I adore all kinds of music — from plainsong to K-pop, from drill to Debussy — and friends will often send me snippets from concerts they think I’ll like. Back before Covid, one thoughtful person sent me a great clip from a foreign TV show: four men appeared on stage performing on one big piano. They played it with finesse, with panache and — most remarkably, I remember thinking —with their penises. Their modesty, I should add, was well hidden by the instrument.
One of these ivory ticklers, I recall, was especially impressive. When he played Hava Nagila, it was like I was hearing it for the first time. I wondered whether they could be hired for my mother’s birthday party but never followed up.
Fast forward a few years and I recognised that same talented man broadcasting from a bunker, galvanising his people against Russian tyranny in the middle of an unspeakable and gruesome war. It had been Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky back in his comedy days.
His courage, his steadfastness and his bravery have been written about by better people than me. All I can add is that, when it comes to true heroism, you know it when you see it. Zelensky’s got it, and so do all the Ukrainians fighting day and night for their country.
Interestingly, I think Zelensky also represents something of real importance: the ability fully to inhabit vastly different types of life. He began, as everyone now knows, as a comedian and actor (playing a fictional president of Ukraine on TV before he became the real one). He really was a proper star of stage and screen; you’ve probably discovered he voiced Paddington Bear when it was locally dubbed or (that greatest mark of entertainment success) he has done his bit of spangly hoofing on the Ukrainian Strictly. Then, of course, he left it behind to go into the gritty world of politics — and now he’s fighting this horrifying war.
What Zelensky’s biography represents — one of the many things that’s so valuable about it — is the message that no life need contain just one kind of story. People, and especially those here in the UK, just don’t seem to like individuals being more than one thing. If you want to be serious, then you’re often pulled down by the press if you’ve had light-hearted or silly stages in your career. But there’s no rule to say that you can’t do both — after all, we contain multitudes. I feel this a little myself. My own CV includes making fart jokes and prosecuting warlords; teaching about the Holocaust and dancing the cha-cha.
Just as his bravery has inspired us, President Zelensky has also reminded us that whoever you are and wherever your journey may have taken you, you needn’t ever be defined by one thing. In fact, maybe it’s time for me to start thinking about a “serious” career in politics.
In other news...
Madonna’s ever-jaunty bum was in the papers last week. Naturally, I didn’t see it. But apparently there were many enraged that a woman over 60 was flourishing her rump so joyously. I’m all for it. Surely, it’s when you hit your sixties that you should start getting naked.
In fact, it ought to be pretty much obligatory. Also essential should be hitting clubs, cliff-diving, speedboat racing and living life at its maximum pitch. The sober, sensible stuff should be left to the young (they’ll have something to look forward to).
The ex-supermodel Paulina Porizkova said it best after being trolled for her Instagram nudes: “I’m 56 and living my best life. After a lifetime spent taking care of others, I finally get to do ME.” Jenny Joseph’s poem Warning begins “when I am an old woman I shall wear purple”. Well, when I’m an old man, I’ll wear nothing at all, thank you very much. Just four or five more decades to go.
