FAT Tuesday is the Mardi Gras version of the day before Ash Wednesday. Pancake Tuesday, in other, more interesting, words. Whereas as Fat Thursday just happens to fall today.
This I learn from skimming today’s headlines. In a moment Donald Trump’s hair and his hissy-spat with Steve Bannon will be discussed. But let’s stick with Fat Thursday for now.
The full name for this shameful spot on the calendar is Fat Cat Thursday. This is because by lunchtime today, bosses of leading British companies will have made more money than the average UK worker will earn in a year.
This finding is based on research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development and the High Pay Centre. It could also have been based on analysis by the Chartered Institute of Well You Don’t Say (CIWYDS).
That’s because it’s obvious to everyone who isn’t a top boss that top bosses are paid far too much. According to the analysis in the news this morning, chief executives of the FTSE 100 companies are paid an average of £898 per hour – that’s 265 times as much as an apprentice on the minimum wage, apparently.
And at least 200 times as much as they deserve, according to entirely unprejudiced research by the CIWYDS.
Bosses of leading companies should earn quite a bit more than the average worker. That’s fair enough. But they don’t have to be that well remunerated. The only people who think Fat Thursday bosses should be paid so much are other Fat Thursday bosses.
Now let’s move on to Trump’s hair. The US President/world’s least favourite weirdo is in the news this morning because; well, because he is in the news every morning, like a sort of giant, attention-grabbing human cheese-burger who drips grease over the rest of the world.
The main Trump story today concerns his falling out with his former chief strategist Steve Bannon. This spat arises from revelations in Michael Wolff’s new book, Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.
Bannon told Wolff that the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign was “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”.
Trump blew back with: “When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind. Steve was a staffer who worked for me after I had already won the nomination by defeating 17 candidates, often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party.”
A typical bit of Trumpian over-statement and grandiose self-pleasuring, I’d say. His onetime ardent supporter and right-wing sidekick was now a nobody, even though Trump was still heaping Twitter praise on Bannon only the other week.
As for that “what is often described as the most talented field ever assembled in the Republican party” – often described by whom? Trump himself no doubt as he eyes himself in the morning mirror. Looking good, big boy. Hair in place, mouth loaded and ready.
Another revelation in Wolff’s book concerns the elaborate concoction that is Trump’s hair. Earlier leaks about the president’s hair have concerned the accidental application of too much hair dye to produce that nicotine-stain colour. And the use of a male-pattern baldness drug which is said to have the following side-effects: sexual, physical and psychological changes. Well, no one wants the low-down on the first; but the other two are there for the world to see.
According to Wolff, this is how Trump does it. He starts with “an absolutely clean pate – a contained island after scalp-reduction surgery – surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the centre and then swept back and secured by stiffening spray.”
Wow – that’s one hell of a ‘cure’ for baldness. As a man whose hair betrayed him long ago, I wish I’d thought of that one. Then again, being bald probably isn’t as bad as going around with a piece of elaborately coiffured roadkill perched on your head.