JEFFREY Donaldson and Squinter are the same age, give or take. Our careers have developed side by side, although of course Squinter never hit the giddy heights in public life that the Kilkeel native hit.
While it wouldn’t be fair to say that Squinter has watched Donaldson like a hawk for the 40 or so years that our parallel professional lives have progressed, Squinter has naturally paid close attention to the ups and downs – mostly ups, let it be said – of the former DUP leader’s colourful and eventful story.
And here’s the truth. For virtually all that time, Donaldson has been the target of gossip, rumour and jokes – all of them about the nature of his personal and sexual life. And nowhere have the gossip, rumour and jokes been more enthusiastically disseminated and enjoyed than in the twin worlds of the media and politics.
That’s because salacious stories about famous people are meat and drink to journalists and a schadenfreude-flavoured bowl of ambrosia for politicians. While gossip, rumour and jokes about politicians have come and gone – some in a flash, some with a bit more stickability – there is no person who in Squinter’s lifetime as a journalist has been more steeped in sexual speculation than Sir Jeffrey Mark Donaldson.
More than that, I don’t know any journalist or politician – and I know a few – who hasn’t, like me, been assailed on all sides by Donaldsonian scuttlebutt.
So it comes as something of... a surprise, let us say... to hear some hacks and reps claim with completely straight faces that they knew nothing of Donaldson’s hidden life.
It’s not as if there’s any shame in having heard all the inappropriate and (at the time) deeply, deeply libellous chit-chat and done nothing about it. Squinter never heard anything that came anywhere near corroborating any of the things he’s heard about Donaldson, and neither did any of the daily newspaper and broadcast journalists who are more plugged into party politics than a weekly newspaper old-timer like Squinter.
Had he or anybody else printed anything even vaguely suggestive about Donaldson then m’learned friends would most certainly have filled their handmade bespoke boots.
Perhaps those who failed to hear the insistent beat of the Donaldson alarm drum live quiet lives of teetotal rectitude; for it has to be said that – as is the case with most of the best unprinted scandal – many or even most of the Donaldson tales were told in the pub.
Things that go bump in the early-summer night
IN the week when the last of the schools broke up for summer, the designer fashion retailer TK Maxx has opened a Halloween section.
No, you didn't hear that wrong. There's a Halloween section in TK Maxx on Boucher. Probably in all the other ones too, because these marketing things are generally corporate orders and not the whim of branch managers.
GHOSTBUSTERS: The Halloween section in TK Maxx comes just four months before the big day
Normally it's Christmas coming early that has half of us disgusted and half of us delighted. And normally Christmas coming early means the start of October. Squinter knows, because he's written about it more than a few times. It used to be a big thing, Christmas displays being put up a month before Halloween. But now it's bog- standard and perhaps even early, because the big wire trolleys in the supermarket chains with the Quality Street, Heroes and Roses tubs are rolled out some time around the middle of September.
It's 86 days from the start of October to Christmas, which seems a lot, even if we're getting more and more used to it. But it's four months to Halloween - 124 days, to be precise. And let's be honest, even in this day of elongated seasonal celebrations that's a hell of a long time. But Squinter's question is this:
Why is the Halloween season coming earlier this year than the Christmas season normally comes? Don't get Squinter wrong, Halloween's great and there's nobody loves the parties, costumes, ghost stories and apple cakes more than he does. And it's getting bigger every year. But even so. 124 days? That's scary.
Twitter is lacking glitter
TWITTER. Or X, as nobody calls it. Has the time arrived to cut back? Or to check out completely?
Squinter asks because while it's four years since Space Karen bought the platform and it's been slowly going to the dogs ever since, its deterioration in recent weeks and months has been spectacular.
Even with Elon Musk's foregrounding of far-right content and the silencing of progressive voices, conversations still abounded and ideas were still exchanged.
But here's Squinter's Twitter experience right now: He'll post a tweet, or reply to one, and almost immediately he'll be assailed by clips of Indian village artisans doing metal
work in their bare feet; loud Americans in shorts fighting in car parks; sorry, parking lots; street chefs in Vietnam cooking fast food with massive amounts of boiling oil.
Twitter, it's fair to say, has become a clearing house for crap Tik Tok content. And it can't be Squinter's fault. If he was being fed content based on the algorithm's interpretation of his interests, he wouldn't be getting amateur Asian metalwork seminars, Illinois punch-ups or life- threatening menu recommendations. He'd be getting things that are relevant and current. Jeffrey Donaldson content, for instance.
On second thoughts, keep up the good work, Elon.
