ALEXANDRA SHULMAN’S NOTEBOOK: The Mean Girls Club is bulging with new recruits

The astonishing injustice experienced by Post Office sub-postmasters has erupted like a torrent of lava, after rumbling below the crust of a story that has been long-running.

In particular, it has brought to public attention the twin villainesses of the saga, former CEO Paula Vennells and her henchwoman Angela van den Bogerd.

High-profile women are definitely not having a good time of it at the moment. Women have spent centuries wanting to be centre-stage, and now that they are, they are revealed as being capable of behaviour that is just as scheming, incompetent and malevolent as that of men. Not really a surprise.

Paula Vennells – surely one of the most vilified women in the country – was in charge of the Post Office during the period when many sub-postmasters and mistresses were wrongly accused of stealing funds, fired from their job and had to enter years of purgatory to try to clear their names. She may have decided, after huge pressure, to return her CBE, but that doesn’t return countless people’s lost lives.

Vennells is the latest villain, but cast your mind back to only a few weeks ago when Baroness Mone came into the spotlight for profiteering through the sale of PPE to the Government during the Covid pandemic. Initially, she had denied being involved but then admitted she had been, with the defence that she was protecting her family.

Until that controversy, it could have been thought unfair to criticise the ennoblement of the former lingerie tycoon with a somewhat brassy blonde persona, when so many men in the House of Lords had an equally dubious right to be there. But with that profiteering deal, Mone well and truly proved her membership of the Mean Girls Club.

And it’s not only by wrongdoing in business where women have shown their mettle. As Home Secretary, Suella Braverman demonstrated that she was capable of shocking callousness. Her suggestion that homelessness was a lifestyle choice was undoubtedly an opinion held, but left unvoiced, by her many dark-suited menfolk in the Cabinet. Braverman’s predecessor, Priti Patel, the pocket Genghis Khan in Bodycon, had similarly brutal form.

It’s almost as if such women feel bound to show they are no soft touch, by ever more extreme behaviour.

Regardless, it’s certainly true that when women behave badly, they get a harder time in the media due to the fact that even now, a controversial woman will always take up more column inches than a picture of another bloke in a suit, not matter what they say and do.

Stamp of approval for our local posties

Talking of post offices, Raj and Perita, who ran our local one for decades, retired at the end of last year. It was a momentous occasion, with grateful customers delivering good wishes and gifts. 

The couple had good-naturedly dealt with illegible handwriting and complaints about the price of stamps and had become a particularly essential part of our lives during Covid, when daily queues formed around the block. 

I wish they were still there so I could ask them what they thought of ITV’s Mr Bates Vs The Post Office. Even though we didn’t chatter much, I felt we knew each other. As yet, I don’t feel familiar enough with the couple who have replaced them to ask their opinions.

Saltburn’s make-up team deserve credit

I’m not sure whether prosthetics come into the Best Hair and Make-up category during award season but there have been a number of eye-catching creations this year. Bradley Cooper’s enhanced nose in his role as the conductor Leonard Bernstein in Maestro may have attracted accusations of ‘ethnic cosplay’, but this feature contributed hugely to Cooper to becoming a very convincing Bernstein.

Less heralded but certainly a talking point is Barry Keoghan’s naked scene in the film Saltburn. For many viewers, his triumphal, stark naked dance around a stately home was the main feature of the movie, provoking much debate about the size of his appendage waving wildly around. Eagle-eyed observers (such as me!) noted the prosthetic credit at the end.

Lightbulb moment in peerless Prague

I spent last weekend in Prague. It was absolutely lovely, but all city breaks in deep winter include the dilemma of what to do when it gets dark, you’ve done enough sightseeing and don’t want to just moulder in your hotel room.

Fortunately, not only is more avocado toast served in Prague than in Hoxton, but it’s filled with music. Although I have no appetite for classical concerts, my partner and I enjoyed a concert in the majestic Spanish Synagogue after spotting a poster for the event.

The next night we did the same, in the grand Smetana concert hall, having discovered the perfect filler between exploring the city in the daytime and time to hit one of the many bars and cafes for our first evening drink.

However, I still haven’t found the answer to my problems with classical concerts. What are you meant to think about as you listen? Surely not, like I did, wonder how on earth they manage to change the lightbulbs in the towering dome of the synagogue.

A bird’s-eye view of a disaster zone

Flying back into London, we got an aerial insight into the flooding of the Thames Valley. Below us, this usual epitome of our green and pleasant land just a few miles from the capital had turned into a huge lake, like an epic disaster zone.

Why such a whine about Calvin Klein? 

Calvin Klein have done it again. For years they’ve used ‘shocking’ advertisements to publicise the brand, from a teenaged Brooke Shields, using the tagline ‘Nothing comes between me and my Calvins’, to a topless fledgling Kate Moss in the 1990s.

Now, the ridiculous Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) watchdog has banned a new Calvin ad featuring half-naked singer FKA Twigs seemingly on the basis that her gaze is suggestive. I doubt anyone would have paid much attention to the advert but now that it’s banned, it’s online gold dust.

Calvin Klein 1, ASA 0.