, Stephen, courted and married Mandy’s mother, Patsy, who was 16 years his senior and, if you’ve been paying attention, you’d have realised by now that, had Mr. Wyman stayed married to Ms. Smith then he would have become his own grandfather…