A-hole in a K-hole: Katie Hopkins’ ketamine adventures

I don’t want to get bogged down in the highly nuanced process of how Lost in Showbiz subjects are selected each week. It is, as Jerry Maguire once informed his client, an up-at-dawn, pride-swallowing siege that I will NEVER fully tell you about. Occasionally, though, the universe chucks you a bone, and this week it’s a headline reading “Katie Hopkins collapses after ‘taking ketamine’ in South Africa.” Yup. Call off the search.

By way of background, the former radio host and former Daily Mail Online columnist crowdfunded a trip to South Africa, where she has just spent almost two weeks meeting victims of farm violence, and putting interview requests to relevant parties in idiosyncratic style: “a big black man like you, afraid of a little white woman like me?” (I’m going to shock you: she didn’t manage to land that one.)

This sort of haute journalisme was accompanied by videos and shots of her posing moodily in denim at various locations. Think of her as Bluejean Terreblanche. None of these was as eyecatching, though, as the photo Katie tweeted of herself laid out on a road, being given an injection in her shoulder by a paramedic, with a gnomic caption including the words “ketamine 1, Hopkins 0”.

Early thoughts? Mainly that whatever stupid shit you’ve done on ketamine, at least you haven’t made a documentary about farm violence calling it white genocide in a manner absolutely guaranteed to make matters worse.

Alas, this wasn’t the take chosen by Katie, who seemed to be upset that the curious picture she had made publicly available was being publicised. “Dear British Press,” ran a later statement. “Ten days of reports on the murder of white farmers and NOT ONE WORD from you. I receive medical ketamine for a serious dislocation & you salivate like dogs over meat. Shame on You.”

All right, all right. Cool your boots, Ben Bradlee. Honestly, you tweet ONE photo of you getting a Special K injection on the South African pavement and people are more interested in that than the dodgy reportage of a known racist in a highly sensitive and complex area where it is simply not evidentially clear at all that white farmers are being murdered at a higher rate than the average South African.

Anyhoo. For a time on this trip – about 10 minutes – it had seemed our misunderstood foreign correspondent wasn’t even going to make it out of Johannesburg airport. As a series of dramatic tweets had it shortly after Katie had landed: “At passport control, I’ve been through security and I’ve been detained, my passport has been marked for spreading racial hatred here in South Africa …”

Needless to say, a video detailing this diplomatic face-off was promptly recorded and posted. Given that madam lives for the drama, it was no surprise to find her instantly positioning herself as the most famous political prisoner in South Africa’s history. I’m hoping the experience will one day be chronicled in a book, ideally entitled Long Walk to Departure Gate. According to Katie, the action was taken “on the orders of the ANC”, who were “trying to prevent me entering the country”. They didn’t end up succeeding, perhaps distracted momentarily by more pressing matters at the top of the government.

Either way, Katie was able to go about her business. The ketamine was for a shoulder dislocation, which seems to be one of the various medical conditions she Doesn’t Like To Talk About. And yet, I’m not sure anyone’s ever suffered in silence more noisily than Katie, who never misses an opportunity to self-deprecate about her health. None of which is to deny her enormous sympathy for a long struggle with epilepsy (reportedly now cured following an operation). It is merely to question her most cherished affectation: that she doesn’t make a fuss, unlike the feckless and self-indulgent obese, or the feckless and self-indulgent poor, or whoever is in her sights this week. In fact, she disports herself with the stagey resilience of some theatrical diva with earwax. “I’m FINE, darling. You KNOW I hate to make a scene. Could you possibly see if you can lay your hands on a bath chair to get me through to curtain-up?”

I long ago lost count of how many times Katie has given media interviews about the epileptic fit she suffered on the parade ground at Sandhurst, which we are always encouraged to believe was the British army’s great loss, having prevented her from passing out and beginning active service. Was it? I can’t help feeling it was a kind intervention by the Fates, given how easily terrified and unhinged Katie is by terror attacks happening in cities several counties away from the West Country where she lives. Having read all her near-verbless thinkpieces that accidentally reveal how comprehensively terrorism works on her, it is surely clear that someone of her delicate temperament would not be suited to frontline service. To adapt Jack Nicholson’s A Few Good Men speech to Tom Cruise with regard to Katie’s notional military service: “You have the luxury of not knowing what I know; that Katie Hopkins being invalided out, while tragic, probably saved lives.”

In this respect (as in many others) she reminds me of fellow second world war romanticiser Nigel Farage. As discussed before, for all their misty-eyed harking back to the Blitz spirit and whatnot, Nigel and Katie are precisely the sort of people who would have had to be interned during the war for spreading panic. Indeed, as the nation’s most desperate Trump apologist and now Soros-baiter-in-chief, Farage has far more in common with Lord Haw-Haw than he does with any of the brave military heroes he ever invokes.

And as far as Katie goes, I’m not sure people who call for “a final solution” are really officer class, certainly not in the UK. Perhaps she will have more luck in this latest pose as a “war” correspondent. But all things considered, she has proved herself rather better suited to the battles of reality TV, which tend to revolve around who pulled whose hair extensions in the garden gnome task. Unpleasant, yes, but hardly El Alamein.

He is risen – Mel Gibson’s latest resurrection

Hilariously redemptive scenes in Hollywood, as Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ sequel really does seem to be happening.

The first movie was the highest-grossing motion picture ever made, which is just one of the many reasons Mel’s journey back from what happened on the hard shoulder of the Pacific Coast Highway was a whole lot easier than some naive people thought it would be. Ditto the journey back from the later domestic violence allegations, and tapes in which Mel could be heard verbally abusing his former partner, in violent and racist language. His comeback is now almost complete, with a best director Oscar nomination last year, and all manner of credible actors perfectly willing to work with him.

As for titles, we must hope Mel goes for something accessible and light, like I Still Know the Passion of the Christ, or Seriously, Dude, the Passion of the Christ. We do know that Jim Caviezel is in advanced talks to reprise his role as Jesus, which feels best. I’m not sure the saviour of mankind should rise again played by someone completely different, and have all the disciples act like they haven’t noticed. It didn’t work in Ramsay Street when the Robinson family did it with the second Lucy, and there’s every chance the apostles won’t pull it off either.

Other than that, Caviezel is in raptures about what Mel has cooking: “There are things I cannot say that are going to shock the audience,” he declares. “The film he’s going to do is going to be the biggest film in history. It’s that good.”

A blockbuster resurrection in every important sense, then, and we look forward to hearing from the great man himself in due course.