Not caring for someone in the news can be down to personal prejudice.

Take me and Kirstie Allsopp. Perhaps you are in the dark about who she might be. If so, feel free to put your feet up on the sofa of blissful ignorance.

Those of us not in that position know Allsopp as a presenter of property programmes such as Location, Location, Location, along with assorted spin-offs. Oh, and a terrible Christmas decoration affair at which I may have slung non-festive barbs.

Why the antipathy? Oh, Allsopp oozes entitlement and class privilege, or she does to me, and she’s always sounding off about things, usually without first checking the irony Geiger counter.

A search of her name of the BBC website reveals the following selection…

Kirstie Allsopp: Parenting ‘isn’t rocket science’…

Kirstie Allsopp’s parenting tips: ‘I smashed my kids’ iPads’…

Kirstie Allsopp leaves Twitter over iPad smashing backlash…

Oh, and don’t forget that time she said young people could afford a home if only they gave up coffee, gym and Netflix – seemingly forgetting her family are said to have helped buy her first property.

These are reasons to be irritated by Allsopp, or my reasons. Perhaps this is unfair, as plenty of people seem to like her, including my wife, who enjoys the property shows and even willingly watches that baubles programme.

So why has Allsopp, who never shies from attention, fallen again from the over-stuffed cupboard of news? She has been contacted by social services after allowing her 15-year-old son to go interrailing around Europe for three weeks with a teenage friend.

All this, or the way it happened, was partly her own fault. When her son returned from his jaunt, Allsopp mentioned his homecoming on X, formerly Twitter (yes, she flounced off but must have flounced back).

Someone then seems to have referred her to social services at Kensington and Chelsea Council, who said they were obliged to act.

Some people on the site were gleeful about Allsopp being shopped, while it was also pointed out that social services intervene far more often in the lives of those far less privileged.

As for those who cry ‘Leave Kirstie alone’, they are likely the same people who complain loudly if social services don’t intervene when they should have.

But against my better sour judgment, I sympathise with Kirstie Allsopp here. Yes, she’s privileged and annoying, and a less advantaged parent might not have sent their child off on an interrailing trip around Europe.

But isn’t she’s right to suggest no harm was done, that her son has learned from the experience (even if her saying all that is still irksome).

Now, I’m afraid, you will now have to put up with another of those probably pointless anecdotes where an ageing columnist plucks something they once did from the drawer of dim distance. Does this help or add anything – who knows, but here goes.

In 1970, aged 14, I travelled alone from suburban Manchester to Brussels to stay with a family who’d been our neighbours in the cul-de-sac. Little about the journey has stayed in my mind, but as this was long before the Channel Tunnell opened in 1994, I must have caught the train to London, then another to the coast, then crossed the sea, then caught another train to Brussels.

It is possible these arrangements are not as remembered, but it was eons ago. However I got there, nothing about that trip now seems remarkable. There and back, no harm done. Not as adventurous as the Allsopp boy, but a shaping experience.

It is still possible to wonder at the lack of something more important to report. But as I’ve managed around 600 words on this so far, the sin of giving Kirstie too much attention has been committed here, too.

But just because someone is maddening doesn’t mean they aren’t right sometimes.

 

NOT much politics here today – we all need a rest – but it has been interesting to see the row-about-nothing-much concerning the Labour peer and party donor Waheed Alli.

Depending on who you believe, Alli either has or temporarily had a pass to Downing Street. This bit of no-news prompts the Daily Flail to wring its hands about ‘Sleaze rotting our politics to the core.’

Perhaps that was a headline left over from the Boris Johnson days of gold wallpaper, Tory backers or mates being given lucrative Covid contracts and boozy lockdown parties in Downing Street. Except, of course, the Mail – and the Telegraph – forgot to report much about any of that.

No reason why there won’t been a Labour scandal sometime or other, but this one’s surely a non-starter.