Comic Katherine’s gourmet gripes in Britain

THE Earl of Oxford and Asquith took a bullet in Parliament yesterday when Labour MP Barry Sheerman accused the Earl, a former MI6 chief in Moscow, of being ‘a lobbyist for a man in the U.S. who is believed to be involved in Russian gang crime’. Sheerman urged the Government to ‘look into this issue’ as ‘everybody knows there is a group in the Upper House that is very close to Russia’. Blowhard Barry may not have noticed that the Earl, who helped double agent Oleg Gordievsky to defect from the Soviet Union in 1985, is a critic of Vladimir Putin, calling him ‘delusional’ and deploring ‘sadistic’ Russian troops in a Lords speech earlier this year. Or does Sheerman think the Earl is operating under deep cover?

BRITISH food is no laughing matter for Canadian comic Katherine Ryan.

‘I dislike the perplexity of putting everything [in] a pastry or a pie,’ she tells me at the Bafta Nominees’ party at the V&A museum in London (left).

‘The war is over and it doesn’t have to be leftovers any more — you’re a real booming economy,’ says the star of Channel 4 hit 8 Out Of 10 Cats, who moved to the UK in 2008. The 40-yearold adds: ‘You don’t have to pretend that we still just have leavened flour.

‘I don’t like British food, and [Britons] don’t like their spice, which hurts my spirit.

‘I don’t like sausage rolls, I don’t see the need to pickle an egg — there are loads of fermented foods like kimchi.

‘We’re citizens of the world, there is multiculturalism from foods that you can enjoy.’

MODERN motherhood is no easier than it used to be, claims TV historian Suzannah Lipscomb. ‘It’s an amazing, awe-inspiring and wonderful thing to be a mother, but it’s also entirely mundane and boring and irritating,’ says Suzannah, 45, who has a five-year-old son with actor Tom Hutch. ‘It’s a choice I’m making on an almost daily basis. When my child comes back from school he says, “Mummy, come and play with me”. And I have to say, “I’ve got to go back to work”. Most of the time, you’d actually rather be with your child than at some event that’s going to further your career.’ She adds: ‘It’s extraordinary to read a book [on motherhood] from the 1930s that feels so relevant.’