Thread by @harriet1marsden

This article is filled with some genuinely batshit lines. Let us review: Society writer William Cash reveals how Prime Minister agreed to let him raise love child dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7…

“Why did I take Helen Macintyre to Mark’s, the private members’ club where I’d had my wedding lunch after each of my two failed marriages?” Good question! And why did you keep the receipt? You’re not trying to get a shifty plug in by any chance? No, of course not.

“And to make matters worse, the ancient manor house that was my life’s other passion was once again in serious disrepair. Even today, Upton Cressett’s diamond-leaded windows...” not to seem cruel but I actually laughed out loud

“I was served with divorce papers on the eve of my 40th birthday after my wife hosted a dinner for me but then failed to appear.” That is... bizarrely brutal

“Next came Dr Vanessa Neumann, a green-eyed beauty known in the diary pages as the ‘Cracker from Caracas’ thanks to her Venezuelan heritage and because she’d previously dated Mick Jagger.” BUT OF COURSE

“I was, to paraphrase Jane Austen, a single man in possession of a good house – and very much in need of a wife.” I tripped over my own foot reading that line

“she was an unpaid ‘art adviser’, and that she lived in a large townhouse in Belgravia with a chef, a butler and a chauffeur.” WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK

“Helen, I realised, belonged in a Thackeray novel, an enigma wrapped in mink.” That is your second bastardisation of a literary super cliché mate, the next will be your last

“There was none of the usual stuff from Waitrose or Tesco. Instead, the kitchen rack was piled with dusty £500 bottles of Latour, Pétrus and the like.” 🤣

“Upton Cressett ... a building I was already calling ‘Money Pit Manor’. For the English, our houses are often so much more than just bricks and mortar. In my case, Upton Cressett had always been the most dependable of my relationships.” WHAT THE SHIT SOMEONE HELP HIM

“The truth is that I was party to blame for its terrible state, having employed a cowboy builder whose idea of ‘renovation’ was to wreck the place. It resembled an architectural salvage yard.” Sounds like you are blaming the cowboy builder tbh

“With the foundations of my life falling away beneath me I, too, required as serious a makeover as my Elizabethan house.” THATS IT, ENGLISH PEOPLE ARE CANCELLED

“At the mention of Davos, Helen took a gulp of wine and looked away. ‘You know that Pierre may not be the father,’ she said. I nodded, saying: ‘Pierre is dark, like you.’” A veritable geneticist

“She also had an almost complete lack of reserve or guard when it came to talking about men, love, politics and sex.” Unlike you of course, who definitely hasn’t just written thousands of words in a national paper about those things - about someone else’s personal life no less

“After lunch, I walked her to the Mini. As she stood by the car, I kissed her beside a parking meter. (Yes, she had a ticket).“ BRACKETS YES SHE HAD A TICKET!!!

I will never be able to unread this

“I’d been to a party at the Spectator magazine where, as the then editor, he’d jumped on to his mahogany desk to make a speech. It juddered under his weight.” Rude!

“I’d been relatively ancient, in my mid-thirties, when I got engaged to my first wife.”

Excuse me I’m going to lie down

“I had no personal problem with Boris. He’d known my family for years as my father, Eurosceptic MP Bill Cash, had been at Oxford with Boris’s father, Stanley.” OH HOW VERY CASUAL

“For myself, I feared being burned alive by the fire storm that would destroy anything, or anybody, within its range if the news were to break.” 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

She seemed to love Upton Cressett ... Instructions soon followed for buying a complete set of Fissler cooking pans (in Harrods’ sale). I was to consider only Miele dishwashers and washing machines and so on.“ BRACKETS IN HARRODS SALE I can’t even

“The ‘Boris Summit’ at Brown’s was a long meeting – worryingly so. Helen was away for at least two hours. After the second hour started, I began to think I was a fool for having suggested a swanky hotel.” SHES AT LUNCH FOR TWO HOURS AND YOU THINK SHES PLAYING AWAY??!

“thankfully, when Helen finally came back, she looked perfectly normal.” As opposed to what, freshly shagged?

“Boris told her he knew about Upton Cressett as he’d been there for a political house party ... at the invitation of my father and my mother, Biddy, who used to work at Downing Street. ‘Biddy, I love Biddy. Will Biddy be there?’ Boris had exclaimed.” BIDDY DOES NOT REAPPEAR

“I couldn’t take the pressure-cooker atmosphere any longer so I grabbed some clothes and went down to the bar. I remember watching football on a TV screen as I sank two whiskies. I could feel I was losing her.” GOOD JOB YOU WERE DOING SOMETHING MATURE AND CONSTRUCTIVE THEN

“I wanted to be with Helen and for us to live between London and Shropshire once the house was finished.” Again with the house! You are obsessed with this bloody house! It’s ruining your life mate!

