By Jan Moir
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They slayed us with the little boy who couldn’t wait for Christmas. Not for himself, of course. He was just desperate to give mummy and daddy his clumsily wrapped present. Blub!Â
Then they killed us with Mr and Mrs Snowman, particularly by Mr S’s dogged trek through storm and hail to purchase his frosty wife a pair of gloves for Christmas. Sob!Â
Over the years, the creative minds at John Lewis have cornered the market in magic, melting moments to promote their High Street stores.
They seem to know just how to pluck our heartstrings in the most piercing way. They know what floats the nation’s emotional boat.
Rigged or ragged? Model Johnny Harrington - left - and Homeland's Damian Lewis - right
The adverts featuring male model Johnny Harrington, a former carpenter from Milton Keynes have caused a stir
Until now, that is. For some fear they have struck an iceberg with the launch of a titanically awful new campaign to promote their menswear range, John Lewis & Co. One that can, perhaps, end only in capsize, despair and a sharp pair of sheep-shearing clippers.Â
This week, there has been a hairy uproar about their Beardie Bloke adverts featuring male model Johnny Harrington, a former carpenter from Milton Keynes.Â
The good news is that Johnny looks a little bit like Homeland actor Damian Lewis. The bad news is that he looks like Damian in those torrid Homeland scenes where he had just been dug out of a filthy hole, after being incarcerated by the Taliban for eight years.Â
How can I put it? From certain angles, 32-year-old Johnny is as unkempt as an orangutan in a high wind.
He looks a little bit like Shaggy in Scooby-Doo, if Shaggy had been given a course of testosterone shots and bison steaks, then kept prisoner in a comb-free environment for several decades. Clearly, Johnny is a man who is never knowingly under-trimmed.
If he did ever set foot in a John Lewis store, he would probably find himself being escorted off the premises by security pretty damn sharpish.Â
Especially if he lingered too long in the more complicated sections of the lingerie department.
Some have even said he looks ‘like a tramp’. To which Johnny rather forlornly responded on his Twitter feed this week: ‘Ironically, if I had a penny for every time someone called me a tramp I could probably buy a house.’
Hiring such a bedraggled figure to promote their smart jackets and shirts seems a strange departure from a store and a brand which pride themselves on middle-class respectability.
However, according to a spokesman, this new look represents what the John Lewis & Co brand is about; deconstructed and a bit dishevelled, but smart and with a great sense of style.
OK, got that. But does it make male customers want to buy a tweed waistcoat or a green denim jacket, as modelled by our man in the backpacker’s bangles and jazzy plimsolls?
Are women supposed to want to mother Beardie Bloke? Give him a hot bath? Fall in love with his rufty-tufty charms or run screaming to the wool-rich section to buy hubby a sensible cardi with leather elbow patches?
According to a spokesman, this new look represents what the John Lewis & Co brand is about; deconstructed and a bit dishevelled, but smart and with a great sense of style
No wonder that some traditional John Lewis shoppers are appalled, while critics say the normally dependable store is making an uncharacteristic but terrible mistake. Well. I have news for them all.
For John Lewis have got a hit on their hands again. In the end, I suspect that most women will adore Johnny. Personally, I love a man with his hair in a bun, which is vastly preferable to a man with some bun in his hair.Â
The first suggests a piratical dash and swagger, the latter some dubious table manners when consuming hamburgers. And at a time when beards are enjoying a moment, our Johnny has got himself a prize specimen.Â
George Clooney, Sam Mendes, Hugh Jackman and Ben Affleck all sported beards at the Baftas recently, but their clipped efforts were mere wisps of shrubbery against the might of Johnny’s ginger gigantor.Â
And even in his more restrained John Lewis outfits, the re is something romantic and windswept about his appearance. He looks like an old- fashioned hero and explorer.
Someone who accompanied Captain Scott to the Antarctic, who was with Mallory on the first Everest expedition and a man who would, without question, give you his last ship’s biscuit.
John Lewis say they chose Beardie Bloke because they wanted to appeal to the hard-working, ordinary customer who is often overlooked by fashion.
erhaps they have hit on something else, too. For the images also tap into the inner Robinson Crusoe dormant in every man who, even though he may be a deskbound drudge buying a striped organic cotton polo shirt for weekends on the putting green, is the swashbuckling hero of his own adventure.
So I like Johnny for all of these reasons. But I like him most of all because he is not Romeo Beckham.
Damning verdict on Britain's jurors
The jury in the Vicky Pryce trial have been laughable, that is certainly true. Cutting-edge comedians are weaving jokes about their chronic stupidity into new routines as we speak.
Yet we should be crying, not laughing. Once upon a time not so long ago, jury duty was something people took seriously.
It was a civic duty, an important one. It was not something you rocked up to in your trainers and a fleece with half an eye on the clock and a book of puzzles crammed into your back pocket in case you got bored.
