Terry Prone: What were the board members doing during Theranos debacle?

Elizabeth Holmes: In court, she pulled the line that none of it was her fault and the blame lay with the coercive boyfriend.

SUNDAY

The other passengers at the luggage carousel talk amongst themselves about the broken, hard-side suitcase as it barrels along, its contents kept inside only by the fabric lining. I grab it, praying it does not vomit forth its contents, pathetically desirous of telling them that it’s brand new. Cheap, though. A false economy, as its gaping sides announce to the world.

MONDAY

Never let it be said that cats don’t miss you when you’re away. Since I came home, Dino has gone into mouse-catching overdrive. Every time I look around, he deposits a new victim at my feet.

As I am a moron who refuses to accept nature as she is, I get a bowl and an envelope, capturing the mouse under the bowl and sliding the envelope under it, then carrying it to the garden for release with instructions on survival. The cat spends 20 minutes trying to figure out where the mouse has gone before giving up in mystified disappointment.

TUESDAY

Elizabeth Holmes is found guilty. This is a woman whose company was valued at a trillion dollars or so more than it was worth; who codded the market, financial journalists, and international VIPs such as Bill Clinton and Henry Kissinger; and who, in court, pulled the line that none of it was her fault and the blame lay with the coercive boyfriend.

The truly mystifying thing about this story is that no journalist seems to have seriously gone after members of Theranos’ board of directors to find out why they never asked obvious questions (like why the company president spent so much time on self-promotion and brand marketing rather than on ensuring the technology actually worked), and why they never followed up on early stories, which effectively said: “This is a smart idea, but isn’t going to work the way it’s claimed because, you know what, it couldn’t.”

The board had an express duty to protect the shareholders, who have seen the value of their equity diminish to nothing. 

They must be wondering where the protection was and how guys like Clinton and Kissinger were so easily seduced by a blonde in a permanently applied polo-neck sweater who talked in a baritone which, like the rest of her, was 100% spurious.

WEDNESDAY

A Star Trek exhibition in a Jewish cultural centre in Los Angeles makes the point that Leonard Nimoy’s finger-splayed gesture, as Mr Spock, owes much to a traditional Jewish blessing.

American actor Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock and Canadian actor William Shatner as Captain James T. Kirk appear in a scene from 'The Man Trap,' the premiere episode of 'Star Trek,' which aired on September 8, 1966.

Mr Spock, you will recall, was part-Vulcan. His wish, conveyed by his raised hand, was: “Live long and prosper.” 

However, according to the actor’s son, his father, the son of Ukrainian Jews, adapted it from a Hebrew blessing he saw in Boston as a kid attending an Orthodox Jewish synagogue.

Missing from that exhibition is another borrowing, this time from Jewish artist Harry Kernoff, who was based in Dublin in the early
to mid-20th century. One of Kernoff’s best-known paintings, Bird Never Flew on One Wing, commemorates the Dublin pubs of his time, their names scrawled, higgledy piggledy, behind two drinking Dubs. The guy on the right was known as The Toucher Doyle, based on his capacity to touch people for a few quid.

During the 1960s, the painting hung in O’Brien’s, a Leeson St pub. The man hired to give a distinctive look to a new TV series about spacemen boldly going where none had gone before happened to visit Dublin before production started, and have a drink in that very pub, where he noticed the painting. He paid it enough attention to register The Toucher Doyle’s pointy ears and decided to transplant them to the Nimoy character.

Someone needs to tell the organisers of the exhibition that Judaism didn’t just give Spock his gesture, but his ears, too — via a pub in Leeson St, Dublin.

THURSDAY

You must be sick of the directive headline. That’s the one that assumes you’re a thick, lazy, uneducated, inert blob who must be instructed pretty directly on how to reduce your blob status.

“What you must know about…” is one version of it. “How to wear…” is another. The first assumes the right to decide what you want to know about a particular topic, the second that you couldn’t work out where to put a scarf if you had one. Then there’s “What to cook right now”, with the implication that you were OK unguarded in the kitchen up to this week, but your competence took a nosedive last Friday or Saturday.

Sometimes these headlines are not just bossy but negative: “What not to say to your boss when you want a raise.” This last tends to be followed by advice such as not storming into their office demanding salary equity with Roberto, whose earnings you know because you spied on his payslip.

FRIDAY

Pat Kenny is asked if he’s going to write an autobiography. His response is unequivocal.

“No, absolutely not,” he says, adding a crack — apropos books by RTÉ stars — about there being “a lot of yarns out there that are told and retold”. The idea of adding to the repetitious yarns doesn’t appeal to him. Plus he has to read a lot of books for his programme and wouldn’t have the time.

He has a point, does Mr Kenny. He doesn’t really need to add to the pile of showbiz autobiographies, most characterised by a subterranean crawl towards reader approval, half-concealed by self-deprecatory humour.

Two notable show business exceptions are to be found. The first is Christopher Plummer’s life story, told with an amused detachment and ruthless self-excoriation untypical of the genre. Plummer doesn’t seem to have liked himself that much, but what’s even more intriguing is that he doesn’t seem to have DISliked himself that much either. His book is not about confession leading to redemption. It’s more a scientific study of an interesting specimen, and makes for delicious reading.

The late Sidney Poitier.

The other exception is the first account of his life by Sidney Poitier, who died last week, leaving behind a solid body of cinematic work and a reputation as a man of courage and decency. The book about his early life is about striving and suffering, and the power of a helping hand.

SATURDAY

That TV show is everywhere — mostly being condemned, either because it’s triggering people with eating disorders or because so many of the participants gain back the weight. Also because of female participants wearing Lycra to be weighed, the significance of which somewhat escapes me.

In response to the blast of coverage, a colleague texts me to say: “I just have an overwhelming urge to eat chips every time I hear the Operation Transformation theme tune.” The tune is ‘Bohemian like you’ by the Dandy Warhols — just in case you want a chip prompt.