No resentment Fostered as apology is Ellisited
It’s business as usual this week for Dennis the Menace of Oxford Patrick Foster as Tartgate continues. Foster ‘accidentally’ replied to an email from Linacre College postgrad and Oxford Women in Politics (OxWip) organiser Ellie Cumbo advertising Tuesday night’s all-female election panel with the words: ‘I can’t think of anything I’d less like to fill my Tuesday night with. A load of over-opinionated and under-brained tarts talking blabbering crap."
Cumbo, who was not amused, staged a 45-minute showdown with Foster before sending his comments out in an email advertising the event adding: ‘Thankfully, not everyone in Oxford shares his opinions, or his priorities.’ The ball was then in Foster’s court as a motion to censure him was brought to Friday’s council of Oxford’s largest Stalinist collective by one of its vice presidents, Nicky Ellis, with Hertford’s Bridget Phillipson, one of the OxWip panelists.
‘The views expressed are patronising, arrogant and ignorant, and display a misogynistic stupidity,’ the motion, which passed two to one, read. Foster, who rather aptly received 22 per cent in a recent Ethics collection, couldn’t be there as he allegedly had a tute, but told the council in an email he had indicted himself to The Hague for hate crimes, pleading to be incarcerated alongside Slobodan Milosevic which, he wrote, would be ‘just punishment for my crimes."
But, I can reveal, Foster has now apologised to each of the women concerned, saying he has actually found a worse way to spend his Tuesday night: a Bobby Davro concert. ‘Although I think your event will be the height of tedium,’ wrote the touslehaired wag, ‘I fear that Davro’s unique combination of Frank Sinatra covers and pantomime-circuit jokes would be marginally less informative and entertaining."
Whether Phillipson et al accepted Foster’s apologies remains unclear, but I’ll keep you posted, naturally.
5th May 2005