Pick of the week’s Gossip

Field Marshal Montgomery had little doubt about his own importance, according to the second volume of the writer Kenneth Rose’s diaries. When Monty visited a school in Essex, one of the pupils took some photos of him and offered to send him copies. How, he asked, should he address the envelope? “‘Field Marshal Montgomery, England’ will do,” the old soldier replied. And then, after a moment’s reflection, “Better put ‘Hampshire’ as well.”

Jamie Lee Curtis made her name in the classic 1978 horror film Halloween, and appeared in a sequel as recently as 2018. But she has admitted that she is no fan of the genre herself. “I scare very easily [and] I don’t like to be frightened,” she told the Daily Mail. “I find nothing charming about it and I’d hate to watch a horror movie.” In fact, she is such a scaredy-cat, she made her husband, Christopher Guest, include in their wedding vows a promise never even to throw her a surprise party: “A surprise party would send me to hospital!”

In his early days in politics, Michael Portillo was sometimes a bit too enthusiastic in his electioneering. On one occasion, he hurried up a garden path without noticing that it was covered in wet concrete; only when he’d knocked on the front door did he realise that he’d left a trail of deep footprints. Luckily, he recovered his presence of mind before the door opened. “Good morning, sir,” he said brightly. “I am your Labour Party candidate.”