It has been many years since I pondered whether a human being would eat a worm. Premier League football managers, Love Island contestants, members of the last doomed England World Cup squad: would they eat a worm, I wondered, and if so with how much élan? All of this because, in 2018, a now sadly-departed gravel-voiced former Burnley manager (who once scored a penalty with such no-nonsense Brexitness that it is forever ingrained in my memory as if etched there with a laser) had to publicly admit he didn’t actually eat worms, as accused via a translated-from-Danish podcast, he actually only ever pretended to eat worms by putting them in his mouth and theatrically chewing them.
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Years have whipped the stones down to pebbles. I have gone to the caves and stared at myself in the clear deep pools. “Hey mate you’re that— what’s the name. You’re the VICE guy, aren’t you?” people ask. “You’re that— no you are!” They’ll get a mate over. “It’s that VICE guy!” they’ll say, and the mate will go: Clive?“No, not Clive. The other one.”“What’s the other one?”“There was… there was Clive—”“I’m not Clive.”“Yeah and there’s. I swear there was another one.”“Alhan?”“It’s not Alhan.”“Bish! Joe Bish.”“No it’s—”“I’m not Joe Bish.”“Yeah anyway, the other one, the other one. Yeah I know you. Yeah. Yeah I like the stuff you do about worms.”“Oh! The worm guy!”“Yeah and he did that documentary about the football hooligan. Yeah. And then literally nothing else for four years—”“I did other stuff. I did loads of other stuff. The Ronnie Pickering stuff, stuff like that. Peugeot Dad. I mean these are the tips of the iceberg. I had a book—”
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“Yeah nice one. Worm boy! Worm boy! Hey: does he look like he’d eat a worm?”“I’d have to talk to him, get to know him. Assess him via a brief bio, a skim of his Wikipedia page—”“Does he look like he’d eat a fucking worm or fucking not?”“... yes.”Anyway! The Conservatives need a new leader, again (“Be worse under Labour! Imagine how bad it’d be under Labour, though!” — your dad, 900 times a year, whenever something bad happens) and now the country will be ruled by one of these flagrantly ambitious personality voids who think businesses deserve more human rights that humans, for about two maybe two-and-a-half years until another inescapable scandal ousts them and Michael Gove gets to pretend they might finally run out of Tories enough for him to have a go. And the question on everyone’s lips is: Which Of The Conservative Leadership Candidates Would Eat A Worm?As ever, my methodology for this is simple: I look at a photo of them and decide whether I could bully them, either as an adult or as a child. Worm-eating isn’t a logic puzzle: it is, simply, a vibe, and some people have the vibe that they would eat one and some people have the vibe that they wouldn’t.To say most of these shysters are running on an “anti-woke” agenda – it is funny that you think we live in a relatively well-read and psychically intelligent country, and then you see that about 60 percent of the voting bloc can be distracted away from the mismanagement of COVID and the economy and the deep-rooted corruption that runs riot through the party and the petrol and energy crisis and how bad Brexit has been, and also the fact that pound-for-pound their lives have only gotten harder and more expensive under years of Tory rule, and then be distracted by somebody going “Yeah but they have to say ‘they/them’ in schools now!” enough to vote the Tories in all over again – but if you did want to bisect the population into two very distinct categories that you cannot move between no matter how much you want to, worm-eating could be a good guide.
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There are exactly two types of people: those who would eat a worm, and those who wouldn’t. Let’s figure out what our — can’t believe I’m typing this — next Prime Minister would do when faced with a worm on a plate.
Kemi Badenoch
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And I say, it’s a worm, it’s for an old— it’s like an old VICE bit we used to do. Like the ‘... On Acid!’ bit but. Not… not as good. And she’ll just say: “No.” I’ll stand there for a few moments. I thought I would be Ant and Dec and she would be Gillian McKeith, but actually I am just offering a worm to a busy woman who has no time for this.No it’s like— it’s a bit of fun. Nothing. She slowly looks up and makes red glowing eye contact with me. And then I come to, legs splayed at soft doll’s angles across the laminate conference room hall, the taste of worm on my lips and tongue. Kemi Badenoch does not eat the worm.
