Stop the press, spoil the sourdough starter, and cancel the farmers’ market. Because Ellen DeGeneres is (possibly) leaving the Cotswolds. You know? Ellen DeGeneres? The former US talk show host whose telly show ended amid accusations of bullying but who later pushed back by claiming that she was the victim of orchestrated misogyny but in the meantime moved to the Cotswolds with her wife, Portia de Rossi, ostensibly to escape the tyranny of the Trump regime? Oh, that Ellen DeGeneres.
Well, according to a “source” who blabbed to the Mail on Sunday, Ellen will soon be heading back to California, and it’s not because the ongoing omnishambles of the entire UK political scene is beginning to make team Trump appear sane. No, Ellen simply, allegedly, cannot face another Cotswolds winter.
I know, bless, poor little Hollywood millionaires, are their tootsies getting cold in their Fendi wellies? Are their self-care saunas not working? Or has their heating bill just arrived? It’s risible, obviously. And yet, speaking from experience it would seem that, to paraphrase the bible, let he who has actually experienced a so-called Cotswolds winter cast the first stone. And I have, and so I won’t.
A Cotswolds winter is essentially the same as an average British winter, but for one key difference. Mud. Mud everywhere. Mud on everything. Mud in the car, mud in the house, mud on the floor, mud on the dogs, mud on the walls (yes, all over the walls!), mud on your clothes, mud on the furniture, mud, mud, mud! Sometimes, in the morning, you step out of the shower, put on some crisp clean clothes, skip down the stairs and take one final reassuring look at yourself in the hall mirror only to find that, somehow, inexplicably, you’re already covered in mud.
And it’s not a generic countryside thing. It’s a Cotswolds thing. The soil here is thin, Jurassic and lime-rich, meaning you add a single raindrop and it becomes lethal brown super glue. Even if you’re lucky enough to make it back indoors relatively unscathed, the tons of ambient mud around you (on the dog, on boots, bags and waterproofs) will soon harden, dry and puff insidiously outwards into a suffocating nano-cloud of silt that transforms your entire abode into post-Vesuvius Pompeii.
• Ellen DeGeneres takes the art of the flip to the Cotswolds
I now wear the equivalent of a hazmat suit to the station for my commute to Paddington, and I don’t take it off until I’m past Reading. All the other commuters are the same. You see them on the platform, carefully protecting their box-fresh best and sporting that quietly nervous look, not quite out of danger yet, like angsty staff on the roof of the US embassy before the fall of Saigon. And the rest of the Cotswolds punters, on the opposite platform? Like Orcs from The Lord of the Rings.
And that’s the central irony to the myth of the glamorous celeb-filled Cotswolds. Everyone here looks rubbish. No one is smart. Everyone’s filthy. Like an army of tramps. All the rest is duplicitous hype and nonsense. And all that David Beckham lifestyle porn? Where he sports the latest “Cottagecore” outfit of pristine cardigan, clean cloth cap and spotless carpenter jeans, usually featured in a social media post that reads, say, “This is me, in the garden, checking on my tomatoes”? Rest assured that five seconds after the picture is taken he’s most likely gone full Swampy. The character reference here, in fact, is Arnold Schwarzenegger in Predator, when he first faces the alien and realises that, simply by hanging in the jungle, he has accidentally covered himself, head to toe, in mud.
And so my heart goes out to DeGeneres. I feel that she was sold a lie, or that she stared into the celebosphere and thought, “Cool. I’ll go to the Cotswolds! It’s full of fabulous people in big houses enjoying stylish soirees in fashionable outfits!” And what did she get? Mud.
KST is a cut above the rest
Say it ain’t so. Kristin Scott Thomas might be about to exit the smash TV spy drama Slow Horses. An industry insider has claimed that the 65-year-old appears “miserable” these days, and not very “enthusiastic”. And? I once interviewed the great Dame in the dressing room of a London theatre and she wasn’t exactly bouncing off the walls with excitement. The room was tiny, she mostly went there, post-matinee, to sleep on a chaise longue and so, as I nestled at her feet, like an obedient corgi, she demanded the door be opened wide to the busy corridor behind me, presumably in case I crossed a journalistic line and needed my marching orders. Obviously, because I’m a pro and a deeply lovely person, this never happened. In fact, midway through the chat, she got up, shut the door tight, and returned to the prone position. Besties forever. Point being, to someone else, say an industry gossip, Kristin Scott Thomas might’ve appeared miserable that day. But to me she was just instinctively, intelligently, and refreshingly, serious.
Dogless walkers — weirdos!
Speaking of countryside absurdities… I empathise fully with Jennifer Saunders, who says that going for a walk without her beloved whippet, who died last year, is weird and “utterly pointless.” Over the years, I have become so well trained, or brainwashed, by my dogs that I simply do not understand people who choose to walk without one. I sometimes meet men, for instance, in the woods alone when I’m out walking at dusk. I instantly think, “Serial killer?”, and move on. Or I see a woman approaching, again alone, and so I can’t help but surmise, “Break up, right?” Or two men together. “On the run?” Or two women. “Family crisis?” Or children. “Lost?” I mean, what possible reason is there for walking without a dog?