JD Vance invites Apprentice star Thomas Skinner for beer-fuelled BBQ

It wasn’t just diplomats and high-ranking officials that JD Vance has been meeting on his British holibobs.

Somehow, former Apprentice star Tom Skinner got past the ‘Men in Black’ secret service and angry protesters to join the vice president for a distinctly middle-aged and beer-fuelled BBQ on Monday.

Vance’s other guests associate professor of philosophy James Orr and Tory MP Danny Kruger shared sparkling conversation with the cockney businessman – possibly interspersed with a few ‘Boshes’.

Skinner posted an awkward thumbs-up picture of the unlikely pair, complete with skwiffy tie, the tell-tale sign of the rowdiness of the night.

He added: ‘Here is a pic of Me and Vice President @JDVance towards the end of the night after a few beers

‘I’m overdressed in my suit, but when the VP invites you to a BBQ, you don’t risk turning up in shorts an flip-flops

‘Cracking night in the beautiful English countryside with JD, his friends and family. Once in a lifetime. Bosh’.

He added: ‘He was a proper gent. Lots of laughs and some fantastic food. A brilliant night, one to tell the grandkids about mate.’

The pair had bonded over X when JD Vance stood up for the Great British personality who was being ‘trolled’ for using ChatGPT to write his jingoistic tweets about full English breakfasts and family values.

And with Skinner already pronouncing he was ‘thinking about giving it a go in politics’ maybe he is picking up some tips.

The odd couple’s soft launch came as protesters expressed their fury at JD Vance’s decision to spend his summer holidays in the rolling hills of the Cotswolds.

Activists held up signs accusing the US vice president of ‘clapping when the plane lands’, referred to Vance as the ‘Gobsh*** Goebbels’ and even plastered his meme on to a caterpillar cake.

The JD Vance cake was sliced up and shared among dozens of protesters from the Stop Trump Coalition in a very British show of defiance. They chanted ‘JD Vance shame on you’ between bites.

Phil Ball, a cameraman who lives three miles down the road, even brought a huge Trump head to the protest.

He said: ‘I object to him and his government and what he stands for politically. I object to the fact that he had arrived here on holiday and the amount of police that I have seen facilitating his holiday is extraordinary. So many police cars running around.

‘We know that it’s just not a holiday. If you are on holiday, you don’t go to the home of the foreign secretary.

‘He shouldn’t be making under-the-table political decisions.

‘You can see the way he seems to be. Such a man baby and so emotionally fragile that if he is annoyed he is making decisions with global implications, it seems on a whim to do with his current state of emotions. That’s quite worrying.

He said he would be ‘enraged’ if he were to bump into Vance and added: ‘I’d be enraged by the fact that I was in the same postcode district.’

Zoe Gardener, 37, from London, who is part of Stop Trump coalition, said: ‘He is an entirely despicable man. To come here after he insulted our country and then to be shown this disgusting sort of fake bro romance with David Lammy and we are supposed to buy the idea that they are good friends now.

‘This isn’t a family holiday, this is a political visit.

‘The Cotswolds has a reputation for having a small set conservative representation but people here are still angry.

‘People are horrified. People hate him.’

Villagers had complained about the ‘Men in Black’ like security entourage treating ‘old ladies like terrorists’.

One woman told The Times the village had seen ‘one blinking pantomime after the other’ and said: ‘We are used to the great and good here. Before David Cameron moved in we had Douglas Hurd and he was lovely.

‘We have Ben Kingsley in Spelsbury and we see him in the woods walking his dog, but to close off the roads is ridiculous.’

The woman told the paper she and a friend had been stopped by police blocking a footpath while walking through the area, and said: ‘I told the police “we are two old ladies, we are hardly terrorists”.’

Another local told the Guardian police were knocking on doors asking for personal details of residents and their social media accounts.

One local ranted to LBC: ‘Generally we like to welcome everybody to Chipping Norton, but no, I’d absolutely kick him in the shins.’

Shielded by 15-foot-high honey-coloured stone walls, Dean Manor’s six-acre gardens are usually a model of serene, by-appointment-only beauty.

Navy-jacketed, khaki-trousered teams of US Secret Service operatives patrol the perimeter day and night.

For the duration of Vance’s stay in mid to late August, the public footpaths and bridleways that thread through the surrounding woodland will be the nearest anyone gets to its locked-down gates.