📣 we’re all jackie weaver
what happens in handforth doesn’t stay in handforth
You are cordially invited to this week’s brew of High Tea, your dispatch of 🔥 internet culture served piping hot. This week: we dive into the Parish Council that defies PC (and the standing orders, apparently), LiLo being lowkey on Clubhouse and Alison Wonderland sends us straight down the rabbit hole.
Drink up READ IT AND UNDERSTAND IT!!!!!!!! 🐸☕
p.s. if you’re not a paid subscriber, here’s what you missed from this week’s Bucks Fizz: our Thursday dispatch covering the best of TikTok’s unsigned and emerging talent.
Artwork: The Doodle Apothecary
what we’ve been sipping on:
“yOu hAve No aUtHorITy hERe jACkiE wEaVeR, No aUtHorIItY AT aLL”
January was a big month for the US; in February, the UK really said ‘hold my Stella.’ Along with TikTok sensation Lubalin’s “is this available” and ofc, our favorite, a group where we all pretend to be boomers, it’s no secret we’ve been loving the chaotic boomer energy as of late. But this week, Handforth’s Parish Council really took the McVities digestive. Hitting YouTube’s #1 trending spot on Thursday (garnering 2.9M views while sandwiched between The Weeknd and Trisha Paytas, no less), this week a viral video covering a meeting of a Parish Council ‘having it out’, positively broke the internet.
In the space of 1hr 20, this small yet mighty force of Councillors (and their Clerk – more to come), engaged in what could be called some of the most chaotic-discourse-entertainment we’ve seen all year; and has since piqued the interest of celebs to play their roles in the Netflix reboot 👀 plus TikTok creators (ofc). Buckle up pals, this edition is brimming with drama, deceit and main characters kicking the bucket (GoT vibes anyones?), while rising stars “Jackie Weaver” (best actress) along with “Julie’s I Pad” (best supporting actress) secure their positions in High Tea’s Hall of Internet fame.
Handforth Parish Council? We don’t know her
We are aware that for our US based readers, the Parish Council could seem a rather unknown phenomenon. Quite simply, it is a volunteer group of residents in a local area of the UK who form to represent the interests of the entire community. The intentions are pure, but this Zoom call was anything but. To give you a brief synopsis, despite their best efforts for order, the Handforth Chairman PC Clark and his Vice Chairman dismiss and shout over Jackie Weaver, who decides to enact her Zoom admin privileges and boot the former from the meeting. Once PC Clark is removed against his will, hilarity ensues as the rest of the ‘cast’ discuss how best to continue the meeting without a Chairman present.
Ironically, the only thing they do agree on is making the recording public. And here we all are.
As for the ‘characters’ that make up Handforth’s Parish Council? Let's dive in 🐸☕️
💡 “David Pincombe”: Strangely woke. Comes into the meeting only to say that he thinks that if this video goes on the internet, it will go viral and there will be a “war of words.” He wasn’t wrong.
🕵️♀️“Julie’s I Pad”: Just like Sia we can’t see her. Ultimately one of the most interesting characters as we never see her face. Julie is really known throughout for her deep sighs and her refusal to mute her mic, despite Jackie politely asking at the start of the call. Julie, ofc, has her shining moment when she takes a personal call while on the Zoom. Which, we allow, because the meeting hadn’t ‘technically’ started yet.
🕊“Sue”: A keeper of the peace. Sue with her serious ‘third mom energy’ has a strong sense of community alerting the Councillors that a “member of the public wishes to speak.” Democracy lives on in Sue; we must protect her at all costs.
😆 “John Smith”: Reader of the standing orders. John wants this video to be seen by those outside of the meeting. Towards the end he asks: “Can we make this recording available?” Despite being chaotic and laughing loudly at the wrong moments, he’s a friendly, smiley soul who wants to see some accountability for this mess.
🤬 “Aled’s iPad”: Potentially the Vice-Chairman and the man who inappropriately shouts at Jackie Weaver as he believes she hasn’t read the rules of the meeting: “read the standing orders, READ THEM AND UNDERSTAND THEM”, to which Jackie (and the world) audibly gasped in disbelief.
🤣 “(The other man using the Aled’s iPad, could be Aled)”: The one who laughs like a hyena and tells the other man on Aled’s iPad to “stop”
😵 “Handforth PC “Chairman” Clerk”: Killed off in the first 4 minutes. The PC Clerk has the most infamous line of the whole show, despite being only ‘cast’ for the first few minutes: “You have no authority here Jackie Weaver, no authority at all”, to which Jackie boots him out of the Zoom. Iconic. Not using his actual name on the Zoom meeting, and instead calling himself the Clerk (which no one had voted upon) was a bold move. We later hear some other members call this character “Barry” although this is not officially confirmed.
