Muttley’s last laugh on Trump

LEGENDARY Spectator and Oldie editor Alexander Chancellor, right, who died on Saturday aged 77, proposed himself as Trump’s assassin in a last, characteristic blast against all that was wrong in the world. Oldie publisher James Pembroke reported his proposition in a letter to Oldie contributors and noted: “He would have been far more successful than The Jackal, charming his way past security guards, who would have been disarmed by his beautiful manners, engaging smile and Muttley-like laugh.”

Chancellor was every journalist’s dream editor,

HAIR-RAISING tale from über PR boss Maria Boyle, recalling the time her client, colourist Jo Hansford, heard Naomi Campbell was on the way to see her. “A RollsRoyce pulled up with blacked-out windows. The chauffeur walked round the car, opened the door and picked up a box off the back seat and brought it in to the salon... with Naomi’s wig in it. Apparently she only wanted her fringe piece to be coloured.” assembling excellent writers and letting them get on with it. Graham Greene described him as “the best editor I have ever worked for”, and

Charles Moore called him “world-class”.

The Spectator was in freefall when Chancellor took over as editor in 1975. An ex - Reuters correspondent, he knew nothing about editing print but his mischievous personality transformed the failing title from busted flush to a funny, cynical must-read, notably pairing Taki’s High Life jet-set antics with Jeffrey Bernard’s Low Life chronicle of vodka-soaked Soho despair.

Chancellor’s final Long Life column — on Trump —was in last week’s Spectator.

PAGE-turner of the day: Stanley Johnson, father of Boris, is to write a book on the “skulduggery” that may have gone on in the run-up to the Brexit vote. Don’t tell BoJo.