Bit brisk in the States, isn’t it? Tarquin, the Drone’s weather boy, tells me it’s so cold that the Michigan town of Hell has frozen over.
*****
Of course it may all be familiar ground to you sophisticates of the world but a new acronym has baffled me: LGBTQQIP2SAA. I’m grateful to that nice chap in cashiers for putting me right. Apparently, It means lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex, pansexual, two-spirit (2S), androgynous and asexual. Something to break the ice with Aunt Maud over the After Eights.
*****
Enjoy your rum-laden Christmas pud while you may. According to researchers, it’s likely to be extinct by 2025. Blame the ever-threatening Gen Z. Almost half of under 25s say they don’t like the traditional ‘boiled fruit cake’. Mind you, more than a third confess never to have tried it. Typical!
*****
Thanks for all the cards that have been pouring into The Goss. Mind you, if they haven’t got the word Christmas on them our ‘office manager' Enid, a traditionalist, is more than likely to bin them. What would she have made of Victorian cards which were ‘downright creepy’, according to Mental Floss?
Among the strangest scenes: a mouse riding on a lobster, humans struggling to get out of the stomach of an evil snowman and a frog fleeing with a moneybag after murdering a friend. And forget cuddly, cosy robins: the Victorians liked images of dead ones — a sign of good luck for the new year.
*****
Children could be forgiven for thinking Santa is just another of the swarthy drivers (and that’s just the women) with thick East European accents delivering packages in this season of online shopping. In the States (where else?) the sophisticated tracking of presents is carried out by no less than the North American Aerospace Defence Command.
Don’t tell Putin but 1,500 staff and volunteers each year exchange monitoring the skies for incoming missiles to fielding phone calls from youngsters anxious about the progress of their gifts. The tradition began in 1955 when a child misdialled a phone number and ended up chatting to Col Harry Shoup, a US Air Force officer watching for Soviet air raids. He played along, convincing his young caller he was, indeed, Santa and more calls followed.
*****
That mischievous scamp Mary Berry tells me that we in Britain eat more Brussels sprouts than anyone else, including a mind-boggling 700 million at Christmas. Can this be true? Oi, Berry, you’re having a giraffe aren’t you?
*****
Channel 4’s Wagatha Christie trial re-enactment (bit tedious, isn’t it?) gives everyone another chance to laugh at Peter André’s allegedly diminutive cock. Not that André, a genial chap, seems fazed. Apparently, at an after show media trough fest to mark his West End turn in Grease he handed around a tray of chipolatas to hacks to help the medicine go down.
Incidentally, another name for the Rooney-Vardy libel tussle: The Scousetrap.
*****
How the ‘mighty’ have fallen: jungle over-achiever Matt Hancock entered the book charts at 191 with his much-hyped Pandemic Diaries. Now, though, it has plummeted out of the Top Thousand altogether, comprehensively outsold by The Air Fryer Cookbook. Ouch!
*****
Just when you thought it was safe to return to the No10 rose garden … BoJo takes the first important step on his comeback trail. The ousted prime minister has flown to Rupert Murdoch’s ranch in Montana to beg the media mogul to support him when, the theory goes, May’s local election results make Rishi Sunak’s position untenable.
Apparently, Murdoch ‘heard him out’ and now Victoria Newton, Tony Gallagher and Emma Tucker are said to be dreading the phone call telling them to back Johnson.
*****
Darts? That’s for cissies. Latest craze in the US, says The Economist, is axe throwing. Some 20,000 competitors take part in 324 dedicated venues (up from 16 in 2017) all over the country. Chucking axes at wooden targets is also popular for team-building, stag dos and break-up parties where women target pictures of their exes. As retired cop Dean Cooper, from Texas, says: ‘I get to throw sharp stuff into wood and drink beer with friends. What’s not to like?’
*****
My snippet recalling Dorothy Parker’s Wrath of Grapes warning to those who, ahem, like a tincture prompts old chums to message The Goss with other examples of her keen wit.
From Country Boys’ Billie the Ghillie (and he should know): ‘I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.’
And from a feature writer who, wisely, wishes to remain anonymous: ‘I’m not a writer with a drinking problem but a drinker with a writing problem.’
Finally, from cheeky little Flo, who sometimes used to assist Alice (as in ‘pass the sickbag’) in the Express Grill Room: ‘I like to have a Martini: two at the very most. After three I’m under the table; after four I’m under my host.’
*****
As the Christmas party season builds to its over-loud, often embarrassing, sometimes vomit-flecked climax let’s remind ourselves of, and heed, Dorothy Parker’s warning about the Wrath of Grapes.
*****
Worried how Donald J Trump is faring two years after his fall from grace? Don’t bother. Legal problems aside, the 45th president is like a pig in shit, says the Washington Post (it didn’t really but you know what I mean). The strawberry blond-tressed 76-year-old plays 18 or 27 holes of golf six days a week using a golf buggie equipped with a laptop and printer which a lackey, who rides shotgun, uses to show him nice media coverage. On ‘quiet days’ another lackey calls his allies to request they phone him ‘to boost his sprits with positive affirmations’.
*****
Talk about the cost of living crisis: loaves of a Japanese-style milk bread are selling for £11.40 a pop in London and £15 in Los Angeles. The Tokyo bakery Gina Nishikawa, which created the latest must-try nosh called Shokupan, has a secret (up till now) ingredient for each loaf: a spoonful of honey.
*****
A bearer pads into my den bearing a cleft stick containing a dispatch from a chum at the Mirror. The message reads: This is the first par of the latest Hi folks, coming after our paltry 3% and all the misery of staff cuts and rota mischief:
'Hi folks
This week I've begun my annual tradition of reading A Christmas Carol … It's a reminder on the importance of reflection and a great recharge of your empathy batteries!'
My contact commented: 'Presumably he's lost the charger for the 'self-awareness batteries’.
To spare the author’s blushes I hesitate to name him. Suffice to say it’s Big Jim, who may or may not be CEO of Reach.
*****
To the Anglers, our local, for the Drone’s Christmas piss-up. A good time was had by all. The Editor, sensibly, after last year’s debacle, gave his annual pep talk early in the proceedings (he gets a bit slurry after a few). The subs, predictably, were unseemly and out of hand. Old sweats, though, go for a pee when they start turning their jackets inside out. Not for me a fusillade of incoming Brussels. Interesting to meet our Country Boys, Teddy and Oliver, invited up for the occasion. I asked Ollie how they met. Apparently, it was at a production of The Sound of Music. He recalled: ‘I fell when Ted turned to me and said: “Those lederhosen really suit you”’. Aaah.
*****
Perhaps it’s a surfeit of Yuletide cheer (Surely not — Ed) but Mail Online is becoming even more eccentric than usual in the run-up to the Big Day. The ‘Comment’ section, for instance. Ahead of the leaders and columns by Dominic Lawson, Ruth Sunderland and Andrew Pierce the main item proclaims: Anitta shows off her VERY sexy moves in a sparkly black nude illusion jumpsuit at iHeartRadio’s Jingle Ball ahead of Charlie Puth, Backstreet Boys, Ava Max and more in Miami.
*****
Interesting, wasn’t it, to read the list of clichés banned in the Sunday Times Travel section? My copy boy, Melvyn, points out that if such curbs were in place when GatesTours was in business, the Freebie Kings of Fleet Street would have been hard put to find enough words to compile their travelogues.
*****
Forget overpaid rail workers and posties (how can you tell whether the latter are on strike or not?), when NHS ‘heroes’ (nurses and ambulance staff) walk out, the Government knows it’s in trouble. Shame there’s no spare cash available. Hang on, though. Rod Liddle in The Sunday Times says he has spotted an ad for a 'Director for Lived Experience' for the NHS in the Midlands. It requires the ability to ‘bring the experiential lens to Trust Board decision-making’ and to ‘facilitate the cultural changes needed to infuse and propagate best practice.’ Qualifications? None apparently. Pay? £115,00 a year. Now dismiss me as a nit-picking redneck if you will, but unless and until someone sorts out this sort of billhooks* the venerated NHS will never deserve the sainthood it revels in. *T&Cs
*****
The concept of the ‘hot priest’ (Richard Chamberlain in The Thorn Birds; Andrew Scott in Fleabag) acts as pure, unadulterated catnip to some ladies (and gentlemen, too, in this enlightened age). Thus, it is no surprise that Rome’s annual Hot Priest Calendar is still selling well in the Eternal City’s tacky souvenir shops after 20 years. The €10 Calendario Romano showcases 12 dishy hunks of the cloth against ornate liturgical backdrops. There has to be a catch: they’re not all priests. Photographer Piero Pizzi randomly snaps men wearing religious-looking clothing. In 2008, for example, Father March turned out to be a Spanish estate agent.
*****
Remember when, to get a job in journalism, you needed certificates, shorthand qualifications and the ability to read without moving your lips? Well, the British Beer and Pub Association is advertising for a communications officer. Ideal qualifications: a flair for writing, savvy on social media and ‘love a pint in your local’. Don’t all rush now.
*****
Another WTF moment, courtesy of The Goss: winter is known to some sad people as the best time to embrace Ephroncore, ‘the millennial urge’ to romanticise everything to do with filmmaker Norah Ephron. According to Vogue, this includes the categorically cosy: warm pillows, toasty winter coats, a sofa with the optimum amount of squish. Ephron, whose hits include romcoms When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail has developed an almost cult-like online following. Now you know.
*****
Slack-mouthed viewers of the Harry and Meghan
whinge-athon will notice that a Town Crier pops up now and again to mark important milestones in the Sussex’s ‘journey’. The documentary makers obviously think he is an official figure like, say, the Lord Chamberlain. In fact, he is a self-appointed, self-promoting show-off called Tony Appleton. Our old chum, Roger Watkins says: ‘I recall Tony before he made himself famous. He was a carpet salesman in Brentwood. I think Carol may have bought a rug from him but I can’t be sure.’
*****
Not content with earning more than £1million from a mere four speaking engagements since he was given the heave-ho in September, Boris Johnson fancies another line of work: poetry recitals. ‘I now have a pretty stonking repertoire,’ he writes modestly in The Spectator. ‘In 35 minutes I can do the first 100 lines of The Iliad, the first 100 lines of the Aeneid, the first canto of the Divine Comedy and the whole of Lycidas. I propose to fill this unexpected hiatus in my career with vast lucrative theatrical renditions of these great texts, in ascending chronological order.’
*****
The joy of reading the news online is enhanced by readers’ comments on the end of stories. At the end of a report on the BBC News website headlined 'Breakthrough in nuclear fusion energy announced’ some wit commented: 'Hope Harry and Meghan are ok with this.'
Lovely stuff.
*****
Bardot? Non, merci! Discerning young thrusters, I am assured, always preferred the more nuanced lusciousness of Mylene Demongeot, who has just died aged 87. La Demongeot, who was born in Nice, appeared in more than 100 films in French, English, Italian and Japanese (!).
Her latest movie, Maison de Retraite, in which she stars with Gerard Depardieu, is the most popular film in France this year.
Adieu ma belle!
*****
As I sync my glittering new rhinestone-inlaid iPhone18 Pro Max, I ponder how we coped before pagers and mobiles. Particularly, how people such as the Prime Minister kept in touch. Semaphore? Flaming beacons? Thanks, then, to Max Hastings’s new book, Abyss, for revealing how Churchill and Attlee et al could be contacted if the country came under attack. The answer was that the AA’s radio rescue system would have been asked to alert the PM’s driver to stop at the nearest phone box. Hastings says that it was even suggested that the chauffeur be issued with the four pennies then necessary to operate a public call box.
*****
Fancy a few shavings of collateral on your pasta? The Italian bank Credem has the answer. Since 1953 it has allowed cash-light farmers seeking loans to offer large wheels of Parmesan as collateral. Interest on the loans is offset by the value of the cheese which increases as it matures. The bank holds 500,000 wheels in two high security warehouses. They’re worth an estimated €200 million. Who knew?
*****
One of my first tasks of the day is to read the obituaries in The Times. They always cheer me up; after all, if I can read them I am, by definition, doing better than the subjects. But occasionally there is another reason to be cheerful. Yesterday it was the headline on a page devoted to the life of a man called Jet Black: 'Drummer of The Stranglers, the punk band that ranked alongside the Sex Pistols but let the side down by winning an Ivor Novello award'.
I wish I’d written that one.
*****
It’s a good job all those ex-Express scribblers out there have nice company pensions because there ain’t much money in authorship these days. In 2006 the median full-time income was £12,330; this year it’s £7,000 — a drop of 60 per cent when you count inflation.
If this continues, says Joanne Harris in the Guardian, only the elite few authors will be able to continue and ‘readers will be restricted to a small selection of books by a narrow range of authors’. Worrying, isn’t it?
*****
It had to be California, of course. The Golden State now has a break-up boot camp where, for $4,000, sad singletons spend three nights of contemplation and terminal wokery. Alcohol and drugs are taboo but daily activities include primal screaming and writing letters to exes and then ceremonially burning them. There are also lessons from a professional dominatrix about power dynamics through the lens of BDSM. How unlike the home life of our dear departed Queen.
*****
Delicious obit in The Times on satirist, broadcaster and Standard columnist Victor Lewis-Smith. He could certainly turn a phrase. Once he accused a celebrated chef of ‘gastronomic alchemy…he’d made a pig’s ear out of a fish pie’.
*****
I’m probably not allowed to use the term Yellow Peril but I just have so take note that China has at least 100 unofficial ‘police stations’ in at least 50 countries, according to The Guardian. Chinese security operatives in cities such as London, Paris, Milan Barcelona and Sydney use them as a base to harass and intimidate dissidents to repatriate. In Italy, which has the most stations, Chinese police are allowed to patrol cities to ‘assist’ Chinese tourists.
*****
Thank you to those who claimed their crisp oncer for adding to LP Brevmin’s list of winter weather clichés to be avoided like the plague (Get on with it — Ed):
Arctic maritime airmass; widespread frosts; double digit sub-zero temperatures; wintry biteback; festive freezer; Polar fury; a bend in the Polar front; the odd flurry; snow ploughs on standby.
*****
TV’s programme The Savoy at Christmas recalls the halcyon days when the hotel was once a sort of upmarket canteen for some senior Express execs. There’s a tale of Sir Larold Lamb being forced to take public transport to the Strand when his office car was off the road. Hopping aboard a west-bound No. 11 Routemaster outside PA, the great man ordered the conductor: ‘Take me to The Savoy!’
