Katy Guest: Rant & Rave (06/02/11)

Rant

On Sunday she announced that she is a member of Save England's Forests, and on Monday she revealed the gruesome details of her recent Brazilian bikini wax; simultaneously, Rachel Johnson, better known as Boris Johnson's even more pointless younger sister, proved that she really will leave no relative unexploited in her slightly sociopathic quest for total media domination.

Writing in Vogue, the formerly chic monthly magazine, Johnson revealed that she was horrified when her teenage daughter confessed to having had her pubic hair waxed. So horrified was she, in fact, that she immediately copied her and then wrote all about it for the benefit of her nauseous readership. Is it too late for the young Miss Johnson to be taken into care? I'm thinking about the child cruelty aspect of this total national humiliation, you understand, because otherwise I would have to think about Rachel Johnson's hairy bits, and I've just eaten, thanks all the same.

Johnson found national fame in 2009 when she became editor of The Lady magazine and sacked its literary editor on camera for a TV documentary. But those of us in London meeja have had to put up with her for even longer. Julia Budworth, the redoubtable mother of The Lady's proprietor Ben (and a good argument for matrilineal primogeniture if ever there was one) has accused Johnson of using the magazine as "a vehicle for her own promotion". Dear, she uses her own daughter's genitals as a vehicle for her own promotion, so I really wouldn't expect her to hold back for a little old magazine.

Rave

You can always rely on a Scouser to speak plainly, so hats off to Liverpool City Council for pulling out of Cameron's Big Society pilot and telling him exactly why.

"When we agreed to become a vanguard, your Government promised to work with us to remove some of the problems and blockages that were preventing us from successfully delivering our Big Society programme," wrote the leader. "I have to say, the Government has failed to deliver a single change that we have requested."

Calm down, David, calm down.