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September 8, 2009

Red in tooth and claw

By Grey Cardigan

Just back from Somerset after a spot of postbox peppering to find the Derry Street sisterhood in disarray.

 

Daily Mail columnist Janet Street-Porter has bared her fangs and gone for fellow hyphen-hogger Liz-fucking-Jones after the latter clogged up several pages of the Mail and the Mail on Sunday whining about her ordeal at the hands of shotgun-wielding country bumpkins.

 

Under the heading ‘How the country tamed this bossy boots loudmouth’, Street-Porter, herself a country-dweller, writes: ‘I pay my neighbours’ teenage sons £5 an animal for trapping my moles – the countryside isn’t for the faint-hearted. It’s not a good idea either to swank publicly about your relative wealth. I buy my wine online so my choice of beverage remains a mystery.

 

‘Liz reveals that she feeds her pet chickens organic linguine from Carluccio’s. There’s a danger it could sound as though a 21st century Marie Antoinette has taken up residence in Somerset … It’s not done to appear flash. People work very hard to make a living farming in remote areas, and resent incomers patronising them.

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‘London values don’t work in the countryside. Liz offered a prize at the local horse show of a day out at London Fashion Week and lunch at The Ivy. Why anyone from West Somerset could be bothered to drag themselves to London to be treated like a visitor from an alien planet is beyond me.”

 

We await the inevitable response, but is it just me who thinks that this episode might give dear Liz an excuse to return to the bright lights of the city now that her book detailing her rural ordeal has been published? Although what she would do with several horses, a pack of dogs, a flock of sheep and multitudes of cats in Notting Hill does pose a puzzle.

 

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