*****
Who knew? Elizabeth Taylor amassed a fabulous fortune from films, including a percentage cut of Cleopatra, and husbands but this was easily eclipsed by a perfume she developed and marketed in 1991. White Diamonds, described as ‘a magical and glamorous fragrance’ has brought in £1.5billion (and counting).
*****
Episode 3 of the Harry & Meghan Netflix series takes slightly scattershot aim at Royal correspondents: a topic that is guaranteed to get media excited.
A documentary researcher once told me the biggest headaches producers invariably endure when making shows about the Royals don't come from the Palace. Nor do they come from nervous lawyers or network bosses. The most consistent source of drama, hissy fits and egomania when touching anything related to the Windsors? Royal correspondents, who absolutely hate other reporters horning in on their patch and are unbelievably precious about their representation on screen.
*****
How are things going for Kelvin MacKenzie with his new media venture The Daily Disclosure?
He posted a job listing on Facebook this week, but comments were turned off by an admin after a prospective candidate asked how much experience they'd need in slandering dead football fans to be considered for the role.
*****
The revelation that two psychics were among the alleged conspirators in the foiled Reichsburger Plot will come as no surprise to students of Germany’s far Right. As Ben McIntyre says in The Times: ‘No nutty German political conspiracy would be complete without its complement of occultists, soothsayers, mystics and others claiming paranormal powers and the ability to predict the future.’
I wonder if they have any link with G.R. Petulengro-Frame, the Drone’s resident visionary and seer, who presciently foretold the downfall of Suella Braverman.
Die Zigeunerin hält schtum — Ed
*****
I’ve always been a mite suspicious of Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves as she sits there with a smug Mona Lisa smile listening to Less to Him Than Meets the Eye pontificating at PMQs. Now my scribbler with 180 Pitmans high above the Labour benches tells me how decidedly anal she can be.
Apparently, she sends 3,200 Christmas cards, dedicating and signing each one, in marathon sessions which start in the summer. During a recent magazine interview she whipped out a tinsel-laden card and signed it to the publication’s staff without breaking the conversation’s flow. Scary.
*****
Stuck for Christmas gifts for a vast extended family? Why not rent an entire village nestling in the hilly Marche region in central Italy for a holiday? Petritoli can take 200 guests and has cobblestone streets, a wine tasting cellar, swimming pools, sundry gelataria, a Baroque theatre and an historic castle. All yours for just £1,300 a night. Affare fatto!
*****
Look out in February for the film Cocaine Bear about (and I can’t believe I’m writing this) a black bear on a coke-fuelled rampage in the state of Georgia. It’s based on the true story in 1985 of a drug smuggler who dropped duffel bags containing 130 kilos of cocaine from a plane over Chattahoochee National forest. Then, wearing night-vision goggles and Gucci loafers (as you do), he parachuted down to retrieve it but (as you try not to) he fell to his death. The coke was found three months later next to a bear which had a fatal overdose after eating some of it. The animal was stuffed, named Pablo Escobear and is currently on display wearing a Santa hat in a Kentucky shopping mall (and I can’t believe I’ve just written that either).
*****
Marketing? What a world of duplicity, smoke and mirrors. And, occasionally, brutal honesty. Tourist bosses in Nebraska got so fed up when, for four years, it came last in a list of states people wanted to visit, that they went on the attack. A new slogan was adopted: ‘Nebraska. Honestly, it’s not for everyone’. Ramming home the message were accompanying taglines: ‘Famous for our flat, boring landscape’ and ‘Lucky for you, there’s nothing to do here’. Has it worked? No, I’ve got no plans to visit Nebraska either.
*****
A cautionary tale as you prepare to read the side-splitting ‘jokes’ in crackers this Christmas. Have you heard the one about novelist Anthony Trollope dying of the giggles? Emily Temple, of LitHub, tells me that in 1882 his niece, Edith, began reading aloud a comic novel about a father who switches bodies with his son. Trollope found the tale hilarious and laughed so hard he had a stroke. The sad punchline is: he died a month later.
*****
Not for the faint of heart but how’s about a Christmas snifter of a schnapps-like spirit produced from apples harvested in abandoned orchards near Chernobyl? A British firm is collaborating with a Ukrainian distillery to knock out 1,700 bottles of Atomik (geddit?) despite historical reservations and current incoming from Putin’s ragtag army.
Yeah…but Chernobyl? Totally safe, they say: levels of radioactivity are harmless and distillation eradicates elements such as caesium and strontium. Profits from a half litre at £45 will support areas affected by the 1986 meltdown and now the Russian invasion.
*****
The Harry-Meghan docu-bomb inevitably prompts comparison with the arrogance and feeling of self-entitlement of the Duke of Windsor and ‘that woman’. All you need to know about Windsor is that he spent some of their honeymoon on a Mediterranean cruise practising his golf by hitting 3,000 balls into the sea.
*****
Pharmacies in Manhattan are prey to an outbreak of shop theft, reports my snout in Hell’s Kitchen. So much so that pretty much everything — baby formula, deodorant, laundry detergent — has had to be locked in glass boxes. One chain, Rite Aid, had to close one branch after $200,000 worth of stuff was stolen last winter. It’s not random thieving, though. Police say organised crime groups steal ‘large amounts of swag’ in carefully planned operations and then sell it online.
*****
The fallout from the Sussexes’ docu-bomb is bound to be damaging to all parties concerned. But one story, that Ms Markle demanded air fresheners to counter the mustiness she perceived in 674-year-old St George’s Chapel, Windsor, where her £31million taxpayer-funded wedding ceremony took place, has never been denied.
I remember asking former D. Ex royal editor Ashley Walton at the time if this were likely to be true. ‘Must be,’ he said ‘even we wouldn’t have made that up.’
*****
Now England are through to the World Cup quarter finals it’s just as well to carry out some spot kick analysis, advises my lackey on a laptop in Tel’s Pop-up CaffBar and Brasserie, Qatar. Research reveals that nearly a quarter of penalties are aimed at the bottom left corner of the goal. Don’t do it! Just 63% of them make it into the net.
Bottom right is a much better choice: 17% are aimed there but 74% go in. Best option is the top right corner. Only 6% of faint-hearted penalty takers attempt this but 88% of those who try are rewarded with a goal.
*****
My mole buried deep within the entrails of SW1A 2HB whispers that the Army is about to launch a new super computer called StrongShield intended to regularise, or minimise, existential, homogenised strategic matrix approaches within the military through systemised monitored mobility. Concentration on a comprehensive reassessment of millennial organisational capability has produced ambitious remote policy paradigm shifts. StrongShield also delivers a raft of optional monitored time-phases and holistic relative matrix initiatives. Functional incremental programming, deconstructed asset analysis and balanced third-generation options are also part of the package.
Just thought you’d like to know.
*****
A rummage through faded back copies in the Drone’s vaults of the teenage girls’ periodical Jackie reveal that Jimi Hendrix compiled a list of his Loves and Hates for the mag when he was 24. Loves included Daydreaming, Choccie milkshakes, Hair, Beautiful, sleek American cars, Spaghetti and California. Among his Hates were Cold sheets, Sharing his bedroom with cockroaches or fleas, Mashed potatoes, Pale colours and TV: ‘It’s a drag’. Sweet, isn’t it?
*****
Sometimes when everything is going wrong, all you can do is laugh. That seems to be the approach adopted by GB News CEO Angelos Frangopoulos.
Two of its contributor-presenters spoke out in solidarity with Enoch Powell this week, throwing the beleaguered channel into yet another crisis of its own making. Overnight, two advertisers pulled out — yet when depressed staff asked Angelos the next morning what he intended to do about any of it, all he did was laugh and say 'Well, maybe they've got a point…?'
*****
Another example of Where’s Prodnose When You Need Him? featuring the newspaper without a discernible revise system. Columnist Sarah Vine reviews Granite Harbour, BBC 1’s new three-part crime drama set in Aberdeen. She says the lead character is a lance corporal in the Royal Military Police: he is obviously a sergeant (the three stripes on his arm are a clue). Then she says he is assigned to a DCI (detective chief inspector) who, on screen, is introduced as a sergeant. It matters.Warnings of frost and snow from the north-east caused by a ScandInavian weather system nicknamed the Troll from Trondheim has prompted chief sub LP Brevmin to declare the Drone a weather cliché-free zone.
Longie tells me subs have been told to avoid them like the plague. Consequently, the following words and phrases are banned:
Sub zero blast; Beast from the East (especially when it’s an Atlantic storm); plunge; plummet; soar; El Niño; La Niña; jet stream alignment; the white stuff (use on pain of death); blanket; winter wonderland; snow joke; icy grip; wintry on hills; light dusting; white Christmas; temperatures really struggling etc
The Goss’s crisp oncer for the best wintry expression not listed here.
*****
An amusing postscript to The Times’s obituary of music mogul David English. He gave an after-dinner talk for a portly friend called Harry Stillman. It began: 'Harry’s perfect woman is one who makes love all night and in the morning wakes up as a bacon sandwich.'
*****
A colleague with Gallic connections tells me that the centuries old rivalry between cheese makers in France has plumbed new depths of paranoia and jealousy. The distinctive black layer of activated charcoal running through the Morbier cheese has, in effect, become a trademark after a 10-year legal battle. Now Montboissie du Haut Livradois, a mountain cheese in France’s centre, has been banned from containing charcoal because it is too like Morbier. Producer Florence Arnaud says: ‘The black line is our story. It’s the signature of our cheese.’ Pass the Somerset brie and a snifter of Taylor’s 94, Perkins.
*****
We all recall Labour leader knight of the realm Keir (Less to him than meets the eye) Starmer bottling out of sacking his gorgeous, pouting, auburn-tressed deputy, Angela Rayner and promoting her instead. It was straight out of the Richard Nixon Songbook.
Tricky Dicky knew it was going to be tough to sack his great friend, FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover in 1971 but was determined to pull the trigger, says the New Yorker. We don’t know if Hoover brought up the voluminous files of political dirt he had compiled in nearly half a century running the agency but after an hour’s meeting in the White House, Nixon increased the FBI’s personnel budget.
*****
World Cup host nation Qatar maybe already out of the competition but that did not dampen the ardour of its raucous, committed fans. Or so it looked. Now the New York Times reveals that, in fact, the Gulf state recruited 1,500 ‘home’ supporters from neighbouring countries. Good deal, too: free flights, digs, match tickets, food and a ‘small stipend’. The faux fans arrived in mid October in time to rehearse their choreographed actions, newly written ‘traditional’ chants and, of course Qatar’s national anthem. Why does this not remind me of the LNER stadium where aged ex-Express ultras throng the stands supporting Lincoln City?
*****
More than five weeks after leaving Downing Street, the economy and Britain’s standing in the world are not the only victims of Liz Truss’ disastrous tenure as prime minister. Poor old Tatler, the magazine for silly people, by silly people and about silly people, looks even sillier with the December issue devoting six pages to the bloody woman, all in the present tense with her still in the job. It can’t have been more than a few days after the magazine went to press that Truss did the decent thing and went.
It wasn’t as if the omens weren’t there; the disastrous wrecking ball mini budget had happened and the results were only too clear and written about in the profile by the Spectator’s Katy Ball.
Long lead time on glossies are such a curse, give me a daily rag … or better still the world’s greatest website.
*****
I hesitate to share intelligence of the latest right-on craze in New York but we are purveyors of truth, after all, so here goes. TikTok activists are posting clips of themselves ‘dumpster diving’. The New York Times says this involves going through the bins of major retailers and revealing details of needlessly discarded products. Rubbish raiders have discovered anything from packets of chocolates to $500 designer handbags. Clips from #dumpsterdiving have had more than two billion views.
*****
Vive la France! Vive La baguette! French delegates at the United Nations have been celebrating the granting of UNESCO heritage status to the French stick. The ruling recognises the baguette, more than six billion of which are baked each year in France, as one of the abiding symbols of the nation. President Macron describes it as ‘250 grams of magic and perfection’. Ahhh!
*****
It’s journalism. But not as we know it. The Sun’s online offering by Beth Alcock (named and shamed) runs a 14-par story under the heading Good Morning Britain Fans Shocked As Major Presenter Is ‘Missing‘ From Show In Shake-up.
The premise for this shattering piece of news seems to be that weather popsie Laura Tobin was ‘absent from her desk’. Twitter airheads pondered who her replacement could be before agreeing it was Ruth Dodsworth, an ITV Wales weather presenter. There’s plenty of guff about her but no clue to where Laura was (a day off, perhaps) and no suggestion that anything untoward caused the ‘shake-up’. And, er…that’s it.
The Mirror are just as bad, it’s click bait and nothing to do with news — Ed
*****
As I am a signatory to the Drone’s protocol precluding criticism of a certain newspaper for its lazy, cliché-ridden journalism and apparent lack of a revise system, I won’t comment on its time-warp use of the head Oh, I Say, a phrase last employed by its originator, commentator Dan Maskell, more than 30 years ago, on a tennis story about Emma Raducanu receiving her MBE. (Oh I say, Dumpy, by Drone standards 30 years is recent — Ed)
*****
Ever wondered how wolves decide who’s leader of the pack? Catching a common parasite, Toxoplasma gondii, does the trick. Apparently, it makes the host wolf more aggressive and reduces its fear of other predators. Researchers say infected wolves are 11 times more likely to quit their birth family and start a new pack and 46 times more likely to become the pack’s leader. I wonder what a well known London actor would make of that.
*****
Talking of Michael Caine (né Maurice Micklewhite), I hear a great story about how he acquired his familiar stage name. Apparently, he was cast in a role before he had settled on a suitable working monicker. During a call from a phone box in Leicester Square he was pressed by his agent to choose a name quickly. He looked around and saw the word Caine on a half obscured film poster at the Odeon and the rest, as they say is, cliché. He said later that if a tree hadn’t been in the way, he could have been known as Mickey Mutiny.
*****
Trust them Aussies! About 2,500 turned up on Bondi Beach to pose naked in the early morning light to raise awareness of skin cancer. Snapper Spencer Tunick organised the event to encourage people in Oz, the country worst affected by the disease, to have regular screening. Tunick has form on this: he has staged 100 large-scale nude pix around the world. In 2010 5,500 bared all at Sydney Opera House and he once convinced 18,000 to show their bums in Mexico City.
*****
'I’m not hiding. I don’t care what I look like.' Who said that? It was Claudia Winkleman, presenter of Strictly Come Dancing, who was once listed as the BBC’s highest paid female star, talking to The Times Magazine.
