5 Times Male World Leaders Made Pillocks Of Themselves

In a society where the phrase toxic masculinity gets plenty of air-time, there’s not nearly enough attention given to what I like to call muppet masculinity; the art of powerful men making complete and total pillocks of themselves

To demonstrate the art of muppet masculinity, we look at five times some of the most powerful men on the planet have set out to flaunt their testosterone credentials and have ended up looking like complete idiots.

ONE: Vladimir Putin

At the risk of being Novichok’d out of existence, the pride of place amongst our pride of pillocks has to be Putin. Never one to let an opportunity to strip off his shirt pass, Putin likes to liberally pepper world media with official images of him doing good, honest macho manly man things such as riding bare-chested, shooting big guns bare-chested, sitting astride some poor animal he’s just shot bare-chested. The only thing we don’t have confirmation of him doing bare-chested was invading Ukraine, which was more bare-face-cheeked. 

TWO: Kim Jong Un

One has to feel sorry for Kim Jong Un, he’s like the fat little tag-along to the big kid in the playground. Always trying to emulate his hero, not quite getting it right and having to run off home to Mummy who gives him a packet of Jaffa Cakes to make up for it. If Putin does photo shoots on a horse, by God little Kim Jong is also going to get on a horse! Not bare-chested of course; one wouldn’t want the people of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea knowing that beneath the voluminous shapeless grey suits lurks 120kg of blubber. No, little Kimmy bestrode his mighty stallion sensibly dressed in a thick Winter coat, with his best reading glasses on and a barely contained look of sheer terror.

THREE: Elon Musk

Hip-firing my Barrett 50 cal pic.twitter.com/OkNnjWid0r

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 30, 2023

The bonkers mental billionaire, having been frightfully bullied and called Muskrat at his South African school, likes to make up for the humiliation by going cray-cray with big guns. Here he’s showing his skills at shooting a Barrett 50 cal from the hip, something any self-respecting sharp-shooter or state-sponsored assassin will say is not how one handles a Barrett. His most famous foray into muppet masculinity has to be his bizarre challenge to Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg to meet Musk in a cage fight. I mean, that makes sense because Zuck is one of those computer nerdy types right? Wrong. It seems old Zuck is rather ripped and a bit of a dab hand at the old martial arts. Oddly, after Zuckerberg posted the image below to Instagram, Elon couldn’t seem to find time in his busy schedule ruining Twitter to fight Zuckerberg.

FOUR: Donald Trump

Come on, you can’t have a list of muppet masculinity without having The Donald on it. Trump absolutely loves to think of himself as the zenith of all things masculine. Donald’s favourite expression of macho manliness is boxing; he fancies himself an expert pundit and, quite possibly, a top-class mentor in the sport. In 2019 he posted a somewhat bizarre image of himself as Rocky. Why? Nobody knows. One thing we do know for sure though is that he’s not issued any challenges to his fellow billionaires to meet him in the ring.

FIVE: Boris Johnson

Coming in last place, but with an honourable mention, is the British entry to the muppet masculinity list, Boris Falafel Johnson – the man, the legend, the wafty-haired, wiffle-balled wonder. Okay, so the British entry can’t boast any bare-chested horse-riding stunts and he’s not into hefting 50 cal guns around but, by God, he wasn’t going to get defeated by a zip-wire. Resembling the result of a weird scientific experiment where a banker, a Fraggle and an SAS soldier have their DNA mixed, Boris bravely dangled tens of feet off the ground waving his flags around and ignoring obvious wardrobe malfunctions in the groin area. Whadda man.