A hotel room with a pay-per-view (or two)

Strewth! What next - the Pope gets caught coming out of a Roman night-club looking tired and emotional? Jeffrey Donaldson says those bills for hundreds of pounds in movies viewed - alone, presumably - in his London hotel room were for 'blockbuster movies'. Like? Oooh, like the Star Wars trilogy and, what was it - Mary Poppins? Something like that. Jeffrey has two problems with this one. No, three. No, actually, four. (OK, OK, I'm a writer, not a mathematician. Give over.)

One, how did he manage to cram in all those movies and still get some sleep? Two, should a man with that kind of taste in films be representing the adult population of Lisburn and environs? Three, for a variety of reasons, when the words 'movies' and 'hotel room' and 'pay-per-view' are put together these days, the public mind suffers a kind of tremor and starts thinking things that, well, you wouldn't see in the average family movie. And four, was he entitled to charge up movies, whether adult or family, on his hotel bill? If he was, why pay the money back - or is he just doing it because he's afraid of what people will think? Lacking the courage of his convictions? Either way nice little Jeffrey doesn't emerge looking too good. And if he WASN'T entitled to charge up those movies, however childish or adult they were, isn't that the equivalent of putting your hand in the public till and helping yourself - i.e., stealing? If you or I took what didn't belong to us, we'd be up in court. If you don't believe me, try not paying about £600-worth of income tax next year. Now, in case Jeffrey's lawyers are licking their little pencils, I'm not for a moment suggesting Jeffrey HAS acted illegally. I'm just saying IF he had acted illegally. Pure conjecture, hypothetical, dream-world possibility. I mean, you only have to look at Jeffrey to conclude that he's not the kind of guy who'd go around putting his fist in the public purse without permission. That said, he also doesn't look like the kind of guy who'd be sitting alone in a hotel room watching hour after hour of Star Wars. Or even the kind of guy who'd agree to share a flat with Sammy Wilson. Stand by for TVs being thrown out the window of London flats as Jeffrey tries to run Swiss Family Robinson a third time...