Suella Braverman
Penny Mordaunt
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Penny Mordaunt somehow is the head of the Conservative Union within her first week of college, ousting the previous incumbent who has just entered their third year. Penny Mordaunt lurking outside PPE, History of Art and Law lectures to identify and take-down the universities most eligible upward-moving bachelors. “Me and Rory are trying to sleep in there and we can’t because of this guff you’re playing!” Penny Mordaunt is yelling, as you spin a Bloc Party CD at 8.15PM before a Saturday night at Crash.Penny Mordaunt goes missing for two weeks and you all get a weird firmly-worded letter from the administration saying if the shared areas don’t get cleaned up your grades get affected (???). Penny Mordaunt needs the kitchen all day because five girls you’ve never seen who are all called Clara are coming over that day and she’s making them a big moussaka.This is a profound energy but it exists in certain members of the population, and when harnessed correctly – as Mordaunt, I suppose, has – it can lead to a certain careerist high. But I still cannot move past the fact that she’d eat a worm, somehow. I mean come the fuck on. She did Splash!.
Rishi Sunak
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In fact, why do you even want to be an MP? Why do you want to deal with this shit when you’ve already got the ultimate amount of money to live a good life? If I was worth £730 million, you losers would never get a word out of me again. I’d be on a yacht and I’d strangle exactly one person a year and get away with it because I’m friends with the mayor. But given that much wealth, that much freedom, given the ability that maybe only 1,000 people on earth have to never do anything but enjoy life ever again: Rishi Sunak chooses to be an MP who maybe occasionally tries to be Prime Minister. That is so pathetic – so small time! – that a small part of me does actually think I could get him to eat a worm. “OK, so,” Rishi Sunak is saying (in the time it took him to stutter that out with affected, bought-and-paid-for charm, his overall wealth rose by my entire annual salary), “OK, so, the worm. Do people— do this country’s people, who make this country so Great, do they— are they worm partakers? Do they partake in worms?” He has no idea. He has no idea what we eat.Yeah, man, I say. Worms are like… you know fry-ups? It’s a bit like fry-ups. When you’re a lad, and you’re on a hangover, and you really need it… you eat a worm.
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“Wow, OK,” he says. He eyes up the worm on my plate. “So I just— gulp it down?” I nod. Gulp it down, Rishi. Gulp the worm. He forms both lips into a huge succulent O and suckers them onto the plate (this is how he eats). He sucks the worm down like a hoover. “Thanks, guys,” he says, shaking everyone’s hands as he leaves. “Vote Conservative, Vote For Our Country.” You see it now, don’t you? Rishi Sunak would inhale a worm.
Liz Truss
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She turns on the news. Liz Truss is being interviewed. “And what will you do when you buy up all this decrepit, useless, no-hope land, Ms. Truss?” the interviewer says. And Liz Truss turns to the camera and looks right down it and smiles like a crocodile. A voice in Leila’s head, suddenly: I see you, Leila. I always do. I will— and the noise is close to getting too strong! The screaming of the wind around her is fluttering the curtains! — I Will Crush You! The voice goes evil like a demon’s does: I! Will! Crush! You! Child!No. Liz Truss would not eat a worm.
Tom Tugendhat
OUT OF THE RUNNING:
Jeremy Hunt
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I do not think Jeremy Hunt would eat a worm, then: He always seems to emerge unscathed from the career plane crashes he orchestrates around him. I think he’d turn worm-eating into a long filibuster-y debate, then hire a team of lawyers to make me apologise to him for even mentioning “a worm” and “Jeremy Hunt” in the same paragraph. If you see me on Instagram acting like I’m homeless over the next couple of months, that’s why. Jeremy Hunt decided to sue me so hard I can no longer pay rent.