Pick of the week’s Gossip

As president, Donald Trump repeatedly asked national security aides if China was using a “hurricane gun” to shoot storms at the United States, it has been claimed. “He asked if China ‘made’ hurricanes to send to us,” a former official told Rolling Stone magazine. “One guy in the room responded, ‘Not to my knowledge, sir.’ I kept it together until I got back to my office.” Another recalled: “It was almost too stupid for words... I did not get the sense he was joking at all.”

Katharine Birbalsingh is well-known for the high standards she demands of the pupils at her school in Wembley, where forgetting a pencil can lead to a detention. But this week, a clip from a documentary about Birbalsingh’s methods led some to suggest she should be in detention herself, for misattributing one of the inspirational quotes displayed in a school corridor. The line – “Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it’s the courage that counts” – is attributed to Winston Churchill, but it actually comes from an advert for Budweiser beer. Birbalsingh said it was “the essence” of it that mattered.

It’s perhaps just as well that No. 10 did not close during lockdown, as Boris Johnson has admitted that he does not get much done at home. “My experience of working from home is you spend an awful lot of time making another cup of coffee and then, you know, getting up, walking very slowly to the fridge, hacking off a small piece of cheese, then walking very slowly back to your laptop,” he told the Daily Mail (see page 21).