Could that be the same Claudia Winkleman who was beckoned into an afternoon Daily Express news conference at Blackfriars by editor Nick Lloyd, who rather touchingly introduced her as 'my daughter'? (In fact, he is her stepfather.)
It could indeed. She was down from Cambridge for the holidays — and she definitely cared what she looked like that day. As she sashayed out, she adjusted her mini skirt with a little wiggle and the jaws of a dozen or so male, middle-aged newspaper executives became as unhinged as their thoughts.
Don’t care what I look like? Bah, humbug!
*****
Whichever way you look at it, China is a fabulously rich country ($17.7 trillion, measured by nominal GDP, or $30.07 trillion measured by Purchasing Power Parity).
So why do you think Britain donates £51.7 million annually from its international aid budget to the People’s Republic? Just thought I’d ask.
*****
These techie types leave me open-mouthed in admiration some times. An outfit called Storekit has researched the price of a pint near London Tube stations. They vary from £1.49 at Spoons pubs at Stepney Green, Acton Town, Chadwell Heath and Harrow-on-the-Hill up to £6.50 at Terminal 5 Heathrow. They’ve posted it all on a spoof Underground map.
*****
Much outrage in the Back Bar of the Flying Frack*, which has been converted into a World Cup Viewing Suite, over the banning of chaps wearing crusader costumes in Qatar. FIFA has ruled that dressing up as a Christian invader is offensive to the tournament’s Muslim hosts. Fans have been ordered to hand in their swords, shields and chain mail. What next, Rupert Bear’s trousers designated as LGBTUVWXYX+ virtue-signalling apparel?
*T&Cs apply
*****
Remember when the local rag was, er, local? Spare a thought, then, for Dion Jones, editor of the North Wales Daily Post, based in Colwyn Bay. His patch has just been extended to the Scottish border. Jones, curiously the first Welsh-speaking editor in the Post’s 165-year history, now oversees journalists covering an area more than 200 miles in length. I suppose that’s what his employers, Reach, mean by reach.
*****
Welcome to The Goss’s Cleft Stick Club where we bring you obscure items of news from far-flung outposts of civilisation: like the flock of sheep in Inner Mongolia who walked around in a circle for 12 days and no one knows why. An outbreak of listeriosis, aka the Circling Disease, has been dismissed because it causes death in 48 hours. Another theory from agriculture professor Matt Bell is that it’s typical herd mentality: one sheep started doing it and the others joined in ‘to bond and join their friends’. Ahhh!
*****
My item about hell-raising Richard Harris certainly rang a bell with some thirsty adherents of The Goss. So I pass on the tale of the actor drunkenly driving a truck under a low bridge ‘lifting it clean off its pillars’. When the Guardai arrived, he explained: ‘Sorry, officer — I was just delivering this bridge to Limerick’.
*****
Those intimidating pugilists who rule the world of heavyweight boxing are just mischievous scamps really. And suckers for employing marketing chaps who enjoy dodgy puns. Thus, Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield have joined up to launch ear-shaped sweets infused with cannabis to mark the fight 25 years ago when Tyson bit a chunk out of Holyfield’s lug. The ‘Holy Ears’ treats are being released for the. Christmas ‘Holy Daze’ because (and it gets worse) it’s ‘the most wonderful time of the ear’. Pass the spliff, Perkins.
*****
England may not win the World Cup but my statistician at the back of the Isaac Newton Stand tells me that at least we can be content in the knowledge that, at some time or another, we have invaded all 30 other countries competing in the finals (31 if you count Wales). Only 22 nations to go, including Mongolia, Sweden, Guatemala, Monaco and Vatican City.
*****
Footie star Ronaldo’s abrupt defenestration from Man U was announced in a 67-word statement, according to an online news outlet. To fans and pundits alike, this was seen as highly significant. Our man bagging up the balls and collecting the cones says: ‘A 67-worder, as it is known, is the absolute apogee of football club statements. The 57-er used to be considered the ultimate while it’s true that some damp-eyed nostalgics still yearn for the well constructed 120 but a 67 is so on point and says so much about the quality and articulacy of the Old Trafford Haitch-Arr department.’ The Goss reached out to Ronaldo for comment, in a word count of his choice, without success.
*****
They just don’t make hell-raisers like they used to: actors such as O’Toole, Burton, Reed and, wouldn’t you know it, Richard Harris. Inevitably, drink is blamed but we don’t need to go into that, do we? Just check out the Sky documentary The Ghost of Richard Harris for the (gory) details. Like the time he popped out for a paper — and was gone for eight days. On his return, he joked to his furious wife: ‘Why didn’t you pay the ransom?’
*****
This World Cup kerfuffle over One Love armbands could surely be solved if all the players wore one. Then everyone would be booked and then, presumably, sent off. How would FIFA get around that? After all, the ‘I’m Spartacus’ ploy worked for Kirk Douglas.
*****
Have we lost the battle to resist the Americanism ‘meet with’ do you think? The pesky phrase seems to slip into speech and print unchallenged and electronic subs don’t seem to want to save words these days. Mind you, I also saw the construction: ‘She wore a chiffon maxi dress teamed with white trainers’ when ‘and’ would have sufficed. Alas, Drone editorial protocols prevent me from naming the newspaper (and it’s lack of a revise system) responsible for both of the above but our poet, Brian Bilston, doesn’t reckon much to it either.
*****
Remember when football injuries were sorted by a tubby man ambling on with a wet sponge? Now the World Cup has started expect to see more sophisticated and prolonged treatment: the first half of England’s opening game had to be extended by 14 minutes as a concussion assessment was carried out. Don’t be fooled, though. Wayne Rooney thinks a lot of modern sports science is bollocks.
When he was recovering from a broken foot before the 2006 World Cup an ‘independent specialist’ was called in to rule on his fitness. Says genial Wayne: ‘He took me out on the grass, got me to do a bit and then, when we walked in, stamped on my foot. He said: “How was that?” I replied: “Eh, fine” and he said: “Yeah, you’re fit.”’Controversy over alcohol sales at the World Cup prompts my dressing room flunky, whose task it is to retrieve bars of soap from the communal bath, to recall, vaguely, the antics that Belgium captain Eden Hazard got up to when he was a lad.
The night before his last game for Lille in 2012 Hazard, then 21, ordered some farewell drinks — as you do. One thing led to another and when next morning Eden turned up for the match, he was still visibly over-refreshed. Lille skipper Rio Mavuba says: ‘The guy hadn’t even slept: he drank the entire night.’ Pro that he is, Hazard changed and shuffled on to the pitch. And scored a hat-trick.
*****
Amaze your festive dinner party guests with a neat Just Fancy That, courtesy of The Goss: when Democrat John Fetterman is sworn into office in the new year exactly 10 per cent of the US Senate will have the first name John or Jon.
*****
Snowdonia National Park will now call Mount Snowdon by its Welsh name, Yr Wyddfa (pronounced er with-va). For those worried they won’t be able to find Wales’s highest peak on a map, have no fear, says one Twitter user: 'It’s a massive fucking mountain.'
*****
Sad scenes at the Stadiwym Prinicipality in Cardiff after Wales are surprisingly beaten by Georgia in a rugger international. One fan, known to The Goss, cradled a pint of Brains in the BrewDog in Westgate Street and said: ‘I wouldn’t mind but it’s Louisiana up next.’
*****
Much has been made of Jeff Bezos giving Dolly Parton $100million to donate to her favourite charities. But I’m grateful to my tame techie with an electronic abacus (Marina Hyde in The Guardian, actually) for putting this gift into context. When you consider that the Amazon boss is richer by an estimated $205million every day, the donation is the equivalent of a person on the median UK salary giving £34.56. Also remember that this donor, probably paying tax, is being even more generous than Bezos, who, famously, avoids paying most of his.
*****
You can’t really blame the French for resenting that their beautiful language is being subsumed by the hated mongrel tongue, English. There’s a current campaign against Nice’s slogan, ‘I Love Nice’ and another resort using the franglais ’Happy Days A La Ciotat’. The hawk-eyed guardians of the Academie Francaise are already sourcing French translations for obscure sports at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Mind you, one can go too far: for example, some language fanatics use the phrase un chien chaud when it is more commonly known in France as un hot dog.
*****
My preppy tame snout on The Hill in the Brooks Bros moleskin sport coat and extra slim brushed chinos tells me that the debate over whether an increasingly doddery Joe Biden is able to complete his term let alone run again, pales against worries over the Veep whose gaffes make even her boss look good. Kamala Harris recently spoke warmly of the U.S.’s ‘alliance with North Korea’. On transport policy she wisely said: ‘You need to get to go. You need to be able to get where you need to go. To do the work. And to get home.’
*****
Pop diva Mariah Carey, who has just lost a preposterous trademark court action to be proclaimed Queen of Christmas, has form. The All I Want For Christmas Is You chanteuse once insisted on being surrounded by 20 white kittens and 100 doves just to switch on festive lights at the Westfield shopping centre in West London. She had to back down when Elf ‘n’ Safety Scrooges intervened.
*****
Hollow, ironic laughter rings around Dumpster Towers at an episode of the latest series of The Crown. ‘Martin Bashir’ tells Diana he’s had challenges growing up on a council estate: ‘I had to work twice as hard as anyone else to get my foot in the door of the whiter-than-white BBC.’
Times are changed; we are also changed with them — as Ovid didn’t say.
*****
For those who recall a Woodbine or two behind the bike sheds, an inspiring story from China. Amateur runner ‘Uncle Chen’ has just completed the Xin-anjiang marathon mostly with a fag in his mouth. He consumed a pack of 20 cigarettes while running the race in a creditable 3 hours 28 minutes. My ashtray emptier in the city near Shanghai reveals that, normally, Nunc doesn’t smoke at all.
*****
Amid all the celebrations of the BBC centenary, a fascinating nugget about its rigorous news-gathering in the early days (and I’m not taking the piss). Apparently, editors insisted that every story had to be corroborated by a second source. So if Reuters filed the overthrow of some despot in a far-off land, the Beeb would not transmit news of the coup until, say, AP, or UPI or AFP backed it up. Trouble was, the stringer in Ishouldcoco, or wherever, often represented two of the agencies and, sometimes, all four.
*****
It’s difficult, nay impossible, to stifle a laugh at the up-your-bum New York Times when it clambers aboard its high horse. The Democrat-supporting paper, clearly weary of Donald Trump’s attention-seeking antics, leads its online comment section with: 'How Is It Possible That We Are Still Talking About This Man?' Shame that its next eight articles are about the 45th president who has just announced he intends to run again in 2024.
*****
Who knew? Rats have innate rhythm, according to Tokyo University boffins. They particularly like Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos, moving their heads in time to the music. They adjusted their pace when the track speeded up or slowed down. However, the rhythmic rodents seem to prefer tracks between 120 and 140 beats a minute. Top rat hits are Maroon 5’s Sugar and Beat It by Michael Jackson. Now you, too, can bore dinner party guests.
*****
My diamante-encrusted iPhone 14 Pro Max shrills at my elbow. I am assailed by the sound of giggling girls and chuckling men making merriment (and probably more) — clearly an occasion where strong drink is being consumed.
Finally a voice announces: 'I have in my hand a piece of paper" (channelling Neville, no less) 'on which I have written the exact time and date of the moment Dominic Raab will be sacked from the Cabinet.'
Sounds of papers being shuffled. The voice: 'I had it a moment ago ... hang on.’ More shuffling. 'Bugger. I'd better call you back.'
No way, Jose. I give a sigh and tap Block Contact on my phone. These G R Petulengro-Frame imposters really are getting above themselves. No appeasement!
*****
Please excuse my drawing a diaphanous yet discreet veil over the next item but sexually transmitted infections among the randy over-65s are reported to have rocketed by 20 per cent, if you’ll forgive the phallic allusion.The increase in online dating among the elderly and the fact that most avoid condoms because there is little pregnancy risk are being blamed
*****
The prospect of an annual charity fundraiser on December 8 prompts my tame legal eagle to pause rummaging around in his briefs to recall when some of Fleet Street’s finest were on trial having been caught up in the ‘Sir’ Keir (Less to him than meets the eye) Starmer-initiated Operation Elvedon Cash for Info witch-hunt.
Proceedings at Kingston Crown Court were halted when the jury foreman passed a note to the judge, Common Sergeant of London Richard Marks, QC. The defendants, assorted QCs and the usual tricoteuses were agog.
Was this some arcane legal point that needed explaining? Had footpads hired by the Attorney General been intimidating the 12 good men (and women) on the jury? Judge Marks cleared his throat and addressed the hapless hacks locked in the dock and facing possible jail terms. Would they mind awfully if the jurors dressed up to mark Christmas Jumper Day?
*****
Our man Bilston is known for taking against people such as Jeremy Clarkson and a certain family newspaper:
How Much I Dislike the Daily Mail
I would rather
eat Quavers that are six weeks stale,
blow-dry the man bun of Gareth Bale,
listen to the songs of Jimmy Nail,
than read one page of the Daily Mail.
If I was bored
in a waiting room in Perivale,
on a 12-hour trip on Network Rail,
Halfway through a circumnavigational sail,
I would not read the Daily Mail.
I would happily read
The autobiography of Dan Quayle,
selected scripts from Emmerdale,
1001 Things You Can Do With Kale,
if it meant I didn’t have to read the Daily Mail.
Far better to
stand outside in a storm of hail,
spend lockdown with a killer whale
scratch a blackboard with a fingernail,
than have to read the Daily Mail.
If I was blind
and it was the only thing in Braille,
I still would not read the Daily Mail.
BRIAN BILSTON
*****
My man in blue scrubs and a needle full of Novocain (‘You’ll only feel a tiny prick’) has been reading the excellent email newsletter from The Knowledge. He reminds me that it’s nearly 250 years since the toothbrush was invented by an inmate of Newgate prison fed up with cleaning his molars with a grimy rag. Smart arse bribed a guard to give him some bristles which he attached to a bone left over from supper. Of course, when he was released he made a fortune: his best brushes used badger hair; the rest pig bristles.
His name was William Addis, an ancestor of a novice monk who went on to frack* up the Daily Express but was awfully good at sorting out sock drawers.
*Normal Terms and Conditions apply
*****
My reference to ‘Army humour’ prompts a former wag in the mess to recall an example of military mischief involving our late, lamented pal, Michael O’Flaherty.
Back in the late fifties Mike was called up for National Service and reported to a barracks in London.