A jury is supposed to be a mix of abilities and intelligence â€" but this lot just sounded plain stupid. Yes, it was an archaic defence that was brought before them â€" but they didn’t even seem to try to understand the evidence.
Friends who attend trials regularly tell me they see it all the time in court. Jurors who can’t be bothered. Who try to get out of it, if they possibly can. Who don’t pay attention. Who see it as an inconvenience.
What has gone so horribly wrong? Is it the education system? Or the influence of television shows? Many of those broadcast display scant respect for the system of law or due process.
It all rather shatters one’s faith in the jury system. To say the least.
41 gongs and counting
Anne Hathaway got confused about which awards ceremony she was attending this week and which award she was up for.
No wonder! The actress with the elfin crop has won so many awards for her role as Fantine in Les Miserables that she is a shoo-in for the Actress Who Has Won Most Awards Award, newly awarded by me.
At the last reckoning, she had already won 41 gongs for Fantine â€" including dozens of Best Actress In A Supporting Role awards, plus a few Most Unforgettable Moments , a Performance Of The Year, not to mention an Outstanding Performance Of The Year.
Anne Hathaway has already won 41 gongs for Fantine - including dozens of Best Actress In A Supporting Role awards
She is also nominated for a further ten awards to come, including the big one â€" the Best Supporting Actress Oscar â€" for which all bets are off.
Once she had worked out she was going to the Costume Designers Guild Awards on Tuesday, she had to research them online ‘to find out exactly what I was being honoured for’.
It was something about frocks.
Great! Because ‘collaborating with the costume department’ is apparently one of her favourite things.
Don’t you sometimes wish the film industry would put a gong in giving gongs?
Why should the NHS fund IVF?
Being infertile is an isolating and heartbreaking business. No one can quite understand the agony you go through, not even your husband or wife or partner.
There are feelings of being incomplete. The longing to have a family of your own never abides. Then there is the private stab in the heart every time a newborn baby is presented within your circle of family and friends.
we all sympathise, that goes without saying. However, do we all agree that the NHS should be funding IVF treatments? Or, indeed, increasing its funding to now include women up to the age of 42?
This week, the National Institute For Health And Clinical Excellence issued new guidelines stating that infertile women between 40 and 42 should be entitled to one free round of IVF treatments.
The guidelines are not compulsory. Some heath authorities fund treatments on the NHS and some do not â€" yet I sometimes wonder if the NHS should be funding infertility at all.
However sad it might be, infertility is a condition, not a disease or an illness. Having a baby is not a right for any woman â€" it is certainly not right that the State should be expected to pay for the p rivilege of having a child, no matter what the circumstances.
However, over the past dozen years, it has just become accepted that the NHS must treat infertility. Pressure groups have campaigned for this for years, and now it is mere convention that this is one of the treatments on offer â€" but why should that be the case?
Especially when report after report informs us that the NHS is broke.
Failure to conceive is sometimes rooted in disease and sometimes not. Sometimes, there is no reason, medical or otherwise. And I can’t help but feel it is wrong to push the age range upwards, which sends out the wrong message about the possibilities of older women conceiving.
At a time when the elderly are left to rot in hospital beds, when cancer patients cannot always get the drugs they want, we should prioritise.
Path to true love starts in Leeds
Prince Harry has a new girlfriend, Cressida Bonas. Blonde, pretty, athletic â€" the Chelsy Davy-lookalike proves that Harry certainly has a type.
Prince Harry has a new girlfriend, Cressida Bonas. Blonde, pretty, athletic - the Chelsy Davy-lookalike proves that Harry certainly has a type.
And oddly enough, just like Chelsy, Cressida went to Leeds University.
So if you want to bag a prince, girls â€" and there is only one left â€" forget finishing school or hanging out at Mahiki and head to Leeds instead.
There, the university’s motto is Perioxidus hairus blondii et Nil Hesitatium Kissyprince.
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Next month, another auction of Princess Diana’s dresses will take place in London. Ten iconic outfits, including the one she wore to dance with John Travolta in the White House, will go under the hammer.
Isn’t there something rather sad about seeing these frocks circling the world like a flock of lifeless crows, being sold for ever-increasing amounts of money?
It was initially Prince William who s uggested to his mother that she should sell the gowns to raise money for charity. I wonder how he feels about that now.
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Travel website TripAdvisor has listed Europe’s ten best beaches. Along with the steamy fleshpots of Sicily and Spain, three British beaches make it onto the list â€" Rhossili Bay near Swansea, Woolacombe Beach in Devon and Porthminster in St Ives.
What? No room for Porthcurno? No Lunan Bay? No shimmering stretches of Northumberland?
British beaches might lack some elemental touches â€" like sunshine and heat â€" but they are the most beautiful in the world.
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