Bashir the teacher?

WAS Martin Bashir really the best choice to tell children how to be a journalist in CBBC show Celebrity Supply Teacher? Bashir, under investigation over the dubious techniques he used to secure his Princess Diana Panorama interview 25 years ago, will be grilled himself at the inquiry into the sorry Panorama affair.

The Green Party has set itself five worthy challenges next year. But none of them includes going above single figures in the opinion polls. They are languishing on 4 per cent.

Claudia Webbe, the labour MP for leicester east, joins the protest against suspensions of Jeremy Corbyn supporters, tweeting: ‘Stop the unfair and unjust labour Party administrative suspensions.’ Webbe has been suspended by labour after being charged with the harassment of a woman.

SASHA SWIRE, author of Diary Of an MP’s wife — a scurrilous memoir — has denied she allowed ex-Chancellor George Osborne to censor her entries. Sasha, married to former Tory MP Sir hugo Swire, says: ‘No one read a draft apart from the lawyers and my long-suffering husband.’

HIGH drama over negotiations was not restricted to the EU last week. Closer to home, police minister Kit Malthouse found himself in tense talks after he had to scrap his nine-year-old twins’ birthday party because of Covid. ‘They were not happy,’ he told Nick Ferrari on LBC on Christmas Eve. ‘We’ve offered compensatory items but you know what kids are like. They trade. We are in discussions far worse than the EU. It’s all sorts of negotiation but normally configures around computer games.’