His interview with the recruiting sergeant went like this: ‘O’Flaherty, eh? Irish, eh? Broad accent, eh? Want to join the Pay Corps and would like to stay in London, you say? Here’s a rail warrant to Glasgow, laddie: welcome to the Highland Light Infantry.’
*****
An intruiging news story relating to Alan Dershowitz and Virginia Giuffre has caught my eye. Guiffre has dropped legal action against Dershowitz saying she may have made a mistake — some mistake after having been sure since 2014. I wonder what prompted her to doubt her own memory?
In light of this development she might care to review her memory concerning a veteran Israeli military man turned politician whom she also named as someone who she was required to entertain?
It's amazing what you can remember when you try.
*****
In an attempt to raise the tone of this column I am pleased to feature the work of Brian Bilston, Poet Laureate of Twitter. Here is his latest offering:
Fugue and Far Between
A clash of times,
the choice was stark
the Albert Hall
for a spot of Bach
or to The Globe
for some Much Ado?
He vacillated
between the two
unsure of which he
should embrace
caught between baroque
and a Bard place
*****
The late and very much lamented Daily Mirror journalist, Garth Gibbs, who died in 2011, used to claim his 'most spectacular success' in journalism was not finding Lord Lucan.
When telling of his career in not tracking down the fugitive peer, he noted: 'As that brilliantly bigoted and crusty old columnist, John Junor, once cannily observed: "Laddie, you don’t ever want to shoot the fox. Once the fox is dead there is nothing left to chase”.'
*****
A timely entry in The Goss’s annual Pull the Other One competition: a new history of the Parachute Regiment reveals that an early commander of 3 Para was Colonel Richard Pine-Coffin. Obviously no plank, he boxed for the Army and won a DSO and Bar and an MC at his day job. Army humour decreed that he was universally known as Wooden Box.
*****
Those civil servants said to have been ‘traumatised’ by Dominic Raab throwing three Pret A Manger tomatoes noisily into a bag should think themselves lucky. There are some among us who had to endure Les Diver chomping his way lustily through his nightly egg and chips.
*****
Them frogs: clever little buggers, n’est-ce pas? France has passed a law requiring all car parks, new or old, with 80 spaces or more to be covered by a ‘roof’ of solar panels. The government claims this could generate 11 gigawatts of energy, equivalent to 10 nuclear reactors. Prendre note, Rishi!
*****
That Vladimir Putin is a mischief all right. During his recent foreign policy conference he was asked if he were prepared actually to use nuclear weapons. The great man stared ahead and said nothing. Eventually, the nervous questioner broke the strained silence: ‘You’ve stopped to think. That’s disconcerting.’ Putin fixed him with a gimlet eye and said: ‘I did it on purpose to make you worry a little.’ Scamp!
*****
Are we sure that leggy, 6ft-ish female former footballer Jill Scott, currently starring in I’m A Celebrity isn’t, in fact, leggy 6ft-ish male former footballer Peter Crouch? Think about it.
*****
I’m constantly trying to raise the tone of this column (an uphill fracking* task, I can tell you) so, pray, lift you eyes up unto the hills of poetry. Not your Byron, Keats or Manners but a more contemporary master of words. Forgive me if you’re already a fan but allow me to introduce you to the Poet Laureate of Twitter (80,000 followers), the Banksy of poetry. Brian Bilston, a pseudonym, is known for his witty, incisive use of words (a sub really). Here’s an example with more to follow:
You took the last bus home
Don’t know how you got it through the door
You’re always doing amazing stuff
Like the time you caught a train.
*Usual rules apply.
*****
It’s taken the Christmas ads on the telly (John Lewis: I’m filling up, believe me) to make me realise what a diverse, multicultural country we are. There was I believing YouGov research that black Britons make up only three per cent of the population when the ad agencies creating for our major supermarkets prove otherwise. Every festive gathering is thronged with people of all races; most white women appear to have a black husband and vice versa. Is this your experience, too? Salutary lesson, eh?
*****
Following the defenestration of Johnson, Kwarteng, Truss and Williamson (with Braverman on hold for now), the Guardian flams up a story about Dominic Raab allegedly being nasty to civil servants. Who’s next to be a target for the Left’s rabble rousers? Perhaps we should ask G.R. Petulengro-Frame. Or perhaps not.
*****
No apologies, but grateful thanks, to The Times Diary for lifting the reminiscences of a Gloucestershire bookseller about the bizarre written requests he has received: Have you a copy of The Handmaid’s Tail or Three Men and a Goat? No? Surely, you must have in stock James Joyce’s iconic, but impenetrable, novel Useless. And what about Cervantes’s classic, Donkey Oaty?
*****
Let it never be said that the Drone doesn’t keep its readers adjacent to the latest intel. Thus, exploring the infinite horizons of knowledge, our celebrated Not Many People Know That department can reveal that the oldest legible sentence ever written is about…head lice. Archaeologists have revealed that an ivory nit comb, found in Israel and thought to be 3,700 years old, carries the inscription, in ancient Canaanite: ‘May this tusk root out the lice of the hair and the beard.’ Next: Did Cleopatra really make an asp of herself?
*****
Why is it, do we think, that, while Commons Speaker Hoyle is meticulous in giving the growing number of Knights Commander and Bachelor in the House their titles, the Opposition leader is always referred to as plain Keir Starmer?
Could it be that Sir Keir, ennobled before he became an MP, rather regrets it and has prevailed upon the Speaker not to emphasise the gulf between him and the horny-handed sons (and daughters) of the soil on the Labour backbenches?
Thus proving that there really is less to him than meets the eye.
*****
Running out of burial land or just bored with old fashioned interments? Worry not: there’s now a firm specialising in scattering loved ones’ ashes by drone. It’s a snip at £975. Aerial Ashes, which operates out of Stokesley, North Yorkshire, is run by former RAF pilot Christopher Mace, who saw the commercial possibilities after scattering the remains of military personnel at sea. He says: ‘The spectacular sight of ashes billowing through the air is always a good takeaway for grieving families.’
*****
Again I send an inky-fingered trainee to scour The Goss’s voluminous files to unearth gems for our popular Not Many People Know That Dept (Literary Section).
For instance: the titles Fun and Games, Let’s Play Islands and The Isle is Full of Noises were considered before William Golding settled on Lord of the Flies.
And Slag was the putative title of one of the 20th century’s greatest novels until author Richard Llewellyn was persuaded to change it to the more mellifluous How Green Was My Valley.
*****
Wonder why Emanuel Macron is looking so chuffed to frack* at the COP summit in Egypt? Le petit general has just realised he’s actually taller than Rishi Sunak.
*Version autorisée
*****
Twice this fearless column has reported on the rumours surrounding the private affairs (‘life’ surely — Ed) of Elizabeth Truss (a former prime minister apparently.) I see that Private Eye editor Ian Hislop has finally caught up, not in the Eye but on Have I Got News For You. The latest episode referred to the hacking of her mobile phone.
Hislop: ‘There are a lot of rumours of what’s on that phone …there are rumours about previous rumours that there was some sort of some sort of compromising situation which some people may have got in. No one wanted to print these rumours because they are very interesting.’
Where Dumpster leads, other follow … a month later.
*****
Phew! What a relief! Here was I expecting to spend the weekend reading Britain Reaches Out: Our Duty To Refugees, a massive report, with a foreword by the Archbishop of Canterbury, prepared, collaboratively, by Labour, the SNP, Lib Dems, Plaid Cymru and even that Green woman, but it failed, for some reason, to land on my Thames side desk. So, instead of marvelling at this coalition’s ingenious solution to the influx of thousands of army-aged young Albanian men, I took in a bit of cricket and rugby, wandered by the river, attended a bonfire party and sorted out my sock drawer (not really!)
Sometimes life just overwhelms me with its munificence.
*****
Odd the world of the famous and iconic, is it not? One of our favourite actresses, Julia Roberts, confides that the medical costs for her birth in 1967 were paid by none other than Martin Luther King. Eh? What was that all about? Apparently, King and Julia’s parents struck up a friendship after they accepted his kids into their theatre school in Atlanta, the only racially integrated one in the city. One good turn etc. Now you know.
*****
Who is the flaxen-tressed temptress who brings a nightly hush to the Back Bar of the Flying Frack? The seductive siren who lures dedicated drinkers to abandon base beer and gather around the battered old telly on the Ludgate wall of Fleet Street’s favourite hostelry? Why, it’s the Colleen of Cuisine, Anna Haugh, new judge on BBC’s Masterchef: The Professionals. As Gregg might say: ‘Cooking doesn’t get much tastier than this!’
(Dumpster, old chap, I’m not sure that this sexist, drooling resonates with our sister Drones but I suppose we are here to rattle cages — Ed)Who knew? Matthew John David Hancock, former Cabinet Minister and upcoming I’m a Celebrity penis-eating bushtucker trial victim and Michael Alan Newton-Parry, former Daily Express News Editor and go-to live radio clown, attended the same school, King’s Chester.
*****
Fans of the perennially pontificating pain in the arse ‘Sir’ John Major in the Back Bar of the Flying Frack (of whom there is actually none) are, nevertheless, agog to see the upcoming (sic) Channel 5 documentary Yes, Yes, Yes Prime Minister. This will, inevitably, touch (sic) upon old Holier Than Thou’s amorous liaisonette with lissome (Eh? — Ed) Tory playmate Edwina Currie and is said to highlight the hypocrisy of his subsequent Back to Basics speech. That the prog will irritate the old boobie is almost enough for the Flying Frackers but the prospect of a re-telling of his volunteering to take the tap end in a shared bath is considered to be the icing on the cake (sic). (I’m sick of sic — Ed).
*****
Our old pal Ruth Sunderland continues the Fleet Street tradition of Express journalists going on to flourish on the Mail. Ruth, Mail Group Business Editor, has just been named London Press Club Business Journalist of the Year and praised for her ‘campaigning journalism’ and ‘lucid’ commentary. I’d like to claim that I taught her all I know but I have subbed her copy. Does that count?
*****
Much excitement in the world of visionaries and seers over the appointment of Gypsy Rose Petulengro-Frame as the Daily Drone’s new astrologer. Do we predict a starry career for the Mystic Meg of Walton-on-Thames? Only if he avoids the sort of interview one lady with crystal balls had with Bernard Shrimsley when he was a Mirror exec.
Told she had a great future behind her and was being let go, she wailed: ‘Oh, Bernard, this has come out of the blue.’
‘That, dear lady, is part of the problem.’
*****
We’ve all spotted a literal on a page the Printer has just sent to stereo. So commiserations to the modern equivalent of a stone sub who let this one slip through in a Sunday Times interview with the lovely Debbie McGee: ‘(Paul) Daniels was diagnosed with an inoperable brain humour and died in the March of that year’. No, it’s not funny.
*****
Sweden once basked in the reputation as one of the world’s most serene, safe and secure countries. Ah, those were the days. Nowadays it is one of the most violent places. Last year there were 342 shootings compared with just 25 in 2015. Police concede they have little control over 60 neighbourhoods and huge riots earlier this year injured 300 officers. The acknowledged cause of this mayhem? Whisper it: unfettered immigration. We have been warned.
*****
Once again The Goss’s Not Many People Know That dept rushes to fill a knowledge vacuum with intelligence that an intrepid bar-tailed godwit has just set a new world record for long distance migration. The bird, known to chums as Fred, flew 8,435 miles from Alaska to Tasmania in 11 days…without stopping.
*****
The latest from the Er, can you run that past me again Dept: Ambulance workers who go on strike are likely to have to work more hours. NHS rules demand minimum staffing levels but worker numbers are already beneath that threshold. So a strike vote could be a vote to take on extra shifts. All clear?
*****
Trust those tech-savvy Californians. A recent 5.1 magnitude earthquake in San Francisco didn’t catch out those with the MyShake app on their phones. Eighteen seconds before the tremors started they were alerted to Drop. Cover. Hold on. Eggheads at Berkeley employ sophisticated sensors on mobiles to detect vibrations giving vital extra time for users to find shelter.
*****
Fulfilling our unique brief to keep Drone readers informed of the ups and downs of modern life, we report that the price of a kilo of cocaine this week is: Colombia $1,451; Mexico $12,433; U.S. $69,000; UK $89,000; Australia $152,207 and Kuwait $214,000.
Next week: the price of bread in British supermarkets.
*****
He cut a Caribbean holiday short. He namechecked Cincinnatus in his farewell speech. He signed off in the Commons with 'Hasta la vista, baby!' So why would a man like Boris Johnson — seemingly hell-bent on returning to high office — pull out of the leadership race if he genuinely did have the numbers he needed?
His choice to do so late on Sunday was telling. One of the major reasons I hear for his withdrawal was that he learned The Sun was planning a front page for Monday's edition urging him not to run.
At that point Boris threw in the towel.
*****
Schoolboy pranks can often be cruel. Schoolboy pranks at Eton, especially so. But I heard of one this week that seemed not only victimless, but actively fun for all involved.
Classmates who attended Eton with Jacob Rees-Mogg had a longstanding prank they liked to play on him over the years they were there. Someone would start singing or whistling the National Anthem whenever he was in earshot, then watch as young Jacob would stop whatever he was doing to proudly stand for it.
Never got boring, apparently.
*****
Drone Fashion Director Reckless Rambleshanks shimmers into my riverside eyrie, all agog, to update me on the latest ‘micro trend’ in the world of frocks and fripperies. What’s called ‘Plazacore‘ is inspired by New York’s iconic Plaza Hotel and its ‘esteemed clientele’. Apparently, Upper East Side elegance demands tweed twin sets, pastel pinnies and embellished headbands for everyday wear. A night on the town requires more dramatic add-ons such as opera gloves and pearl jewellery. A mandatory accessory (and I know certain ex-colleagues who will love this) is ‘a rich-bitch attitude’.
*****
If you had any doubts about the wisdom of ditching Britain’s shortest-serving Prime Minister, relax: you were right. My tame number-cruncher with the logarithmic slide-rule says that had she stayed in post for five years, Liz Truss would have been spitefully costly. The additional borrowing costs incurred because the markets had little faith in her would have totalled £11.8bn or £2.4bn a year or £6.4m a day.
*****
A tedious feature of the prime minister-a-day TV coverage is the dispatching of a vox pop poppet with a mic to some food bank/soup kitchen in the North or Midlands who patronises pensioners by pretending they are huddling together for warmth and are frightened to turn on the heating because of the COLC.
