Charlotte Gill Sense Of Humour Failure

Sometimes, pundits underestimate their worth to the world in which they operate. More often, they overestimate it: the number of those who believe everyone should know who they are is disproportionately large in relation to their actual presence. Vanity, it seems, reaches further down the media food chain than Sarah “Vain” Vine. So it has proved with Charlotte Gill, now deputy editor at ConservativeHome.

Charlotte Gill. Don't you know who she is?

Ms Gill has proved herself to be an appallingly immodest individual, albeit with much to be modest about, not least her blind right-wing tribalism, which leads her into defending the indefensible - provided that the SOB she defends is her side’s SOB.

Pretentious? Who, Moi?

So it was when Philip Rutnam resigned his Civil Service post and effectively denounced Priti Patel: “I really think this Priti Patel thing reeks of sexism. My suspicion is that Sir Philip Rutman couldn’t handle that a woman was his boss” trilled Ms Gill, being unaware how to spell Rutnam correctly, and that Rutnam had had four female bosses previously.

Still, minor research fail, eh? But then came a remark from Nev Fountain, who for Tories is A Bad Person because as a contributor to Private Eye magazine, he is an equal opportunity piss-taker. “I really think this Charlotte Gill thing reeks of opportunism. My suspicion is she can’t handle being dubbed Junior Hartley-Brewer”.

Ms Gill wasn’t standing for that. Not when she could sit down: “This is the second time a Private Eye writer has called me ‘Junior Hartley-Brewer’. I know this may be hard to compute, but not all women are the same person”. Her fellow right-wingers rallied round, with Dominique Samuels reassuring her “I literally always get this - people claiming I’m trying to be another woman in politics. It really is annoying”.

That’s the same Dominique Samuels who told the media that Turning Point UK were not going to replicate their US parent’s Professor Watchlist. But they just did. Meanwhile, Mark Wallace, Ms Gill’s boss at ConHome, predictably sneered “Personally I’m looking forward to when he finishes writing the gags for Dead Ringers and they actually start telling them”. He hasn’t improved since he was shouting people down for the TPA.

In any case, Ms Gill had miscounted her “Junior Hartley Brewer” appellations. After she tried to look clever with “Laurence Fox is a new genre of man: the anti-woke bad boy” (no, didn’t work), Fountain had responded “Junior Hartley-Brewer speaks”. Then, when she snarked at Brian “Prince Charles has got to go. He is absolutely not King material; even Jeremy Corbyn could manage a better performance!”, Tom Jamieson, Fountain’s writing sidekick, followed suit with “Junior Hartley-Brewer clocks on”. So twice beforehand.

Which meant Ms Gill was one short (no change there, then). And David Ziggy Greene added another earlier today with “Not all Private Eye writers are the same, you Junior Hartley-Brewer :)”. Moreover, given her tone-deafness, she should embrace the name.

Why? Because Julia Hartley Dooda (for it is she) may be a shameless self-publicist, climate change denier, selfish long-haul flier, bad listener, unreconstructed snob and appallingly right-wing with it - but at least she has her brain engaged most of the time.

Private Eye’s scribblers are flattering Charlotte Gill. Who isn’t up to realising it.

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