Ephraim Hardcastle
LABOUR MP Dennis Skinner, 84, is the subject of a forthcoming documentary film, The Nature of the Beast. His former colleague, John Prescott, 76, announces via Twitter: ‘£1.5K short of amount to get Dennis Skinner film finished. £10 gets your name on the credits. £30 = credit & DVD. Go!’ With his customary grace, Skinner isn’t overcome with gratitude. ‘Prescott needs a stick to walk now,’ he points out.
VANITY Fair editor Graydon Carter says Donald Trump, posing in a luxurious, £1,000 plus Loro Piana cashmere sweater for one of the magazine’s photoshoots, was asked to take it off but refused, thinking it might disturb his extraordinary, comb-over hairstyle. So they had to cut the sweater off his back. Does The Donald wear a hairnet at night?
BUZZFEED UK’s editor-in-chief, Janine Gibson, 44, pictured, says the news website rejected the story of Jeremy Corbyn having to sit on the floor of a train when a Labour activist offered it. Anthony Casey, she says, ‘attached a load of conditions around the words and wanted it written his way’. Asked if she was surprised by The Guardian’s decision to publish it, Ms Gibson says: ‘I’m not going to comment on The Guardian.’ Interestingly, she hoped to become its editor in succession to Alan Rusbridger. Indeed she was his favourite. But the staff’s candidate, Katharine Viner, 45, got the job. I expect Ms Gibson is heartbroken that Ms Viner later had to print a humiliating apology for printing as news a misleading tale concocted by Corbynistas.
JEREMY Paxman, 66, who quit BBC2’s Newsnight in 2014, complains on Radio 5 Live about news presenters: ‘Have you noticed this fashion for people in television studios standing up? Why are they standing up? Why aren’t they sitting down? It’s just ridiculous!’ The old boy had good reason to be against standing up. He suffers from wonky knees.
WHILE Sir Cliff Richard, 76, expressed his grievances against the BBC in Parliament this week – he’s also suing the corporation – it’s forgotten that the Beeb originally hoped its live report of the 2014 raid on his Berkshire home would win awards. The appallingly intrusive Sir Cliff coverage, involving film of his home from a helicopter, produced in cahoots with South Yorkshire Police, was nominated disgracefully for Scoop of the Year at the 2015 Royal Television Society Awards. Mercifully, it didn’t win.
TORY legend Norman Tebbit fears his old party might be hijacked by extremists. Writing in the Left-wing New Statesman, the life peer, now 85, worries that the ‘Conservative Party in the country could be taken over in the way that Labour has been hijacked by Trots, Marxists and delusionals’. He adds: ‘There is terrible disarray in the leadership of major Western political parties, with Trump and Clinton in America, poor Angela Merkel in Germany and Mr Corbyn here at home. I pray that Mrs May is immune to the sickness.’