Like the post-credits sequence at the end of a superhero film, the saga of the acrimonious Handforth council meeting that went viral in 2021 has finally released its postscript.
It has been over a year since the heroic Jackie Weaver wrangled the meeting into some kind of order, by muting and booting out the furious men who tried to shout her down and told her she had “no authority here”. She became a symbol of no-nonsense stoicism, a steady hand in the wild west of lockdown Zooms. In a world of online rage, so the story went, we could all try being a bit more her.
Weaver became a star of sorts, giving interviews and writing a self-help book called You Do Have the Authority Here, subtitled #What Would Jackie Weaver Do?). But as much as this looked primed for a happy ending – the rise of Weaver, the fall of fury – Handforth council, rebranded now as town and not parish, has opted to close the whole affair with a bang.
Six investigations into councillor misconduct were made public last week, after initially being published in May last year. Three of them focused on the chaos of that Zoom meeting and came to a dramatic conclusion. This was a classic plot twist. It’s the finale of season one of The Good Place, it’s the Red Wedding episode of Game of Thrones.
The report decided that Weaver had no authority to do what she did, after all. Presumably her book is being reissued with a new cover and titled: Technically You Don’t Have the Authority Here, #What Would Jackie Weaver Do Anyway?
The report was sympathetic towards Weaver’s actions, citing the “unusual and difficult circumstances” she faced, but described her actions as being “without any formal footing in terms of appropriate process and procedure”. I couldn’t help but feel as if I’d just watched my favourite team lose. Really, did it matter who had the procedural authority when Weaver had the moral authority? As funny as it was, the atmosphere on that Zoom meeting was poisonous. Her triumph was about more than just the rules.
But I imagine that this attitude is probably what got that meeting into such a pickle in the first place and it is definitely not very #What-Would-Jackie-Weaver-Do? of me. Weaver herself was much more proper about it all, telling the BBC that she welcomed the findings, “but am deeply saddened that it took so long and cost so much to get there”. Classy. Because that is what Jackie Weaver would do.
Adjoa Andoh: Bridgerton star could read anything to me
Bridgerton has returned to Netflix for a second series, which has been criticised for its lack of raunch, although this has done nothing to stem the tide of Bridgerton fever. My inbox has never had so many “get the Bridgerton look/house/attitude!” emails (though I notice none for “get the Bridgerton early 19th-century life expectancy!”).
This season features more of Lady Danbury, which means more Adjoa Andoh, the woman who plays her. I’m going off on a tangent here, but one lasting legacy of the lockdown months was that I got into audiobooks for the first time since I was a child. I found them very comforting, and still do. I hadn’t given their narrators much thought before, but it turns out that it’s an immense skill and a good narrator can elevate a story, just as a bad one can ruin it.
Andoh is pretty much the best there is. She does the voices without “doing the voices” and at this stage, her name attached to the reading of any story would sell it to me. She has read Americanah and Pride and Prejudice, but best of all, she read Lauren Groff’s magnificent Matrix and she brought it to life beautifully.
Slash: I love rock’n’roll but where are the women?
The opening lick (just what is it about describing elements of rock music that brings on an instant Alan Partridge voice?) to Guns N’ Roses’ Sweet Child O’ Mine has been named the best guitar riff of all time, in a poll of 1,500 people, carried out by software company Muse Group.
The 1988 hit, built around that enduring melody by guitarist Slash, the soundtrack to many a wedding and school disco, beat Eye of the Tiger, Another One Bites the Dust and, oddly, Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon, which isn’t even Kings of Leon’s best riff; that is surely Molly’s Chamber and I’m as surprised as anyone that I have a strong opinion on Kings of Leon’s guitar legacy.
It may come as no surprise that there are few women in the top 20, though it did find space for a bass line (Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain). Joan Jett gets a look-in for I Love Rock’n’Roll and the White Stripes and Fleetwood Mac had female members, which counts, but this list reads as if it’s from the era of those guitar magazines that featured a bikini-wearing woman on the cover, holding a guitar as if she were helplessly sexually attracted to it. It is the sort of list that Nirvana (number seven, Smells Like Teen Spirit), a band with famous disdain for rock’n’roll machismo, would have hated.
It’s not that there is a vast trove of female guitarists in the long history of rock music who have been unfairly passed over. It was a male old world. But I do hope that in 20 years’ time, a list like this might have more women than Joan Jett on it.
• Rebecca Nicholson is an Observer columnist
