Arlene and Kate’s car-less whispers?

WHAT was the DUP’s Arlene Foster doing “deep in conversation” with Labour’s Kate Hoey? And why did they leave the Commons in the same car? Hoey, who decried the “minimal” interest shown by her colleagues in Northern Ireland, may have been practising what she preaches, but the two are old friends, meeting in their student days. Foster says: “When I was nominated by the DUP, [Hoey] asked me if there was anything she could do to help. I suggested she should come to Enniskillen to endorse my candidature.”

GRAYSON Perry is a one-man stand against marketing forces capitalising on the everyday. “I stopped sending Christmas cards five to 10 years ago,” he told us yesterday at the Baillie Gifford book prize, railing: “Stop telling me how to live my life. There’s a national day for everything. Stop telling me how to wipe my f**king arse.”