Eh? Have they looked out the window? Gone for a stroll in this balmy Indian Summer we’re enjoying?
The temperature in Walton-on-Thames is set to be nearly 70F this weekend. I rest my case.
*****
Downing Street has been quick to deny that the new Prime Minister, who is 5ft 7ins tall, requires a booster seat when he travels in his official limo. Aides point out that Emmanuel Macron, Olaf Scholz, Vladimir Putin and Volodymr Zelensky, who are the same height, manage very well. As do Tom Cruise and Lord Stevens of Ludgate.
*****
That Martine Croxall’s a piece of work, isn’t she? Her outrageous ‘glee' over Boris Johnson ducking out of the Tory leadership race tells you all you need to know about the BBC. Mind you, I’ve been known to do silly things after a long evening but, if in doubt, Martine and Co should ask themselves: what would dear old Alvar Liddell have done?
*****
Ladies who fancy ending up on the arm of Florida’s eligible governor Ron DeSantis better beware of his method of weeding out unsuitable suitors. The rising star of the Republican Party tells women he just loves Thai food but pronounces it ‘thigh’. If they point out his mistake, they’re on their bike. ‘He doesn’t want a girlfriend who corrects him,’ explains my lobbyist in the Capitol in Tallahassee.
*****
Coming soon in your bargain basement Daily Drone: the all-swinging Nadhim Zahawi weather vane. Back in July Zahawi accepted Boris Johnson’s offer to be Chancellor. A day later he called on his mentor to resign. Fast forward three months and there’s Zahawi writing a piece calling for the return of ‘the man who will make the Tories and Britain great again’. But when Boris announces he’s not running, he immediately backs Rishi. Of course he does. At least he had the grace to tweet: ‘A day’s a long time in politics…’
*****
Following the delicious George Best quote in the Drone (how clever of the Editor to spot it) about him giving up women and alcohol for 'the longest 20 minutes of my life', another Best witticism: The mercurial star often skipped training to spend more time with his supermodel girlfriends. ‘I used to go missing a lot,’ he said, 'Miss Canada, Miss United Kingdom, Miss World’.
*****
I see the tardy Times Diary has only just caught up with (lifted?) The Goss’s anecdote about boxer Mike Tyson’s encounter with Oxford logician Sir A.J. Ayer at a Manhattan party. Tsk, tsk.
*****
Are we to believe this alleged conversation between Boris Johnson’s parents soon after he was born?
‘We should put him down.’
‘Oh, he’s not that bad.’
‘For Eton, I mean.’
*****
In a major policy announcement, Lord Drone has banned the use of the Anglo Saxon word ‘Fuck’ from all DroneMart publications. This vulgar term for sexual congress has been replaced by the more inclusive and friendly word ‘Frack’.
It means that some well known phrases will be adjusted:
Fancy a quick frack?
Got time for a slow frack?
Frack off.
You ignorant fracker.
Who the frack wrote this fracking headline?
You can go and take a flying frack at a rolling doughnut.
In addition, the famous Fleet Street hostelry will in future be known as The Flying Frack. I hope that’s clear.
As mud — Ed
*****
The Goss’s revelation that Lord Drone often does his best work in bed prompts AW of St Albans to write: ‘That must be where the instruction "Take in PA" originates.’
If that’s a joke, I don’t get it and neither does Lord D’s Personal Assistant.
*****
Suffragettes were, perhaps understandably, never great fans of men. In 1911 they issued ‘advice on marriage to young ladies’. It started: ‘Do not marry at all’ then conceded: ‘If you must, avoid beauty men, flirts and football enthusiasts’. Activists were also advised that even if they found ‘a fire lighter, coal getter, window cleaner or yard swiller’ not to expect too much. ‘Most men,’ the sisterhood thundered, ‘are lazy, selfish, thoughtless, lying, drunken, clumsy, heavy-footed, rough, unmanly brutes’. Ouch!
*****
My Comedy Club script snout assures me that, contrary to left wing assertions, Peter Kay, Michael McIntyre, Jimmy Carr etc are not in the least concerned about the prospect of Keir Starmer joining the circuit. Rumours that the Labour leader has been booked for the Edinburgh fringe have also been denied.
*****
Early risers have always been a pain in the balls, especially if you have been used to working at night. Take former Twitter boss Jack Dorsey. Apparently, he rises at 5am, meditates for an hour followed by a six-mile run and an ice bath. Anal actor Mark Wahlberg, frighteningly, has prayer and breakfast at 2.30am, works out between 3.40am and 5.15am then repairs to the -100C chill of his cyro chamber. Contrast that with Lord Drone: Perkins draws the curtains at about 9am. Then, after minimal ablutions, it’s breakfast in bed before snuggling down for a hard morning’s work.
*****
The shit in which Liz Truss finds herself has echoes of the travails of hypocrite, adulterer and sometime prime minister John (‘I’ll take the tap end’) Major in the nineties. At the height of his difficulties he, unaccountably, visited that well known political seer and L!VE TV boss Kelvin MacKenzie in his Canary Wharf eyrie.
Major took in the distant Docklands horizons and said: ‘My, Kelvin, what a marvellous view you have here.’
‘Yes, prime minister, and on a clear day you can sometimes see a Tory voter.’
*****
Forgive me. I’ve just needed a wipedown with a damp barmaid and a rest in a darkened pub. I blame that Sarah Vine. Well, not her exactly but her recollection of Margaret Thatcher: ‘She was both mother figure and object of desire. She disciplined and indulged her members and ministers in equal measure. What was it that Mitterrand said of her? The eyes of Caligula, the mouth of Marilyn Monroe? Spot on. She was mother and lover, a heady, complex mix.’
I met Thatcher twice: once in the late seventies when she was in full milf mode; the second time towards the end of her reign when we were even pictured together drinking something wet but dry. I have to report that she was, indeed, incredibly sexy.
There, I’ve said it and I don’t care who knows it.
*****
Talking about rum’uns, as we have been, that Marcel Duchamp was definitely one. The French (natch) painter, conceptual artist, dada pioneer etc was ‘famous’ for entering The Fountain, a mass-produced urinal, in an exhibition. It became one of the most iconic pieces of art of the 20th century and if that ain’t rum I don’t know what is.
But he was also an enthusiastic, nay obsessive, chess player. Even on his honeymoon he ignored his bride to play with himself, as it were. His mate’s endgame was swift and savage: she glued his pieces to the board. Divorce followed.
*****
We’re all going to hell in a handcart. The whole country is ungovernable, even swish riverside towns. Take Walton-on-Thames, for example (Must we? — Ed). Each morning to reach my suite overlooking the Wilde Brunch Cafe, I have to thread through massed ranks of striking railmen, recalcitrant Royal Mail workers, climate activists and obdurate Badgegate deniers.
Then there are the Tories saying one thing and meaning another (no U-turns, spending cuts banned, of course we’re backing Kwasi). If I were Liz Truss I’d borrow a line from Abraham Lincoln who, when accused of being duplicitous, replied: ‘If I were really two-faced, would I choose to wear this one.’
*****
A bedraggled pigeon from a loft in Rawtenstall flops on to the perch on my Thameside terrace. It delivers an anecdote about one of the decidedly rum Manchester Mirror subs mentioned earlier. Or, to be accurate, his lady wife’s breasts.
This chap awoke after a late night to find his missus lying on the bed reading a trashy chic-lit novella.
‘It says here,’ she said, ‘that the heroine’s breasts are like poached eggs. Are mine like poached eggs?’
‘No,’ he growled, turning over, ‘yours are more like scrambled eggs.’
*****
My ‘cuts man’ in the Red Corner with the sweat-stained towel and a tub of Vaseline recalls a party where an over-enthusiastic Mike Tyson was trying to force himself on supermodel Naomi Campbell. She pleaded with friends to help her out and up stepped diminutive philosopher A.J. Ayer, then 77, who called on the champ to relent.
‘Do you know who the fuck I am,’ shouted Tyson. ‘I’m heavyweight champion of the world.’
‘And I’m the former Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford. We’re both pre-eminent in our field so I suggest we talk about this like rational men.’ As the two chatted, Campbell slipped out.
We wonder what Ayer made of Tyson’s famous philosophical thesis: Everyone’s got a plan until they’re smacked in the mouth.
*****
The latest bollocks to hit The Goss’s riverside retreat (no, not ‘Badgegate’) is sleep tourism where holidaymakers’ sole purpose is getting some quality shut-eye. Zedwell (geddit?) claims to be London’s first sleep-centric hotel. It has windowless rooms (up to £1549 a night) with noise-reducing walls, floors and doors as well as ambient mood lighting and no ‘anxiety-inducing distractions’ such as tellys and phones.
*****
The absolute last word, I promise, on Badgegate, the seething controversy which has engulfed Express pensioners. It started when the paper’s current owners started awarding badges for merit and long service to some, but, unfathomably, not all, people who had served in Fleet Street. The subsequent storm has been condemned as an Haitch-arr and Pee-arr disaster. Now plans for a lavish awards ceremony in a Park Lane hotel have been abandoned in favour of more informal presentations. Tellingly, not one recipient thought it appropriate to wear his badge at a recent meeting of the World’s Greatest Lunch Club #wearyourbadgewithpride
I appreciate that this column has only a loose connection with fact, that is to be expected, but this story is a load of imaginary bollocks, Dumpster — Ed
*****
It’s generally accepted that subs are rum, Manchester subs are rummer and Mirror Manchester subs the rummest. In light of that, could anyone in the army of Drone readers expand on two tales going around about those miscreants back in the seventies:
🔴 The day they went to Blackpool for a evening break.
🔴 The incident in which they got down on all fours to bark at police dogs.
Alastair McQueen reports: The Mirror subs v Mcr police dogs did happen. It was after a subs’ Christmas ‘lunch’. The late 'Big Mal' Munro-Hall, chief sub I think at the time and his great mate the late Brian ‘Bosie' Sutherland faced down the fierce hounds. I remember it being told and re-told. The only person I know of still above ground and almost certainly involved is Crawford McAfee.
*****
More turmoil at the Lincoln City FC ground as our two former Express hacks still search in vain for a parking space nearer The Imps ground in their bid to avoid the long walk through the backstreets of the city’s lacklustre foreign quarter, to their hallowed seats in the Senility Stand, (subs, please note, it’s the SELENITY Stand), where they are legendary for hurling abuse at the team dug-out four rows below them.
On seeing a terraced house with paint flaking off the front door and empty beer bottles on the doorstep, as they wobbled side by side to the Charlton game, my informant tells me they decided to knock and offer a fiver, perhaps double if pushed, to park on the cracked, oil-stained concrete driveway every home game. One hack pushed the other forward to investigate.
The hack went through the pre-war, rusting iron gate but was shocked as the weighty swing entrance came completely off in his hands and he nearly fell over. Struggling with the weight and fearing the front door would open at any moment, he turned for help to his mate, only to find he had disappeared … and was already at the Marmite and Hot Dog bar in record time.
*****
Worried about your fecundity? Fear not: help is at hand, as it were. A new male contraceptive, which drastically reduces a man’s sperm count, is on trial. Nestorone gel, when smeared on to a male’s shoulders, triggers a hormone which does the trick.
No serious side effects, although it can take up to five months to start working. My guinea pig in an easy-access hospital gown confides: ‘You have to be patient after applying the gel otherwise it sticks to your clothes.’
*****
Forget coffins and cremations. Human composting is the way to go, according to the New York Post. California (where else could it be?) has just legalised the practice where human remains are broken down by being placed in a steel vat with wood chips or other biodegradable materials. They are then aerated to make bacteria speed the process. After a month the body will decompose into nutrient-rich soil. Handy for loved ones to plant things in.
*****
Mention of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in The Goss prompts a grey (ash blond, surely? — Ed) haired former Express backbencher to wake up to tell the tale of the late lamented Danny McGrory interviewing PLO leader Yasser (That’s My Baby) Arafat. Their talk in some West Bank hellhole was interrupted by incoming fire which shook the building they were in. As they cowered under the kitchen table with plaster falling off the walls, Arafat reached over and patted the frightened reporter’s hand. ‘Don’t worry, Danny, it’s me they're after, not you.’
*****
My item about Golda Meir prompts The Goss’s chum, the concierge at the Queen of Sheba Hotel in Eilat, to remind me of another Israeli leader who could string a few words together. Menachem Begin, interviewed after a series of PLO attacks, was asked why he didn’t negotiate with the terrorist organisation.
‘Negotiate?’ he scoffed. ‘But they want to take our land, drive us into the sea and destroy us. The destruction of Israel is not negotiable.’
*****
Aren’t ‘celebrities’ a pain in the arse? And the people who record their trivial lives even more so? Mind you, that won’t stop the irony-free zone called The Goss revealing the bizarre phobias from which some sad celebs suffer. Niall Horgan, of One Direction? Crippling fear of pigeons. Horror writer Stephen King? Bad dose of triskaidekaphobia: fear of the number 13. What about those who have passed on to the Panic Room in the Sky? Alfred Hitchcock couldn’t abide eggs and Hans Christian Andersen had such a fear of premature burial that he left a note at his bedside each night to say he was only sleeping. Of course, if you’re very clever like Steve Jobs you can turn your phobia into cash. His koumpounophobia, a fear of buttons, not only led to his polo neck sweaters but also the buttonless mouse — a unique feature of Apple computers.
*****
My man with a worried frown and a calculator trying to work out his pet insurance confides that in California (where else?) a restaurant has opened offering a $75 tasting menu…just for dogs. According to the LA Times, pooch-preferred pastries and ‘dogguccinos’ are served at Dogue in San Francisco during the week but on Sundays there is a three course tuck-in of treats such as organic steak with beets and mussels with carrots and wheatgrass. Down, Spot!
*****
Ugly scenes at Lincoln City: so ugly that Ron Thugg declined to cover the story. Towards the end of a particularly dire 0-0 draw with Charlton there were reports of hooligans trying to break down a perimeter fence. Police quickly brought the situation under control. A burly sergeant was heard to shout over a loud hailer: ‘It’s no use, Tel. You’re just going to have to stay in there.’
*****
Blinking through tears induced by my nostalgic recollections of piping hot black pudding served in the bar of the Crown and Kettle in Ancoats, our food critic, the man with the over-refreshed mien and the Bechamel-stained tie, brings exciting news of billionaire Richard Caring’s new Mayfair restaurant, Bacchanalia, where diners will be fed grapes by hand. They’re already advertising for ‘London’s first grape feeder’: They must have a basic grasp of Latin or Greek and, most importantly, ‘gorgeous hands’. Looks like just the job for you, Frambo.
