Laura Craik on grand gestures of love and Russell Brand’s ticklegate

Our columnist also explores the celebs who will and won’t be together this Valentine’s
Is the grandiose love gesture really over?
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Laura Craik7 February 2019

I know times are hard, but even by current, post-January standards of penury, Londoners’ expectations this Valentine’s Day seem to be set extraordinarily low. Nobody likes a boaster, but I’d take a hundred Instagram posts crammed with roses, chocolates, his ’n’ hers terry towelling robes, sex toys, petal-strewn hotel beds and personalised Marmite jars over the sad-eyed glut of onedownmanship in which the city currently seems to be engaged.

Is the grandiose love gesture really over? I only ask because I recently received the saddest little email ever to grace an inbox, from a retailer touting ‘Valentine’s candles, scrapbooks and mugs to make the most of a solo night in’. Just what Cupid ordered: a candlelit scrapbook session for one. What are these sad unfortunates supposed to be pasting into their hypothetical scrapbooks? Cat pics?

Pots of love: how would you show them your affection?
Pots of love: how would you show them your affection?

Londoners have always been low-key about Valentine’s Day. ‘Nah, we won’t bother with cards,’ says every London couple, every year. ‘Go out? No way. Full of bell-ends.’ Faced with exhortations to purchase everything from a £20,000 bouquet (yes, really) to a cookie the size of your head (now you’re talking) to a £8,700 mini-break featuring your own personal photographer (run for your life, people), perhaps it’s understandable that we all feel less loved-up than loved-out.

Romance isn’t dead. It’s just buried under a shiny satin avalanche of clichés, waiting to be sparked not by a grand gesture but a small and thoughtful deed. Love is ordering the lamb dish even though you’d rather have the prawn. It’s putting the bins out, changing the light bulbs, even if they’re GU10 halogen spotlights with dodgy transformers that require a stepladder, a knife and a degree in astrophysics to make work. Although if anyone’s offering, I’ll take some flowers.

Russell Brand says he thinks tickling children is 'an attempt to subvert the child’s bodily autonomy' 
Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock

Off-Brand

Russell Brand (above) is calling for the tickling of children to be outlawed, because he thinks it’s ‘an attempt to subvert the child’s bodily autonomy, to take away their right to their own space and peace’. Those of us who first came across Brand as the looming, in-your-face, rabble-stoking jester of Big Brother’s Big Mouth — and then later clocked his claims to have slept with more than 1,000 women — might be surprised to find him recasting himself as the defender of ‘bodily autonomy’. But what’s really depressing about Brand’s latest reinvention as a caring parent is that it squeezes one more bit of joy out of all our lives — grown-ups and infants — and adds yet another layer of anxiety.

We’re not supposed to tickle our children now? Really? Is that yet another thing we have to worry about?

Off: Gigi and Zayn 
GC Images

On/off relationship

Love being in the air this week, it’s only right that we reinstate #Shagwatch, just so we can all keep abreast of who’s banging who. Although affairs are somewhat complicated by the stinking red herrings afforded by the #Fakeup, that canny, post-Love Island trope that sees former contestants attempting to keep themselves in the news by — so think many of their fans — pretending to break up for a while (see: Jack ’n’ Dani, Wes ’n’ Megan) before joyfully reconciling. So here goes. On: Timothée Chalamet and Lily-Rose Depp, though concerns have been raised after Chalamet was spotted dining with Kanye and Pete ‘Not A Great Track Record With The Ladies’ Davidson. On: Joe Sugg and Dianne Buswell, despite falling out with their Strictly tour co-stars on account of their ‘non-stop snogging’. On: Cardi B and Offset, courtesy of a ‘no groupie’ rule that’s helping them rekindle their romance. Off: Gigi and Zayn. Again. For now. Or at least until his next album’s out.

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