When I lived in London I used to go to a lot of tv and radio show recordings to be in the live audience. I rarely knew much of anything about the shows ahead of time, and once, the guest host of the show I went to was Ann Widdecombe. I was supremely uncomfortable with this. Maybe I was projecting, but the comedians in the show seemed a bit stressed about it, too.
I can’t remember much of what she said, except that she expressed confusion at students who worried about not being able to pay their absurdly high rent. “They’re students!” she said, “Can’t they just live with their parents?”
Not the most atrocious statement that woman ever spewed out, but still so unfathomably lacking in any understanding of… Anything at all, really. She was one of those right wingers who coasted on being quirky, and I think she put that up as a defence - if you had a problem with her, surely you were just biased against her quirks. I don’t care that she never had sex or that she wrote poetry about her cats or that she looked like a toad. If that was all there was to her, I’d think she was delightful. But she was a wretched person who fought for wretched policies and did real harm.
Rest in piss, vile little bigot.
