Ephraim Hardcastle

THE state-subsidised Young Vic’s production, Happy Days, by Samuel Beckett, is an absurdist drama with two characters. One is stuck in sand and the other spends most of the show unseen. Very little happens. Yet it has a director, assistant director, designer, lighting designer, sound designer, voice coach, casting director, associate lighting designer, stage manager, deputy stage manager, assistant stage manager and props supervisor, as well as a costume supervisor, wigs supervisor, lighting operator, two sound operators, a wigs dresser, dresser, costume maintenance expert, set sculptor, painter, make-up artist, dressmaker and a hat maker. And of course a movement coach. An absurdist drama indeed! ASPIRING Labour leader Chuka Umunna, addressing a Press Gallery lunch, seemed uneasy, says my source, who mentions ‘nervous laughter, a sheen of sweat on his shiny head and ritual praise for Ed Miliband at the start of every question’. Might it also have been his mickey-taking introduction, by BBC political reporter James Landale, who said sleek, natty Umunna, Labour’s business spokesman, ‘is a great supporter of small businesses in the Savile Row area’. LABOUR’S Roy Hattersley, 81, and Liberal David Steel, 75, were cruelly lampooned by the 1980s satirical puppet show Spitting Image – the former, pictured, for dribbling, the latter for being in the pocket of his Social Democrat partner David Owen. Yet both agreed to take part in an event marking its 30th anniversary. Fame addicts or gluttons for punishment? WATER-sodden locals in Somerset are cursing Labour peeress Baroness Young, 65, for the floods, estimated to have caused £50million damage. While chief executive of the Environment Agency (2000 to 2008), part of the Somerset Levels became a bird sanctuary. Lady Young’s previous berth? Chief executive of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. LEICESTER East’s Labour MP Keith Vaz ingratiates himself with John Bercow in the Commons: ‘Mr Speaker, may I begin by congratulating you on your double-celebration this week – not just an honorary degree from City University but, more importantly, an honorary doctorate from De Montfort University, Leicester.’ Vazolene’s oleaginous flattery was well received. TAKING a break from his £300,000 charity job in New York, former Labour MP David Miliband was back in his old South Shields constituency yesterday for the not-tobe-missed annual Harton Technology College lecture. Having been there at Christmas, is Miliband spending more time in his former constituency than brother Ed does in his, Doncaster North? FEMINIST heroine Germaine Greer, 75, denies being a sexual gymnast these days, telling Woman’s Hour: ‘I haven’t tried to put my ankles behind my head for some time.’ She appeared naked in that posture on the cover of a 1970s porn magazine. And has never lived it down.