t this stage, there may be many contenders for person of 2020, but perhaps only one for plus one of the year. Cue Sasha Swire, one-time journalist, daughter of former defence secretary Sir John Nott, wife of erstwhile Tory MP/minister Hugo Swire and author of Diary of an MP’s Wife, the tell-all on the David Cameron “chumocracy” that titillated the nation a few months back. There was plenty to be titillated about, not least Cameron saying on a walk that he wanted to push Swire into bushes and “give her one”. Now she has reappeared to defend her book against charges of betrayal, while insisting that Cameron’s remark was a joke. As if people hadn’t already worked it out. The point is not what Cameron said (save for confirmation that toff “bants” isn’t up to much), but that Swire desperately wanted people to know what Cameron said; to realise that she was once desired by a prime minister, albeit fleetingly and facetiously while chillaxing on a stroll. Therein lies the issue. Not with the book itself, which is a spiky, pacy read. But not only does Swire now compare herself to Samuel Pepys, and chuck around thinly veiled threats to friends who may yet ditch her (she has other diaries, dontcha know!), she also tediously persists in affecting to hate all the attention (“I never had any desire to be in the limelight”) in the same way that a wicked Disney queen might simper that she doesn’t care who the mirror thinks is the fairest of them all. This coy denial of her own industrial-strength ego was the central deceit of the diary and seemingly continues to be true of Swire herself. Far from being an astute chronicler of an elite political circle, she exudes the bottled-up fury and eternal ache of the wrongly miscast plus one. When I read the book, resentment, jealousy and yearning billowed from the pages. One almost expected to turn to a double-page spread of Swire screaming in extra-large bold print: “Why, reader, are you interested in them, when I (YES, I) am so much more interesting?” All of which contributed hugely to why I enjoyed the book. As much as it revealed about the chumocracy, it ripped the skin from Swire too. Truth is, she wasn’t an honest, unwitting diarist; rather, Swire is a journalist who never stopped working but failed to alert those around her – and that was the betrayal, if there was one. That aside, a little self-awareness may be in order. It seems clear that a craving for the limelight was Swire’s true motivation. And what of it? It’s not a crime to refuse to be human wallpaper. As her 2021 resolution, Swire should drop the literary “What, little me?” act, bare her friend-feasting fangs and stand proud. WFH newbies, don’t be slobs. It’s time to clean up your act It gives me no pleasure to report that personal standards have slipped in pandemic Britain. And when I say “standards”, I mean yours, not mine. The Grocer magazine’s annual top products survey reveals that Covid has changed our purchasing habits. Lockdown Britons buy more meat, alcohol (yes, even Corona lager)and cigarettes, but there are fewer purchases of cosmetics and – wait for it – toothbrushes and deodorant. My thankfully socially distanced fellow Britons – there might be a pandemic, but you don’t have to turn into total slobs. In the era of the mask, eschewing lipstick makes sense, but deodorant too? It appears to be my duty to turn this into a “What your best friend should tell you” teachable moment. As an established pre-Covid homeworker, I’ve long stared into this particular abyss, asking myself the same existential questions: “Who will know or care if I courageously fail to get dressed today?”; “Do spaghetti hoops taste even nicer when eaten out of a giant Sports Direct mug?”; “Am I unintentionally sprouting dreadlocks?” I understand how the slippery slope of pyjama-clad (“Sorry, my camera isn’t working”) Zoom meetings swiftly leads to more regrettable grooming dips. Getting away with it is like a drug. Still, all you WFH newbies, there are limits. Just because there’s a pandemic, it doesn’t mean you cease to possess teeth or armpits. And just because you’re not navigating a physical workplace, your body has not started magically self-cleaning. Seasoned homeworkers know never to stint on deodorant and other hygiene basics. A good test is whether one’s encounters with delivery guys remain cheery and normal or if they have started walking slowly backwards from the door, asking in carefully neutral terrorist-negotiator tones whether there are children or pets in the house. Put bluntly, sort it out, WFH newbies, you’re showing us all up. Well, would you want Donald Trump living next door? Astonishingly, there are people in this world who don’t want outgoing Potus Donald Trump living next door. Neighbours of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf club in Palm Beach, Florida, are taking legal steps to stop him living there after leaving the White House. While Trump became a Floridian citizen last year, and the Trumps are renovating their Mar-a-Lago apartment, neighbours argue that it’s a social club, not a residence. They point to a 1993 agreement made by Trump when he converted Mar-a-Lago into a business, stating that he, as a club member, couldn’t live there for more than three non-consecutive weeks a year. Well, there’s a question: could Trump be called a male member? Yet more embarrassingly, Palm Beach residents say that, previously, they had been prepared to put up with Trump’s lengthier stays, but – ouch! – he isn’t president any more. Double-ouch: there’s concern about what the Trumpian presence could do to property prices. A case of “Dude, you’re no longer president, so we’re not putting up with you any more.” Which happens to be eerily similar to what large parts of America are thinking. There could be a lesson in here somewhere about “loser!” karma... but another time perhaps. One wonders, do the Obamas have these problems? Trump is just going to have to get used to a future as Donnie No Mates. Barbara Ellen is an Observer columnist