🧐 “Ian”: The one who has a real problem with the mute button, Ian clearly doesn’t like PC Clerk, nor his choice of calling himself “The Clerk”: “I noted that his label on his video said “Clerk” of Handforth Council and I have a photograph of it”, clearly to report the act. Oooh go off Ian with those receipts.
✋ “Cyn”: A lover of the word “no.” Cyn lasts the entire meeting without agreeing to anything. We later discover she’s not even from Handforth, she’s from Berkinhead. She doesn’t even go here! 💅
🎭 “Barry Burkhill”: King of comedy, Barry has a habit of tuning in late to the conversation. An iconic moment occurs when he asks “Where’s the Chairman gone?” several long minutes after PC Clerk has been sent to the Zoom waiting room by Jackie. Also has a habit of not facing the right way while on the call, the back of his head is a delightful sight. Also owns the infamous line: “the Chairman of the Council...is the...Chairman of the...of the.....er...Council” – Barry Burkhill 2021 everyone.
🌟“Jackie “Britney Spears” Weaver”: Our true shining star. Jackie Weaver has had more of an impact on our lives than any of our politicians in the last year. Iconic moments include standing up to PC Clerk and booting him out of the meeting for the second time despite him telling her she has no authority, while also delivering the news that: “There’s no way you’re stopping him from calling himself Clerk...Please refer to me as Britney Spears from now on.” Your wish is our command!
British Twitter and TikTok responds:
What do we do when a cultural moment lands so perfectly in our laps? We make it into a full scale internet moment, ofc. Twitter accounts impersonating the infamous Jackie Weaver are gaining pace, and castings have even roped in the likes of Celebrity Chef Rosemary Shrager to play Jackie in the “upcoming” show. Sue has also confirmed that she would be “delighted” if Dame Judi Dench would play her. Cc: @netflix the people have spoken.
Meanwhile on TikTok, a new cult of accidental celebrity is taking shape, with 5.3million views for #jackieweaver and 3.6 million views for #handforthparishcouncil. Of course, we haven’t yet escaped the Sea-Shanty-as-storytelling (also known as ‘the ballad of Jackie Weaver’), which is certainly having its...moment rn. High Tea fave and TikTok sound maker @tompablo (204K followers) did not disappoint with his Zoom audio x Kitchen Nightmares background noises mash up (aptly titled “jackie weaver for PM”), earning comments like “imagine trying to explain this to anyone who’s not from the UK” and “Handforth us now providing my lockdown drama”. Honorable mentions also go to viral comedian Munya Chawawa for his Jackie Weaver drill takeover and @cropd with his Handforth Parish Council grace (pls see 👇).
Why we are all rooting for Britney
With the world encroaching on a solid year in lockdown, the Zoom meeting of the Handforth Parish Council has brought us the much needed entertainment in our time of comedic drought (esp since The Office was removed from Netflix at the end of 2020, RIP). In amongst the chaos and misogyny, we have to hand it to the boomers for lifting our spirits and giving us our first UK talking point of 2021. The one thing we ask for? Handforth the Musical cc: Barlow and Bear.
kettle’s on: ones to watch
Mean Girls (2021). With recent high profile figures such as Elon Musk, Zendaya, Zuck and Malcom Gladwell making guest appearances in Clubhouse just this week, we know celebs in CH ain’t breaking news. But for us, Lindsay Lohan is. Welcomed to the platform 3 days ago by none other than Perez Hilton and joined on stage by Daniel Franzese (aka Damian) and Jonathan Bennett (aka Aaron Samuels), it was the Mean Girls reunion we didn’t know we needed. Past the initial silliness and tea spilling we got to eavesdrop on, Lindsay dropped some remarkable truth bombs and life lessons from the heart, in her own words at long last. See u next week, LiLo.
INFLUENCER-19. Just when we needed him the most, D’Angelo Wallace came out of YouTube docu retirement and blessed us with a new exposé on influencers and their bad behaviour during the pandemic 🙏. With 3.1M views in its first 6 days, “INFLUENCER-19” is the latest tell-all documentary from D’Angelo, that follows 2020 bangers such as “The exact moment Shane Dawson’s career ended” (18M views) and “Jeffree Star faked everything about...well, everything” (7.6M views). This most recent drop is a must watch for anyone as obsessed with the Hollywood Fix and influencer culture as we are.
Eat me 🍄. Did someone say Alison Wonderland? Fast approaching a year in lockdown, we’ve pretty much worked our way through the landscape of live streams at this point - the good, bad and the booky. Then, there’s Alison Wonderland x Wave, who created the spectacle “WONDERVERSE” that blessed our screens on Friday night (or 3am Saturday morning if you’re as unwell as Alice is) and, tbh, with our respective Chenin and Chianti in hand, we were deep in the forest with avatar AW, wisps, orbs and...mushrooms. 10/10 would bop again. 👏
Okay, you made it. Now you can go back to streaming the OG Britney doc #freebritney.
ttyl,