Name: Opera lads.
AKA: Michael “Govey” Gove and George “Ozbo” Osborne.
Ages: 50 and 47 respectively.
Appearance: Lads on tour. In suits.
They look more like a politician and a former politician. Yes, they resemble those, too.
So why are we calling them opera lads? Because we can’t resist. They have reportedly been spotted, without their families, on a “lads’ holiday” to the Bayreuth Festspielhaus.
What goes on there? I’m picturing sunburnt binges, chat-up contests and three-for-two Jägerbombs. That is not quite the vibe. Unless your idea of a binge is 24 hours of Wagner spread across four consecutive days.
I will level with you. It isn’t. Although they might have ordered Jägerbombs for the interval. Oh, I’m sure they did.
What are they doing together anyway? I thought David Cameron and Osborne hated Gove now? Well, it certainly seems that Cameron does. Apparently, he is preparing “a withering attack” on Gove in his memoirs, over the campaign to leave the EU.
Honestly, these remoaners. Just because you lie about the money and lie about Turkey and break campaign finance rules they try to call the vote unfair. It is petty, I know.
And people forget that Gove betrayed Boris Johnson afterwards. What could be more loveable than that? Good point. Yes, it will take more than a few political squabbles to break up the original opera lads. Gove and Osborne have been Wagner buddies for many years.
Really? Oh yes. In 2007, Gove wrote that Wagner can “take possession of your soul and inhabit your mind”.
A bit like blue WKD? Um, yeah. Maybe. Anyway, Gove and Osborne were spotted bingeing in Bayreuth together last summer, too. And they pulled four all-dayers in Covent Garden in 2012, in the company of their wing man Ed Vaizey.
No way! The Vaize at the opera? Mad scenes. I believe so. Sadly, this may have been the opera lads’ final European tour.
Why is that? Britain is about to leave the EU, remember, so perhaps the German government will refuse to grant Gove an entry visa next year.
I knew something good might come out of Brexit. One can only hope.
Do say: “I love the one where they have to make it until the end of the day without finding out what happens in Das Rheingold.”
Don’t say: “That’s the Likely Lads, dummkopf.”
