Bit of a no-brainer this week’s Wag, then.   And though some unkind souls may suggest that that hardly represents a first for this column, they would find it harder to contest that Vanessa Perroncel has single handily brought the Wag brand back to prominence and seen them draped again across our national newspapers, and that, if for nothing else, she at least deserves credit for that.

I say ‘single handedly’.   I’m yet to read all the reports, and with the story moving at such a pace as to raise complaints of motion sickness from several readers (and I swear that in every photo I’ve seen of hers, even those presumably taken in the same moment, she appears to have aged by some years, like a grim flipbook of a relationship failing) it’s been tricky to keep thoroughly up to date with all the unsavory details.  So, yeah, she may have used both hands, for all I know.  Or even something else all together.

That isn’t the important point though, the important point is that, like kitten heels, rave whistles and cycling shorts, Wags are back.  In a World Cup year, too, almost as if they knew.  Now all we need is a fragile metatarsal to fret about, something else relating to a paucity of genuinely left footed options, and we can all feel fully on board with the 2010 campaign and its inevitability sour and penalty shoot out based conclusion.  If nothing else, it’s easier to follow than Lost. And you get a similar amount of exposed stomachs in beachwear.

Lots of footballer’s names been bandied around at the moment, lots of speculation, Chelsea players past and present like Eidur Gudjohnsen - (who did you have in the sweep, by the way?  I got Tony Dorigo and Erland Johnsen, which I couldn’t help but be a little disappointed with) - but the arm you’re most likely to see Perroncel on at the moment is that of Max Cliford.

It was pointed out a few years ago in Viz that there is an incongruous contradiction at the heart of Clifford’s role in the shaping of media image of others, given that the best he’s managed to wrangle out of his own media image is ‘irritant’.  I’m also at a loss as why the first step of any of his P.R campaigns seems to involve alerting the press to his presence in said P.R campaign.  With deception and spin the idea, isn’t that sort of a self-defeating tactic?

Wags and self-defeating tactics, eh?  It would still be the World Cup without them; it just wouldn’t feel like it.

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