Pick of the week’s Gossip

The late Sir Peter Hall had many run-ins with Margaret Thatcher – one of them in his own theatre. When the young Simon Callow was starring as a foul-mouthed Mozart in Peter Shaffer’s play Amadeus, the then PM came to a performance. Afterwards, she buttonholed the director backstage. “I think it is disgraceful that the National Theatre shows Mozart uttering such obscenities,” she said. “But Prime Minister,” he replied, “it is actual fact that he did talk like that... his own letters confirm it.” The Iron Lady, however, had the final word. “Mr Hall, I don’t think you heard what I said. It could not be!” The apparent anti-semitism of Roald Dahl is well documented – and his books had to be edited to take out offensive ethnic stereotypes. Yet he planned to make one of his best-loved heroes black. According to his widow, in an early draft of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie was a “black boy”. Felicity Dahl told the BBC it was a “pity” he’d changed his mind, but that she didn’t know why he had. However, Donald Sturrock, Dahl’s biographer, has the answer. “His agent thought it was a bad idea.”

In his new book, John O’farrell recalls an evening at Chequers with Tony Blair when Jimmy Savile was also a guest. During drinks, the party noticed that the DJ had stuck a picture of a naked woman onto the wall. Across it was written: “Oh Lord, please send me Sir Jimmy Savile.” Blair simply shrugged, and said: “He does do an awful lot of work for charity.”