Pick of the week’s Gossip

Peter O’Toole’s Macbeth at The Old Vic in 1980 was a legendary car crash. Audiences were left in stitches at the production’s OTT absurdity; the critics were vicious – and O’Toole took it badly. Brian Blessed, who played Banquo, recalls finding him backstage on his knees after the reviews came in. “Brian, have you seen what they’ve written about me? I can’t take it.” Blessed cradled him, sang a lullaby and reassured him that he’d cancel the show. But as he turned away, O’Toole “followed me on all fours, like some demented ape, gripping me and saying, ‘I have to go on, Brian, please let me go on... If I don’t, I will die.’” Years later, O’Toole admitted: “My nose starts bleeding the minute I even think about the reviews.”

Boris Johnson is said to worry about his finances – but that hasn’t stopped him splashing out on gourmet deliveries from upmarket food company Daylesford. In the past year, the PM has reportedly spent around £12,500 of his own money on 30 food hampers, at a cost of £250 each, along with 100 meals for two, at £50 a pop, says the Daily Mail. The deliveries are apparently “smuggled” in via the back entrance to Downing Street.

At the launch of the uncensored diaries of the Tory MP Sir Henry “Chips” Channon ( see page 56), Michael Gove had a question for their editor, Simon Heffer. “What first attracted you to this social-mountaineering, parent-hating, antiAmerican, anti-Semitic, sexually voracious, tuft-hunting, Nazibedazzled appeaser,” Gove enquired. To which Heffer replied: “I’m waiting to edit your diaries and thought Chips was a good interim plan.”