“I found Helen’s energy and fierce, fun, optimism refreshing. I remember once driving in her Mini past a red-brick apartment block near Sloane Square, and she pointed to a building. ‘I lived in a flat there when I first moved to London. My rent was more than my salary.’” WTFFFFFF

“It was easy enough to see why men – many men – found her so alluring.” I could write a thesis on the indelicate shade thrown by these em dashes

“After he had taken the photo of Stephanie in her pram and left, I turned to Helen. ‘Nobody who isn’t a paparazzo would ask to take a photograph at 9am,’ I said. ‘I think we’re being set up.’” Wow, the intellectual heft of you

“Our last lunch together was at Motcombs wine bar in Belgravia. We drank two bottles of rosé in the sun and talked of marriage.” There is too much rosé in this story!! You’re not in fucking Provence

“Upton Cressett will be ready in a few months,’ I’d said.” THIS ARTICLE IS ACTUALLY ABOUT THE SAGA OF RENOVATING UPTON CRESSETT, never mind the love child red herring

“We had even ordered curtains for the master bedroom. They were to be edged in dark plum silk velvet, with tassels that could have been chosen by Madame de Pompadour.” I don’t... I don’t know how to respond to this. Curtains are cancelled?

“The killer blow came by text while I was driving through Putney Common the day the story broke, as I was on my way to see a therapist. So stressful was the B-factor, I’d needed counselling to deal with my romantic despair.” Cry for sympathy aside, why were you texting in the car

“My marriage plans were dust. Once again, I was out in the cold – only this time it wasn’t clear what my crime had been.” I think you should seek help re your house obsession, even your metaphors are renovation-related

“Distraught, I went to stay with my friend Elizabeth Hurley at her farm in Gloucestershire, where Helen and I had been guests in much happier circumstances a month or so before.” THIS IS THE BEST BIT, Pulitzer-winning stuff, this line could have legit plugged the Titanic

“Plans have a way of going astray when Boris’s sexual adventures are involved. When it comes to women, especially smart, attractive women, he is inclined to risk all.” HE WAS LITERALLY GOING TO LET YOU RAISE HIS DAUGHTER AS YOUR OWN TO AVOID A SCANDAL

“As somebody who has been flattened, Big Daddy-style, by the emotional carnage that he leaves around him, I found myself questioning his moral character. But my conclusion is that Boris is simply unique because of his election-winning charisma.” Oh god, the sweaty desperation

“I too had a failed degree in human relations. I knew what it felt like to be a ‘hack on the rack’, homeless and facing an expensive divorce.” BUT WHAT ABOUT UPTON CRESSETT AND ITS DIAMOND-LEADED WINDOWS you faithless whore

“I felt for Boris, who had by now been slung out of his home ‘like a tomcat’ by wife Marina.” OK so you were dumped for offering to raise another man’s child; he was “slung out” because he fathered a child with someone else. Yep totally comparable

“People often ask me about my thoughts on Boris. My answer? Trust the women, not the jealous rivals.” Trust the women like.... Marina?

“The women in his life – many of them smart, feisty and attractive, like Helen – have mostly remained stoically supportive. That’s an unusual form of loyalty and testament to his many qualities.” Apart from the two divorces, then?

“Personally, I took the view that smart and intelligent women are more reliable judges of human character than most. Smart women can’t stand pessimists.” I don’t even know where to start with this, except get a bloody thesaurus, you need some synonyms you shit amateur Freud

“While others wrote him off, I found myself placing a £150 bet two years ago on him to be Prime Minister, at 6-1. I’m glad I did! I have become a true Boris believer.” CLEARLY! Your tongue is so far up his arse in this article that I think you might need expensive surgery

“I wanted to marry Helen and bring up your daughter as my own. It was that simple.'

'Right… er… got it. Thanks for letting me know.'”

Precisely the response that a man of strength and character would give! Don’t you think? No? Perhaps you shouldn’t end on this repartee then?

We come to the end of this truly immense piece of writing, and I have learnt two things: 1) posh home-owning English people are a different species, and 2) never shag a journalist. You’ll end up with a bazillion-word hit job in the Sunday papers, or a love child. Or indeed both.

P.S. Who else is curious about the eventual fate of Upton Cressett? Hope the fee for this article paid for some decent renovation and a new builder! Bonne chance, Monsieur Cash, I raise my glass of rosé to you