Opinion

Jake O'Kane: The world will be a safer place with a walking President Biden than a bumbling President Trump

Behind the tears and tinsel, the This Morning studio appears to have been a toxic wasteland for many of its contributors

Jake O'Kane

Jake O'Kane

Jake is a comic, columnist and contrarian.

Happier times for the former presenting team for ITV's This Morning, pictured in 2017 before the recent very public falling out between Phillip Schofield, Holly Willoughby and husband-and-wife duo Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes. Belfast-born Holmes, now on GB News, has been scathing about Schofield and says Willoughby should follow him 'out the door'
Happier times for the former presenting team for ITV's This Morning, pictured in 2017 before the recent very public falling out between Phillip Schofield, Holly Willoughby and husband-and-wife duo Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes. Belfast-born Holmes, Happier times for the former presenting team for ITV's This Morning, pictured in 2017 before the recent very public falling out between Phillip Schofield, Holly Willoughby and husband-and-wife duo Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes. Belfast-born Holmes, now on GB News, has been scathing about Schofield and says Willoughby should follow him 'out the door'

ARE you OK? I'm asking because just like This Morning host Holly Willoughby, I lie awake at night worrying about you; no, honest, I do.

I've never been a fan of daytime television – much too positive and sickly sweet for my taste – and so I wasn't too surprised to discover that behind the tears and tinsel, the This Morning studio appears to have been a toxic wasteland for many of its contributors.

I was shocked, however, at the level of disingenuous concern acted out by Willoughby as she read, dead-eyed from a pre-prepared script, on her first day back at work.

Burying her stilettos in Phillip Schofield's neck, she put as much clear water between the two as possible. So much for their special relationship and shared family holidays; when it comes to protecting careers, none are as deadly as 'nice' television presenters.

The only element of honest emotion in the whole sorry saga came via Eamonn Holmes who, refusing to defer to any script, called out the ITV executives who, he claimed, knew and covered up Schofield's affair with a much younger man for years.

While I recognise the seriousness around some of the allegations against Schofield, I found the media coverage of the case utterly disproportionate. Most UK print and television news seemed obsessed with every detail of the unfolding melodrama, fixating on every development.

Ignoring the war in Ukraine, the cost of living crisis, refugee crisis and crumbling health service, their focus on This Morning was a damning indictment of UK press priorities.

We've reached a stage where celebrity trumps everything in the news cycle, unless it's Donald Trump of course, or is that yet more proof of the cerebral in news coverage being displaced by celebrity?

President Joe Biden falls on stage at the US Air Force Academy Graduation Ceremony in Colorado earlier this month. Picture by AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
President Joe Biden falls on stage at the US Air Force Academy Graduation Ceremony in Colorado earlier this month. Picture by AP Photo/Andrew Harnik President Joe Biden falls on stage at the US Air Force Academy Graduation Ceremony in Colorado earlier this month. Picture by AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

POOR 'oul Joe Biden took another tumble last week. The President was on his way back to his chair having given a commencement address at a US Air Force Academy graduation ceremony in Colorado when he went down.

A sandbag on the stage was seemingly the culprit although the President had begun to jog from the podium, a dangerous habit of his that I've written about in the past.

Desperate to stymie debate over his physical ability to fulfil the Presidential role at 80, Biden regularly overextends himself physically, leading to mishaps such as from falling from a bicycle to tripping whilst running up the steps of Air Force One.

The octogenarian is toppling more often than a toddler learning to walk, raising the nightmare scenario of a broken hip and the handing of the Presidency to Donald Trump.

So if the US Consul General is reading this, please convince Joe to act his age and walk rather than jog, as the world will be a safer place with a walking President Biden than a bumbling President Trump.

Ian Paisley has warned it could be an 'ice age' before Stormont returns. Picture by Brian Lawless/PA Wire
Ian Paisley has warned it could be an 'ice age' before Stormont returns. Picture by Brian Lawless/PA Wire Ian Paisley has warned it could be an 'ice age' before Stormont returns. Picture by Brian Lawless/PA Wire

IAN Paisley or – as I prefer to call him, Mr Perma-tan – took to television last week to scupper any possibility of a return of the NI Assembly. Obviously feeling irrelevant, Ian announced that it could, "be an ice age" before the Assembly reconvened.

I found his analogy somewhat surprising as I don't remember an ice age being mentioned in the Bible, maybe Ian meant to say 'a great flood'.

Much of DUP infighting still stems from the personal rift between the Paisleyites and Robinsons rather than any political disagreements. During the reign of Papa Doc, great efforts were made to portray the party as one big happy family; in truth, it functions more like one big dysfunctional family.

Peter Robinson was never fully trusted by the Paisleys – after all, he never joined the Reverend's Free Presbyterian Church. An undoubted master organiser and political strategist, Robinson was accepted more in sufferance than love, and when Ian Snr was toppled, the knives were fully unsheathed.

The balance of power within the party regularly swayed between the two camps with the Paisley segment in the ascendancy after the Iris-gate scandal erupted.

Their joy was short lived as Peter Robinson adjusted, gifting the leadership to his protégé Arlene Foster. With the RHI debacle her undoing, she was exiled to GB News and perma-tan Ian succeeded in placing his own surrogate in the shape of Edwin Poots into the leadership role, if only for a matter of days.

For so long as the DUP internecine war continues with our society picking up the bill, the eventual winner for dominance will have a pyrrhic victory, as there's every possibility their inheritance will be a bankrupt state.