Pick of the week’s Gossip

David Cameron is reported to consider Michael Gove “mad”, and will castigate him for the result of the EU referendum in his forthcoming memoirs. But Gove remains friendly with George Osborne: the two recently visited Bayreuth for four days of Wagner operas – including Lohengrin, about a state divided by political infighting, and Tristan und Isolde, in which a man betrays his leader. Their “lads’ holiday” in Bavaria has become something of an annual event, though Gove has admitted that Wagner could be seen as music “for those who think Norman Tebbit is a lefty sell-out and the Village People insufficiently camp”.

After Michael Palin played a chiropodist in the film A Private Function, he received an angry letter accusing him of trivialising the profession. “I have taught and lectured at the London Foot Hospital for 35 years and it is obvious you have scant knowledge of the work of a chiropodist,” wrote Ronald J. Turvey, “I do hope you are not overcome by one of the many constitutional disorders which may create secondary conditions in the feet.”

The late Duke of Westminster could have been a professional footballer, says his biographer Tom Quinn. As a young player, Gerald Grosvenor was offered a trial at Fulham by George Cohen, a member of England’s 1966 World Cupwinning team. But his father vetoed the idea, arguing that there was “too much kissing on the field after a goal was scored”.