*****
Redver Rambleshanks, the Drone’s ruddy-faced Agriculture Corr, pops in (and I do wish he’d keep his muddy boots off my avocado Wilton). He imparts intelligence that it’s been a bad year for wild oats. He quotes Midland Farmer magazine blaming pernicious grassweed for the problem. Apparently, Blackgrass, Bromes and ryegrass have been OK but it hasn’t been so good for the other. I thought you’d want to know.
*****
Inky-fingered ‘experts’ in the Case Room of the Flying Fuck are in raptures over a startling typographical innovation on the Daily Drone: red blobs (Puce, surely? — Ed). Two of them, who wish to be known as M. Mouse and D.Duck, say: ‘The use of this classy device to enhance reader experience is typical of the confident, forward-looking Drone. Any more of this and we’ll be calling the editor Wanking de Worde.’ (You’re sacked — Ed)
*****
My retro Fakelite Trimfone trills (I must put it on flashing mode). It is my Best Boy at Elstree who’s all agog on the cutting room floor over the forthcoming biopic about former Israel Prime Minister Golda Meir, starring Helen Mirren (and an awful lot of skin-safe platinum silicone rubber). He wonders if it will feature a conversation between Meir and Richard Nixon. The President asked her how the U.S. could help Israel.
‘Well, we could do with a couple of your generals.’
‘Oh, yes. Which ones?’
‘General Motors and General Electric.’
*****
Gnarled former inmates of the northern Lubyanka in gritty M60 4HB are marvelling at the fact that Ancoats is now home to Manchester’s first Michelin-starred restaurant in 40 years. Mana, run by super chef Simon Martin, offers set dinner at £105 plus a £75 ‘matching wine flight’. Our food critic says: ‘Dishes such as Yakitori eel, wood ants and spruce celery are a far cry from the black pudding boiled up in a saucepan behind the bar of the Crown and Kettle back in the seventies.’
*****
My item about Naked Attraction wasn’t meant to be complimentary but air-headed PRs for the Channel 4 show don’t seem to have been fazed. A salivating email from a breathless ingenue pings into my inbox: they only want to do a celebrity version and did I know anyone on the Drone who would take part. I have forwarded contact details for Sally, the former Royal Military Police provost sergeant who was sexton at St Addis By The Closet in Country Boys and the hack in a cardigan reputed to have a pretty knob. I hope I’ve done the right thing.
*****
The after-lunch drones (sic) of resting hacks in the Back Bar of the Flying Fuck aren’t going to make the charts but that sort of ‘white noise’ is very musically avant-garde, I’m told, despite its having no tune, beat or lyrics. Humming, hissing, rainfall, crackling bonfires and ocean waves are particularly popular.
Don’t laugh! The 90-second Clean White Noise - Loophole With No Fade has been streamed on Spotify more than 837 million times. That’s $2.5 million in royalties, ta very much. Is that a ker-ching I hear?Trust jumped-up, self-aggrandising, bevel-edged etc twat Robert Peston to be well behind the 8 ball. Just as the ITN Political Ed is attempting to burnish his right-on cred on telly by wearing trainers with a suit, it emerges that this ‘look’ is sooo passé, darling. Embarrassed Gen Zs, appalled that their fathers have adopted ‘their’ trend, are wearing the reverse: formal shoes, such as shiny Oxfords, with casual clothing, brightly-coloured jeans or shorts.
*****
Once again eager Drone readers clamour for more titbits (sic) from The Goss’s Not Many People Know That file. For instance, did you know that French novelist Emile Zola once lost his monocle between the breasts of a woman with whom he was having a chat? Come to think of it, I once had a colleague who sported a monocle. I wonder if that ever happened to him. It didn’t — Ed
*****
You would expect us to revive our popular The Goss Goes Back To Nature feature as this year’s Fat Bear Week in Alaska’s Katmai National Park starts. The annual contest invites the public to vote for its favourite tubby male. The bear to beat is 480 Otis, winner in 2014, 2016, 2017 and last year. He once ate 42 salmon at a single sitting.
*****
What a jumped-up, self-aggrandising, bevel-edged, appliqué-inlaid, cantilever-actioned, diamanté-encrusted (Enough! — Ed) twat is Robert Peston. See him on the telly interviewing the Prime Minister? In a dark suit and trainers? Trainers? The ITN Political Ed is 62, for fuck’s sake. The fact that Liz Truss was also wearing trainers tells us all we need to know.
*****
There'll be a fair few sighs of relief at The Times with the departure of editor John Witherow. Not just from the women who had to deal with his lascivious ways; he was equally weird with some of the blokes too.
One male hack was sat working one day when Witherow approached the desk and loomed over him. 'You think I'm a c**t, don't you?' he said, seemingly unprovoked. The hack looked up at his boss, bemused, and replied 'Erm... no?'
"You do. You think I'm a c**t. Go on then, call me it. Call me a c**t."
The poor guy had no idea what to say as Witherow continued to growl at him: "CALL ME A C**T. CALL. ME. A. C**T.”
Strange times ...
*****
What to make of a sign that’s gone up at the end of the road in Greenwich where Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng lives: ‘GCSE Economics tutor needed. Asking for a friend.’
*****
The Duke of Kent, now 86, is an anachronistic old codger. Born seventh in line to the throne, he is now 40th but still carries out 200 public engagements a year. He recalled in an interview with royal author Hugo Vickers being told by the Queen to keep his distance at the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. The Queen said:
‘Are you going to salute?’
‘I think I am, actually.’
‘Well, don’t knock my hat orf.’
*****
Each day that passes another of the diminishing band of military heroes who illuminate The Times obit pages falls out for the last time. Take Air Vice-Marshall Larry Lamb, veteran of the Berlin Airlift, who has just died, aged 99.
Lamb flew 86 missions into the blockaded, divided German city in 1948-49. In all, there were 266,000 flights carrying more than two million tonnes of vital supplies to the beleaguered population of West Berlin.
Lamb’s Handley Page Hastings transported everything from medicine and coal to tobacco. Oh, and just the odd grand piano for the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.
*****
You couldn’t make it up so I won’t. From the Mail’s TV guide: Channel 4. 10.00. Naked Attraction. Anna Richardson welcomes a pansexual Switch streamer from Manchester who’s hoping to make a connection in the real world, and a bondage enthusiast from Shropshire looking for a silver fox.
*****
Former Express hacks in the Health and Wellbeing Suite of the Flying Fuck pause their relentless body honing to digest the news that Mike ‘Porky’ Parry has been on a fitness drive. The auburn-haired Adonis has announced on Twitter (where else?): ‘My months-long rigorous body-shaping programme has resulted in me being able to buy slim-fit shirts for the first time in 25 years. Quite an achievement, eh?’
Bless.
*****
So grateful to The Retrospectors podcast (we’re all reading it, aren’t we?) for reminding me that once America’s favourite spectator sport was staged train crashes which attracted tens of thousands. At one spectacular in 1896 the boilers on both trains exploded sending pieces of red-hot metal hurtling through the air. Two spectators were killed and many injured. One Civil War veteran said: ‘It was more terrifying than the Battle of Gettysburg.’
*****
Trust the Frogs to out-do us when it comes to fashion innovation. And a cute way of beating the energy crisis. French finance minister Bruno Le Maire announced on radio: ‘You will no longer see me with a tie but with a polo neck.’ He is pressing government workers to adopt the trend of him and President Macron wearing sweaters with their suits rather than shirts and ties.
Just wait till I tell the sad sap in an old cardigan who has taken to hanging around The Goss office hoping for shifts.
*****
Never let it be said that we on The Goss don’t keep you up with the latest trends. Like Butter Boards. According to the Washington Post it’s right on to smear butter on a wooden board ‘topped with all manner of savoury and sweet accoutrements’. One, featuring lemon zest, salad and edible flowers, has had more than eight million views on TikTok.
Will it catch on here? Not with the COLC price of Sainsbury’s organic slightly salted!
*****
The return of the Beeb’s Industry, a raunchy drama set among finance whiz kids in the City, sends The Goss’s ‘Accounts Clerk’ into rheumy-eyed reminiscence of his days in the Bearpit wearing a lairy blazer. ‘It’s all true,’ he says, ‘we spent most of our money on champagne, strippers and cocaine and foolishly wasted the rest.’
*****
Readers of this column will remember my exclusive that the Carlton Club, that St James’ bastion of Torydom, was awash with rumours that Ms Mary Elizabeth Truss, whose address is now given as No 10 Downing St (however temporary that arrangement that may be) was, ahem, reliving her earlier form.
Cocklecarrot advised me to be very careful (so did I — Ed) but what is not disputed is that between 2004 and 2006 Truss had an affair with fellow MP Mark Field. Her marriage survived, his did not.
I now hear that the chatter, far from dying down, is no longer confined to SW1 and that the less scrupulous periodicals are excited. When I asked my HP source for a name the reply came: how long have you got?
What a strange business politics is.
*****
Spare a thought for the new Chancellor. Not only does he have to put up with brickbats such as being called Kamikwasi Kwarteng by the Guardian columnist John Crace, but think what it must be like working for a new Prime Minister like Liz Bust.
*****
I am demurring — official. No pressure from the Fifth Floor will induce me to point out that the gold circle on a necklace Liz Truss wears so prominently has connotations with the risqué novel The Story of O, an orgy of, ahem, female submission and bondage. I’m just not going to do it.
*****
Corgis, those irritating little dogs so beloved of our late Queen, are currently in huge demand and can fetch up to £2,500. Pets4Homes says there have been 10 times more searches for the dogs since the Queen’s death with asking prices doubling in three days. The royal corgis were spoiled rotten: the Queen used to treat them to a daily supper of fillet steak and chicken and poured gravy over the meal herself.
*****
We all recall those tricky days starting a new job so spare a thought for Liz Truss who, according to Bloomberg, has seen UK markets losing at least $500 billion since she started hers. Writer Caitlin Moran says on Twitter that it puts everyone else’s bad first two weeks in a new job into perspective. And that includes an intern at Tatler who, apparently, ‘accidentally decapitated’ the office dachshund in some revolving doors.
*****
Footie pundit Gary Neville’s love-in with The Leader at a Labour conference fringe event has led some, including, sadly, a Facebook-posting former Express hack, to imagine that the former Man U star is some sort of Che Guevara.
Would that be millionaire businessman and hotel owner Gary Neville, paid north of £1million by Sky to watch football?
Of course.
*****
Chaps of a certain age in the Flying Fuck, including the know-all with the grey (ash blond, surely - Ed) hair, poo poo the pervading panic pertaining to the pound. Veterans of 25% inflation, when FOCs negotiated double digit pay rises, say the current financial kerfuffle is mainly down to current money men, mortgage lenders and even those dud cheques at the Bank of England having no experience of the turbulence we are now suffering.
So let’s give thanks that Kwasi Kwarteng is in charge. The embattled Chancellor’s Cambridge PhD thesis was called: Political Thought of the Recoinage Crisis of 1695-97.
*****
My excuse is that I have a duty to the Drone’s red top readers who haven’t the time for The Times. So I share an item from the Thunderer’s Diary about celebrated jeweller Theo Fennell discussing his usually dismal school reports. One, now the title of his new autobiography, is I Fear for This Boy but the best/worst was: ‘Fennell’s nose and the grindstone have again not met this year.’
*****
Wasn’t it good that the Labour Party for the first time sang the National Anthem at the start of their Liverpool conference. Wasn’t it sad that delegates apparently needed the well known words printed out for them?
*****
Which book sold only five copies in the week leading up to the Queen’s death but suddenly rocketed to 8,000 the week afterwards? If you were a 16th century French astrologer you’d probably already know. The 2006 tome Nostradamus: The Complete Prophecies for the Future examines the seer’s predictions which include: ‘Queen Elizabeth II will die, circa 2022 at the age of around 96.’ Nosty has also appeared to predict the Great Fire of London, Napoleon’s rise, the moon landings and 9/11.
*****
News that a US-UK trade deal is some way off doesn’t surprise those who know Joe Biden: he’s never been a fan of us Brits. Former MP Rory Stewart recalls on his The Rest is Politics podcast a friend trying to explain to the then Vice President the fractious relationship between Sunni and Shia Muslims. ‘I get it, I get it — they don’t like each other,’ said Biden. ‘It’s like me and the Brits.’ He added by way of explanation: ‘I’m Irish.’
*****
Guess what happened to The Loneliest Tree In The World, an acacia called the Tree of Ténéré, 250 miles from its nearest arboreal neighbour in the Sahara Desert of Niger. According to Smithsonian Magazine, some dumbo drove into it and snapped its trunk.
Now the most isolated tree on the planet is a Sitka spruce on Campbell Island in the Pacific, 137 miles from the nearest trees in the Auckland Islands. As a well known London actor would say: Not many people know that.
*****
Stop your pestering! I can now reveal how Taylor Swift has had such a successful songwriting career: simps, it’s ‘cool pens’. Swift, winner of 11 Grammys, apparently sorts her lyrics into three groups: quill lyrics, fountain pen lyrics and glitter gel pen lyrics. The songstress explains that the quill is for ‘antiquated phrasings inspired by Charlotte Bronte’, fountain pen for songs with a ‘poetic twist’ and glitter gel for ‘frivolous, carefree, bouncy lines that don’t take themselves too seriously’. Bless.
*****
Winter is coming … so you better get your chopper out! My lumberjack with a good stand of timber forecasts a huge demand for firewood as the COLC worsens. He quotes the Washington Post as reporting that thieves are stealing logs from lorries and cutting down trees; in several countries wood-burning stoves are in short supply and in the former West Berlin they’re fettling redundant coal and wood fired stoves that served as Cold War-era insurance against the Soviets disrupting energy supplies.
*****
That’s gone a long way! That’s miles! That’s 101 metres’ — hyperbolic commentator on a Moeen Ali six in a Pakistan-England T20 international.
*****
My man in the tattered gown at the Bodleian says students are economising by filtering cheap vodka through a Brita filter. Aficionados claim that filtering out all impurities makes budget booze taste like nectar. Bloody clever clogs!
*****
What could TalkTV's most prominent flop Piers Morgan possibly have had to chat about over coffee with a rival media group's Head of Talent?
*****
Prince Harry will have been delighted to see that among those present at his grandmother's funeral were Lord Rothermere and Rebekah Brooks (after an embarrassing amount of lobbying).
