An occasional foray into the media dustbin

A woman who repeatedly turned up at the home of Premier League footballer Rio Ferdinand has been convicted of harassment. Stalker Susanne Ibru, 38, twice disturbed the Manchester United player and his wife while they were asleep, claiming she needed to speak to him. As she left the Court, Ibru said to the soccer star, “Byee, see you soon”. This didn’t suggest an intention to reform.

Perhaps she should’ve been retained for psychiatric examination, but this strikes me as unnecessary: anyone wanting to stalk Rio Ferdinand is obviously a danger to the public, and deserves to spend the rest of her days in Broadmoor.

Supporting evidence for this harsh verdict can be found in the behaviour of Ferdinand and his colleagues after last weekend’s FA Cup semi-final at Wembley. The dressing room was to be used by Stoke City the following day, but Wembley staff had to fix a wall that had been damaged. United have made it clear that they will pay for the damage and have indicated that none of their players were involved in the incident. Either this is an obvious fib (my preferred explanation) or Sir Alex Ferguson has failed to kick the post-match boot-kicking habit.

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US online publication the Daily Beast recently penned a piece sympathetic to one-time cinema heart-throb Robert Redford. The piece ran: ‘Redford arrived at the precise moment in history when being a handsome, soft-spoken leading man went out of fashion. While he might once have had the world without apologies, Redford’s career has been a struggle against his chiseled features, to prove he is not just a haircut’.

Author Richard Rushfield described this as Redford’s ‘pretty burden’.  I cannot tell you how much, during the years 1964 – 1988, I longed to be similarly handicapped.

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It occurs to me that David Cameron’s advisers may well be hell-bent on their client having the full set of historical cock-up parallels by the time he leaves Office. The luckless Prime Minister already has his Watergate (the Newscorp phone-hacking scandal) and Vietnam (the worsening involvement in Libya). If the banks carry on as they are, the next one may well be his South Sea Bubble (derivative bets)….although as yet there is no sign of a Poll Tax. But give the man time: he is a willing pupil.