Lettuce Lady Passes Away. Years from now, will this be the headline above Liz Truss‘s obituary?
It is well-known – in fact, it is probably the best-known thing about her – that back in 2022, during her brief time as prime minister, the Daily Star set up a live webcam of a 60p iceberg lettuce, asking which would last longer – Truss or the lettuce.
The lettuce won. After just 49 days in No 10, Truss resigned. That was close to two years ago. You might have thought the lettuce joke would have faded away by now, but no: it is still going strong, and will dog her for the rest of her days.
Last week, Truss was just coming to the end of an interview at a public event in a hall in Beccles, Suffolk – perhaps the O2 Arena was unavailable – when a banner was lowered behind her bearing a picture of a lettuce with eyes, and the caption ‘I Crashed The Economy’.
The audience noticed it before Truss did because, in true pantomime style, it was behind her. There were a few titters before an organiser strode on to the stage, and said, apologetically: ‘I have no idea where that has come from.’
My advice to Liz Truss is to seize her inner lettuce and run with it. If I were her, I would never appear in public without wearing a lettuce-shaped hat, topped with a dollop of salad cream for good measure
Truss was just coming to the end of an interview at a public event in a hall in Beccles, Suffolk – perhaps the O2 Arena was unavailable – when a banner was lowered behind her bearing a picture of a lettuce with eyes, and the caption ‘I Crashed The Economy’
Morecambe and Wise (pictured), who loved to tease the cheesy singer and entertainer Des O’Connor. ‘Des has just done a one-man show. Let’s hope two turn up next time’, was one of their jokes
At this point, Truss turned round and saw what all the fuss was about. She then strode off, declaring: ‘That’s not funny.’
Most of us know from our schooldays that if you are being teased you mustn’t say ‘That’s not funny’. You might just as well say ‘More, please’. It only encourages them.
Another response to avoid is: ‘Once a joke, twice a bore.’ This suggests that no joke bears repetition, when we all know that some jokes grow funnier each time they are told. This is why comedians develop catchphrases. ‘Don’t panic!’, ‘Does my bum look big in this?’, ‘D’oh!’, ‘Suits you, sir’, ‘Loadsamoney!’, ‘What do you think of it so far? Rubbish!’
That last one comes, of course, from Morecambe and Wise, who loved to tease the cheesy singer and entertainer Des O’Connor. ‘Des has just done a one-man show. Let’s hope two turn up next time’, was one of their jokes.
In another, Ernie said: ‘I’ve got some great news’, to which Eric replied ‘What? Has Des O’Connor got a sore throat?’
But, unlike Truss, O’Connor took the teasing in his stride. In 1968, when the news came through that Eric Morecambe had been taken ill, O’Connor generously asked his audience to remember him in their prayers. When Morecambe recovered, an interviewer asked him, ‘Are you aware that Des O’Connor asked his entire audience to pray for you?’ To which Morecambe replied, mischievously, ‘Well, those six or seven people probably made all the difference’.
Eerily, Liz Truss looks like a female Des, and shares his chirpy optimism. Perhaps she should take a leaf from his survival manual. Far from getting shirty about Morecambe and Wise’s jokes and saying ‘That’s not funny’, he embraced them, and regularly appeared on their shows acting as their stooge.
It is well-known – in fact, it is probably the best-known thing about her – that back in 2022, during her brief time as prime minister, the Daily Star set up a live webcam of a 60p iceberg lettuce, asking which would last longer – Truss or the lettuce. The lettuce won
In one, Des read out a list of all the jokes they’d made against him, including Ernie saying: ‘Des O’Connor is a self-made man’ and Eric replying, ‘I think it’s very nice of him to take the blame’.
If I were Liz Truss’s PR adviser I would tell her to own the joke and embrace her inner lettuce.
Other politicians have realised that the only way to defuse a joke against you is to laugh along with it. In the 1970s, the TV impressionist Mike Yarwood regularly impersonated the bushy-browed Labour frontbencher Denis Healey by saying ‘Silly Billy’ in his distinctive tones. In fact, Healey had never said ‘Silly Billy’, but, prompted by Yarwood, he started to employ it as a catchphrase in his public appearances.
Similarly, Mrs Thatcher’s right-hand-man Norman Tebbit relished being portrayed as a leather-clad bully-boy on TV’s Spitting Image and Boris Johnson shamelessly camped up his image as an upper-class nincompoop, bumbling and stuttering and frizzing up his hair, knowing that this was what the nation expected of him.
So my advice to Liz Truss is to seize her inner lettuce and run with it. If I were her, I would never appear in public without wearing a lettuce-shaped hat, topped with a dollop of salad cream for good measure.