*****
The Goss Not Many People Know That Dept: London has less rain than Rome, Venice or Nice; the South East has lower annual rainfall than Jerusalem or Beirut. The rainiest time in the UK is 7am; the driest, 3am.
There’s more: (It never rains but it pours — Ed) Animals are more attuned to the weather than we are. Owls are 70 times less likely to hoot when it’s raining; bees are excellent forecasters: when rain is coming they’ll work longer the day before; Burmese monkeys greet a downpour with uncontrollable sneezing.
We are grateful to Tomasz Shanksfernaker for his assistance in compiling this item.
*****
Never let it be said that The Goss isn’t en pointe. Consequently, behold our up-to-the-minute guide to emoji trends. A breakdown of American texters’ favourites by software firm Adobe reveals that the three most popular symbols are 😂, 👍 and ❤️. Romantics who wish to go a-wooing should use 😘, 🥰 and 😍. But forget🙏 💩, 😠 and 🍆. You’ll almost certainly receive rejection in a uniquely digital form🖕
*****
Sarah Vine risks the ire of her readers north of the border by saying that the King’s ‘dishy’ equerry Major Jonathan Thompson is a member of the Royal Regiment. She should, of course, have added ‘of Scotland’.
The clue’s in the kilt, dearie.
Alas, I am proscribed from pointing out the lack of a revise system on the M**l.
*****
Don’t ever say The Goss doesn’t keep you in the loop: a top executive at leading vegan company Beyond Meat has rather let the side down by biting a man’s nose outside an American football game.
*****
The late Queen was never a footie fan and was unapologetic about it: no horses, you see. Former FA chairman David Triesman did persuade her to attend a match at Wembley which she seemed to enjoy. He asked who she thought had played best. ‘The band of the Scots Guards,’ said Her Maj.
*****
Useless information dept: Meghan And Harry Arrive For Queen’s Funeral Dressed In Black — Mirror headline.
*****
News that Catholics now outnumber Protestants in Northern Ireland prompts my man in Magheradrool to recall a quote from Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams in 2001. When it was put to him that republicans should wait for higher Catholic birth rates to deliver a united Ireland, he scoffed: “Outbreeding unionists may be an enjoyable pastime for those who have the energy, but it hardly amounts to a political strategy.”
*****
So grateful to former England and Lions rugby star Martin Bayfield for a wonderful anecdote about actors Michael Gambon and Al Pacino. The American was fascinated by Gambon’s newly-awarded knighthood and asked what privileges did it bring.
Gambon pulled out his hotel keycard and said: ‘You get a Knight’s Card which entitles you to approach four women a year: they can’t refuse you or they’re thrown into the Tower of London.’
Just then an attractive woman sat down at the next table.
‘Here, I’ll show you,’ he said and approached the woman.
He explained to her: ‘I’m trying to wind up Al Pacino: will you walk out of the restaurant with me?’
They went around the corner for a coffee and a short time later returned to the restaurant, he ostentatiously doing up his trousers and she buttoning her blouse.
As he sat back down with Pacino he said: ‘I’ve got two left this year.’
The American said: ‘Wow. I gotta get me one of those knighthoods.’
*****
The sectarian divide in Glasgow has been emphasised by the Queen’s death: fervent anthem singing by Rangers fans; four-letter word banners waved by Celtic supporters.
It recalls a Scottish Daily Express staffer, a Catholic, who told me that he had been to Rangers’ Ibrox ground only once and that for a pop concert. While there, though, he took advantage of the crush, dug a hole on the centre spot…and buried a rosary.
*****
Hapless Today presenter Nick Robinson has apologised after The Goss revealed he had quoted from an iconic Vincent Mulchrone article as if it were his own.
The original tribute written about Churchill’s lying in state in 1965 said: ‘Two rivers run silently through London tonight and one is made of people.’ It was reprinted in the Mail this week.
Robinson described the queue to view the Queen’s coffin as ‘a vast river of people: London has not one but two rivers this morning.’
He later tweeted an apology saying he ‘didn’t know’ the metaphor’s origins and ‘should have’.
*****
As new Education Secretary Kit Malthouse gets down to work, he might like to ponder why Margaret Thatcher’s old grammar school, Kesteven and Grantham Girls’, does not offer Politics as a subject to study.
*****
That Nick Robinson’s a rare wordsmith isn’t he? Or is he? The self-regarding Today presenter uttered a memorable phrase when he introduced an item about the thousands waiting patiently to view the Queen’s coffin lying in state in Westminster Hall. He said there were two rivers in London and one was the queue of mourners.
Pity he didn’t acknowledge that a real wordsmith, Vincent Mulchrone, originated that same analogy in the intro of a brilliant Mail colour piece on Churchill’s lying in state 58 years ago which happened to be reprinted in the paper this week.
Shameless, really.
*****
We all remember when you couldn’t wait to get out of a local council meeting, if only to enjoy a furtive fumble in the town hall car park with the new trainee on the rival weekly (Miranda Micklethwaite, where are you now?).
In Northern Ireland, though, reporters are struggling actually to get in to council sessions. The new Newry, Mourne and Down ‘super council’ has held almost 100 meetings this year from which the Press has been barred. Lisburn and Castlereagh City Council also likes to discuss business behind closed doors.
What’s going on?
*****
You always suspect that beneath their American Dream bravado Yanks still hanker after their royal past. How else to explain the Washington Post, no less, running a bright red headline proclaiming: BREAKING: The Queen’s corgis to live with Andrew and Fergie, spokeswoman confirms. American humorist Dave Pell comments: ‘Clearly, we have all lost our fucking minds.’
*****
One bizarre sidebar to the outpouring of grief and respect for the Queen is the BBC appealing on behalf of the Royal Parks for no more marmalade sandwiches and jars to be left in tribute. The Goss doesn’t normally take much notice of Twitter (T.Manners, please note) but one user sums it up aptly: ‘This sort of announcement could only be made in the UK.’
*****
The Queen’s handbag has always been the source of fun but it really did have a genuine use, apart from carrying marmalade sandwiches. Apparently, Palace staff were always on alert for the Royal Handbag Code.
If Her Majesty was bored by an over-long conversation which she wanted interrupted the handbag would swap from one hand to the other; if a dinner was dragging on, the bag would go on the table and if the Queen wanted immediate extraction, the bag was ostentatiously placed on the floor.
*****
Trust the Frogs not to be too impressed by our new Prime Minister. French officials, noting her fondness for U-turns, are so sceptical about her becoming the new Iron Lady that they have dubbed her Iron Weather Vane.
*****
Congratulations to Mail on Sunday Political Ed Glen Owen for winning The Goss’s inaugural Mot Juste Award. His use of the word susurrate to describe how news of the Queen’s worsening condition swept the Commons was spot on. No kewpie dolls, though, for the sub and prodnose who allowed the sentence While she (Truss) is not required to be present, she feels it’s important to be present to appear in the paper.
*****
A senior courtier confides that among the many gifts the Queen received during her long reign (including three tons of presents from Australia when she was a baby) was a woven tray cloth from Gandhi which he made himself.
However, her grandmother, the Old Queen, claimed it was a loincloth. ‘Such an indelicate gift,’ she said. ‘What a horrible thing’.
*****
So grateful to Air Vice Marshall Dougie Dogfight for another Bader reminiscence: the fighter ace was treated with the utmost respect when he became a prisoner of war. At one Luftwaffe base in France the commanding officer even invited him to sit in the cockpit of his personal Messerschmitt. Bader’s request to take the ME109 up for a circuit of the airfield was courteously refused.
*****
The anniversary of the death of Sir Douglas Bader brings a lachrymose tear to the rheumy eye of the old codger with a wilting handlebar moustache who props up the Mitchell Bar in the Flying Fuck.
He recalls the World War 2 fighter ace enthralling young ladies at an upmarket girls’ school with his tales of derring do high above the fields of England.
‘There were three fuckers to my left, two fuckers to my right and another fucker diving out of the sun,’ he told the audience.
A blushing head mistress intervened: ‘Girls, I think you should know that the Fokker was a German aircraft.’
That’s as may be, madam,’ growled Bader ‘but these fuckers were Messerschmitts.’
*****
You will recall that back in the summer I promised a crisp fiver to the Drone reader who named the voluptuous film star who exchanged bodily fluids (and much else) with a senior Express exec in St Brides Passage (sic). I’m pleased to say the prize has been claimed and the gnarled hack, who wishes to remain etc, has shuffled off to the Pole Dancing Suite of the Flying Fuck to purchase a half of lager while it is still that cheap.
The answer was, of course, luscious Janet Munro, who died tragically young, and the steamy encounter took place during the filming of the 1961 epic, The Day The Earth Caught Fire.
Now The Goss’s Crisp Tenner awaits the person who names the dashing Express swordsman with whom she was cavorting.
*****
An informed source whispers in my ear that there was a hand-written note at the bottom the last red box back from Balmoral, to the effect, let’s not make a big fuss, just have a few friends around for a cup of tea and nibbles. A State funeral is such a performance, and we did just spend oodles on my 70th bash.
*****
Our old friend Charles Moore shares a tale of new Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng on the campaign trail. He is approached by a tattooed, shaven-headed white man who says: ‘Oi, you didn’t go to a normal school like us folks, did you? You was at Eton.’ Kwarteng nervously admits that this is the case. ‘Good,’ says the man ‘we don’t want the country run by bloody oiks.’
*****
As Liz Truss’s new ministers compete with each other on the airwaves to trumpet her untested policies, I am uncertain whether they regard themselves as midwives or FedEx drivers: everyone promises to deliver, deliver, deliver.
*****
I know you chide me for reading the Mail and I promise to be a good boy (Eh? — Ed) in future but does anyone read a word of anything before it is published?
Mail Online carries a story premised on the fact that although the Cambridges and the Sussexes are occupying cottages quite close to each other on the Windsor estate their paths are unlikely to cross.
There are four references (including in a graphic) to the cottages being just 380ft apart, which can’t be true; then the distance is twice said to be half a mile (which actually is 2,640ft) and another refers to it being ‘hundreds of metres’. My point is that if I can spot these discrepancies why can’t someone whose job it is to do so.
*****
Proving that you’re never at a loss with The Goss: Liz Truss is Larry the Downing Street cat’s fourth prime minister.
*****
Bet you don’t know many young women called Katrina, especially after the 2005 hurricane of that name which claimed 1,800 lives and caused $125 billion damage. Since then 83% fewer babies have been registered with that name in the U.S.
Same with Betsy (1965), down 45% and Audrey (1957), down 35%. Yikes! Fingers crossed for Hurricane Rosalie. (Who she? — Ed)
We’ve all spotted a pesky literal in the very page the printer has just sent to stereo so spare a thought for Ye Olde Stone Subbes of yestercentury. Especially the hack who signed off the 1631 King James version of The Bible. Alas, the word not was left out of Exodus 20:14 so it read Thou shall commit adultery.
In an 1823 version of the good book camels replaced damsels and in 1944 what should have read women’s own husbands came out as owl husbands.
*****
As the democratic process is being tested almost to destruction, I am reminded of the late, lamented Tom Moore, a member of the Texas House of Representatives. In 1971 mischievous Tom introduced a resolution in praise of Albert DeSalvo, aka the Boston Strangler, who murdered 13 women in the Sixties. The bill praised ‘this compassionate gentleman’s dedication and devotion to his work in the field of population control and applied psychology.’
The resolution was passed unanimously whereupon Moore immediately withdrew it. He explained that he just wanted to prove that his fellow legislators didn’t read a word of what they voted on.
*****
Fulfilling our mission to keep you updated on the latest medical intelligence, The Goss is grateful to the Daily Star for confiding that pissing on jellyfish stings to reduce pain is officially bollocks. A new poll (what else?) reveals that the majority of Brits believe that urine is an effective pain reliever, probably based on a Friends episode in which Rachel is involved in water sports with Ross (I confess I’ve just made that up). But what the Star calls ‘a top jellyologist’ says: ‘You shouldn’t believe everything you see on TV.’
*****
A bloodbath is currently taking place at GBNews. A shake-up was rumoured upon receipt of £60m of new investment the other week, but no-one was expecting them to cull quite so many as it sounds like they have done.
Most surprising of all is the loss of Alex Phillips. This time last year, she was the apple of CEO Angelos Frangopoulos's eye. He reportedly doubled her salary, told her she was the star of the station and even popped out of the office to run errands on her behalf. She was also heard telling people that she'd like to do the splits on his face. A perfect working relationship.
Now she's just been shitcanned with so little notice that she told viewers at the end of yesterday's show she'd be back tomorrow. (She wasn't.)
Good job they've got all those new millions secured. Seems like the severance packages are going to have to be big.
*****
Time for the Goss’s regular Tomato Catch-up: more than 20,000 people have been taking part in the Tomatina Festival in the Spanish town of Buñol during which excitable senors, senoras and, I suppose, señoritas pelt each other with 130 tonnes of the over-ripe fruit. Please don't say we never tell you things.
*****
Apropos Gorbachev (quite a decent cove for a Soviet), ‘Sir’ John Major, no less, regales anyone who will listen with a joke about two men in a slow-moving queue for bread in the depth of a Moscow winter. After two hours in the freezing cold, one says: ‘That’s it. I’m off to kill Gorbachev!’ When he returned a couple of hours later his friend said: Well, did you kill him?’ ‘No. The queue was too long.’
*****
The Goss’s intern, Mo Shanks-Farah, is in strict training for the forthcoming Marathon du Médoc in France. Alas, standards seem to have slipped since Philippides ran the original race nearly 2,500 years ago.
The Médoc features 23 wine-tasting stations along the route, musical accompaniment from 50 orchestras and bands, an oyster bar and a steak station at kilometre 39. Unsuprisingly, most of the 8,500 runners will wear silly costumes. Zut alors!
*****
Some things just get to you don’t they? Like a poignant arrow through the heart. The Duchess of Sussex’s revelation that she makes up little backpacks of snacks for her security team to dish out to the homeless while she’s on the school run in California caught me off balance and I don’t think I can …. (There, there — Ed)Maybe the Tories have been too hasty in, apparently, failing to back Rishi Sunak in the race to be party leader/prime minister. What we need is someone of proven taste, discrimination and judgment.
At a leadership hustings Rishi was asked who he’d rather be stuck in a lift with, Sir Keir Starmer or Nicola Sturgeon. He said he’d take the stairs. Good call. I’m ready for Rishi.
