How offensive do you find clothes pegs? How \u201ctriggering\u201d? Do you start trembling uncontrollably when you see them or break out into a cold sweat? No? You\u2019ll be as baffled as I was, then, by the Ant and Dec \u201cfurore\u201d<\/a> that erupted at the weekend.<\/p>\n Publicising their new podcast, Hanging Out with Ant and Dec, the TV stars shared a shot of themselves hanging from a washing line with their 5.9 million followers, their feet dangling a few inches above the ground \u2013 in the way that they would, you know, if you were hanging from a washing line, alongside a few bits of laundry and a sparrow.<\/p>\n Now, imagine for just one second making the leap from this to \u201csuicidal imagery\u201d. An Olympic gold medallist would struggle to bridge that gap. Yet within minutes of it being posted, the video was being described as \u201cinsensitive\u201d, \u201ctriggering\u201d and in \u201cpoor taste\u201d, with former X Factor contestant and mental health advocate Katie Waissel insisting that the \u201copening visual of feet suspended above the ground is not a harmless play on words\u201d and that \u201cthe suicide imagery is impossible to ignore\u201d. Within hours, it had been taken down.<\/p>\n The TV stars shared this image of themselves hanging from a washing line with their 5.9 million followers on X<\/p>\n Actually, much like the neo-Nazi undertones in Sydney Sweeney\u2019s American Eagle adverts \u2013 \u201cSydney Sweeney Has Great Jeans\u201d \u2013 the suicidal imagery is very easy to ignore\u2026 on account of how it\u2019s just not there. Doesn\u2019t exist. Was fashioned out of thin air by bored woke warriors who need something new to be incensed about.<\/p>\n Imagine how desperate to claim offence you have to be to make that connection? What a concerted, fully paid-up, 24\/7 victim? Because that is not a natural, organic connection to make. You have to work hard at that. Only a modern mind, a sick mind, warped by woke thinking, could go from clothes pegs to noose, to suicide \u2013 to outrage.<\/p>\n Like the American Eagle marketing team who will have been blindsided by the outrage their snappy little campaign slogan unleashed, Ant and Dec\u2019s team must have been scratching their heads on Sunday, even as they took down the post. Even as the comedy duo\u2019s apology was put out. Because, as Matt Damon says on Joe Rogan\u2019s podcast<\/a> this week, celebrities would rather serve a jail sentence than be cancelled<\/a>. Hence the instant apologies.<\/p>\n \u201cWe did not mean to cause any offence with this promo video,\u201d said Ant and Dec<\/a>, \u201cand we are sorry if it upset anyone.\u201d Rest assured: no one was upset. The whole thing was a fabrication and should have been treated as such from the start.<\/p>\n<\/span><\/div>\n