*****
The irony-free zone that is Times writer Clare Foges denounces the sycophantic ‘gissa job dross’ emanating from wannabes seeking favour from Liz Truss when, as expected, she becomes prime minister.
She goes on to pour fulsome praise on that paragon, Michael Gove, who has announced that he is leaving front-line politics. Gove, of course, is tipped by many to be the next editor of … The Times.
*****
Why do Mail journos seem so stuck in the past? There are regular examples of dated allusions which must baffle younger readers and are surely down to knee-jerk lack of thought and laziness. In Answers to Correspondents, for example, a reader asks the purpose of eyebrows. The response is illustrated by a head and shoulders of the late Denis Healey (without any clue to who he was).
If they’d used the Labour big beast, who certainly had prominent brows, when he first held office in 1964 that would have been fine. But nearly 60 years later?
Why not model Cara Delevingne? Not only is she celebrated for her extravagant eyebrows but she’s a lot prettier than Denis …and is still alive.
Stop reading the Mail, Dumpster, it’s bad for you at your age — Ed
*****
It’s to be expected I suppose: gnarled, veteran hacks recalled from the old folks’ home to the subbing team at the height of the holiday season. That’s the only way to explain Auf Wiedersehen, pint! the Mail’s head on an allegation about Geordies with deep pockets avoiding buying rounds in pubs.
What did it mean? I woke up Peter Rodnose, the Drone’s aged retainer, to explain. He said it was an excruciatingly contrived reference to the title of a TV comedy drama about British artisans working in Germany. As it was shown in the Eighties, most Mail readers wouldn’t have got it either.
*****
You’ll never guess the ID of the former mouse-racer with lustrous ‘blond’ tresses who was spotted in the Apple shop in Covent Garden sporting an unconvincing syrup in a dubious shade of auburn.
*****
Michael Gove chooses The Times to reveal that he doesn’t feel he will ever hold Government office again. The Thunderer reciprocates with a gushing top leader saying his clarity and principles will be missed.
If I were Times editor John Witherow, 70 and counting, I’d start composing my farewell speech.
*****
I see those rugger buggers are up to their old tricks again. There has, apparently, been a spate of using a rigid digit as a weapon of punishment, revenge and retribution when the chaps get rough and reprehensible in the scrum.
The practice of inserting a finger in an opponent’s rectum crosses both codes.
Thus, a Catalan Dragons player has been suspended for eight games for doing the dirty deed, something he picked up at Saracens. He was followed into the Hall of Shame by a Huddersfield player and in France, Toulouse have suspended a half back ‘for deliberately placing hands and fingers on the buttocks.’
*****
As he unveils plans to establish a ‘food empire’ all of his own, it’s good to see that Brooklyn Beckham is taking so well to being a horny-handed son of toil.
Spotted at the wheel of his $1.2 million sports car, Beckham, 23, was asked what job he did which enabled him to run such a pricey motor.
‘I’m a chef,’ he replied.
Course you are, love.
*****
Who was the pensioned and rather cuddly Express hack seen in the Lincoln City FC Supporters Club shop making the lady assistants giggle to each other with faces as red as the team's shirts? He was trying to buy a woolly onesie in the players' colours for the cold night's ahead on his sofa at home, when the heating was turned down?
When it was explained they didn't make them, he gruffly had to settle for a woolly beanie hat with a bobble on the top in an unpleasing muddy brown.
*****
Over a restorative aperitif in the Flying Fork’s American Bar a colleague confides that he knows the holiday season has really arrived: his teenage grand daughter has packed 20 bikinis for her gulet cruise in Turkey.
*****
We mugged the Mail! How publicity plotters working for the tourist attraction York Dungeon must be hugging themselves. The Mail carries a sunken page lead on anonymous parents clamouring for the Dungeon’s new Dick Turpin carriage ride to be renamed ‘to protect their children’. The unnamed protestors are alleged to have said that it should be renamed Richard because Dick is too rude.
A self-satisfied attraction manager Mark Mattinson can’t believe that gullible Mail hacks presented him with the space to puff that ‘the carriage ride is the grand finale of our York Dungeon Tour and thousands of guests have enjoyed this thrilling end to their visit. Dick is here to stay.’
*****
How preposterous is the Wee Crofter, aka Ian Blackford the Scots Nats’ leader at Westminster.
He is accusing Boris, honeymooning in Slovenia with the delicious Carrie, of being ‘missing in action’ during the cost of living crisis. It’s time the PM came out of hiding, he urges.
Why has the poisonous dwarf suddenly started stirring the pot?
Maybe it’s because he has been missing in action on holiday in the States for the past fortnight!
*****
Which deluded former Express sub has attempted to slow the advance of senility by acquiring a 2018 Harley-Davidson Roadglide, Twisted Cherry with 14in apes, stage 2 kit, Vance & Hines fishtail pipes, Klock Werks windshield, JPCycles foot boards, highway pegs and crash bars?
*****
What are we to make of suggestions that Michael Gove is to be the next editor of The Times should his political career crash and burn when, as expected, Liz Truss becomes PM? The Gover, arch plotter extraordinaire, is a former Times journo and is said to be palsy-walsy with Rupert Murdoch. Bit harsh on present editor John Witherow, though. But he is 71 soon.
*****
What a beautiful coda to the Wagatha Christie trial, my chums at Popbitch tell me. After losing the case she brought against Coleen Rooney — torching what little reputation she had into the finest, softest ash — who did Rebekah Vardy immediately go and sell her story to?
The Sun and its sister channel, TalkTV.
It's easy to laugh. Fun too. But now that Becky is facing down a seven figure service charge for her day in court, maybe she should consider formalising her relationship with Murdoch & Co? Rupert is still chucking money at TalkTV like it's going out of style, so if there was ever a moment to go mask-off and sign an official deal with NewsUK, it's now.
*****
More news from the Senility (sorry Selenity) Stand at Lincoln City FC’s Division One ground, where Express season ticket pensioners while away their hours with their new hobby of knitting red and white scarves, drinking Bovril and waiting for goals.
Car parking for their four-wheel Chelsea tractors has become an issue in the tiny Coronation Streets in the Old Quarter around the stadium. So much so, that the Old Boys’ aching joints from long walks, are interfering with their enjoyment of the game, especially after negotiating the stone steps to their hallowed seats.
But the Drone is pleased to discover that these old Fleet Street diehards won't give up their scarves yet. They have taken to the time-honoured tradition of door-stepping. In a quiet cul-de-sac or two, they have been knocking on the doors of little bungalows, asking with a smile: “’Ere luv, you wouldn’t be interested in a tenner every other Saturday, for us to park our car on your drive for the game?”
No takers yet. Wonder why?
*****
I see that the Mail’s Femail mag has pieces by someone called Dinah van Tulleken and Antonella Gambotto-Burke (plus daughter Bethesda). Despite apparent picture evidence, are these people real or are their names just elaborate anagrams designed to tease us?
*****
Ooh, er! The World’s Greatest Newspaper’s print edition circulation is about to plummet through the 200,000 copies a day barrier. This brings to mind a former colleague who went on to ‘teach’ journalism students at Harrow (Harlow — Ed). He used to tell the young hopefuls: ‘When I joined the Express it sold three million copies a day; when I left it was one million two hundred thousand. But it wasn’t all my fault.’ (We all helped — Ed)
*****
A perspiring, loin-clothed, cleft stick-toting native bearer (I don’t think you can say that nowadays — Ed) pads barefoot along the Thames to my riverside eerie bringing more intelligence on what has become known as Badgegate.
This is the growing outrage over the Express management’s decision to award Crusader merit badges to some former executives, but not others, who toiled on the World’s Greatest in Fleet Street.
Back Bar conspiracy theorists say that:
A. It is a carefully crafted management strategy reaching out to reward the most deserving, the brightest and the best,
B. A massive Haitch Arr fuck-up.
C. They, er, ran out of badges.
One thing is certain: with rumours of a prestige awards ceremony in the autumn, This Is Not Going Away.
*****
At last it can be revealed: that secret, desperate instruction to German players as time ran out in the final of the Euro women’s footie tourney.
Thousands at Wembley and millions watching on TV saw a German substitute sent on clutching a hand-written note from manager Martina Voss-Tecklenberg to her key players.
My man with a fork-on-a-stick repairing divots in the sacred turf after the match found the bedraggled piece of paper ground into the mud.
On it was written: Verflickst nochmal — ins netz stellen (For fuck’s sake — put it in the net.)
*****
My wordsmith Johnson shares some new entries in the dictionary this year.
They include:
Drooking: Drenched by rain shower.
Soysage: Vegetarian sausage made from soya.
Fluthered: Drunk, intoxicated.
Langered: Very drunk, intoxicated.
Johnson’s chum, Boswell, suggests that sincere regret for one’s over-trained behaviour at a piss-up originated the phrase Look Back in Langer. (What are you on about, Dumpster? — Ed)
*****
When Charlotte Ross, acting editor of the Evening Standard, announced she was stepping down around the same time that Boris Johnson resigned as PM, it set a lot of tongues wagging about the possibility of Boris gliding right back into journalism as the Standard's new editor.
A perfectly plausible rumour — but there was a much funnier one doing the rounds at London media summer parties this year. Namely, that Evgeny Lebedev had briefly been toying with giving the editorship to ... Liz Hurley.
*****
Proof, if it were needed, that the Silly Season has started: official. Some hapless hack on the Sun’s website called Paul Sims puts his name to a ‘story’ headed: My Pet Tortoise Keeps Trying To Escape So I Had To Tie Him To A Balloon To Stop Him Running Away.
*****
As the new footie season kicks off, gnarled Express pensioners who support Lincoln City (The Imps) have been gathering in the re-named Senility (né Selenity) Stand to rehearse a new chant to encourage ‘the lads’.
Sung to an iconic Sousa march tune with a rhythmic ritual scarf display, all its verses just contain the words ‘We are Imps, We are Imps, We are Imps.’
My bovver boy with a baton who conducts the massed choirs at the LNER Stadium reckons they’ll have got it by October.
*****
The Phew, What a Scorcha! hysteria continues to rage out of control on Mail Online despite a drop in temperatures. In addition to warnings about wildfires, animals in peril and crops at risk because of drought, the website warns: ‘And schools could close!’ That’ll be the annual summer holidays then.
*****
Following my note about abstemious man of steel Rishi Sunak cutting his coke (cola) intake to one bottle a week, I see that he and William Pitt the Younger could soon have something in common. Pitt took only three years from being elected an MP to becoming PM (still the record); If he beats Truss, Sunak’s seven years would place him second. Mind you, there the similarity ends: Pitt knocked back three bottles of port a day.
*****
Might the terrifying threat of two tantalising tell-all tomes be causing trepidation for a troubled tycoon? The Rupert Murdoch empire is said to unsettled about what the books could reveal.
One, tentatively titled Murdoch, Me and Other Mad Men is by our own Kelvin MacKenzie who is said to be beavering away on a review of his long working relationship with the mogul until they spectacularly fell out.
The second, called The Successor, is a biog of Rupert’s son, Lachlan, by Australian hack Paddy Manning. Published in November, it will reveal the deterioration of the relationship between him and younger brother, James, who quit the Murdoch empire in 2020.
*****
Glasgow broadsheet The Herald, which describes itself as ‘the longest-running national newspaper in the world’, reveals what it thinks of its present senior staff by actually advertising … for an editor.
*****
Further to my revelations about Brian Clough’s unusual nerve-settling Champagne and bitter pre-match preparation, my kitman in the Nottingham Forest dressing room breaks off from ironing new signing Jesse Lingard’s shorts to recall that four days after that Southampton game, Forest met Malmo in the final of the European Cup. On the way to the Olympiastadion, Munich, Clough produced two crates of beer for his players.
Late score flash: Forest 1 Malmo 0
*****
Can the country really be Ready for Rishi? This teetotal, self-regarding paragon is, according to The Times, ‘down to one Coca-Cola a week as a Saturday night treat with his wife’. What’s that? He’s cut back on his soft drinks? Ask yourself if you want to be ruled by this pontificating prig.
*****
More whimsy from the Drone’s RJS Dept (Sport to you): Man Utd gaffer Erik Ten Hag’s new alcohol ban is regarded as small beer by ex players from the Eighties and a complete contrast to legendarily thirsty Brian Clough’s management ethos.
On the eve of a League Cup final against Southampton his Nottingham Forest players checked into their hotel expecting to go straight to beddy-byes. Not so. Clough and assistant Peter Taylor summoned them to the lobby where 12 bottles of Champagne were lined up which they were ordered to drink ‘to settle pre-match nerves’.
When some whinged that they didn’t like shampoo, the boss ordered 12 pints of bitter which they were expected to drink as well.
Late score flash: Forest 3 Southampton 2.
*****
My man in the Carlton Club (no, not that Pincher bugger) tells me the place is abuzz with speculation about the behaviour of one of the final two candidates for No 10. Cocklecarrot forbids me from mentioning that Ms Truss has form, an affair with former Tory MP Mark Field (her marriage survived, his didn’t.)
And Sunak? Squeaky clean I’m told. So what can it all mean? A disgraceful smear on the blessed Elizabeth I’m told. But I’m not yet convinced. The Drone’s finest are on it day and night and not a dustbin will be spared. Watch this space.
*****
I hear that Boris Johnson will be putting his biography of Shakespeare further on the back burner. He has pocketed the £500k advance and in characteristic fashion couldn’t care less that the wretched tome is already six years overdue. Instead the rascal will concentrate on his own biography which he says will be ‘frightfully fucking frank’ covering his time as a blond fag at Eton, through to his role in the plot to beat up NoW reporter Stuart Collier, his many and varied shenanigans as prime minister and his inability to take any blame.
The title: Buggery, Thuggery, Skullduggery, Smuggery.
*****
Of course, all this ‘I’ll cancel my subscription’ malarkey works both ways. Indeed, Kelvin Calder MacKenzie even ‘cancelled’ a reader. One of the Sun’s four million or so faithful rang up the news desk to moan about a story. Kelvin, who was passing, answered the phone, listened to the angry complainant and said: ‘Right. This is what’s going to happen: you’re banned from buying or reading The Sun ever again. Now fuck off!’
Fifteen minutes later the man’s wife phoned and tremulously inquired whether she, too, was banned or could she continue to buy the paper.
*****
Alex Collinson gets in touch to say: Apropos Ms Rambleshanks’ threat to cancel her subscription, I’m reminded of my first chief reporter, the recently deceased Dennis Alkins, when confronted by a huffing and puffing reader in the front office of the Cheadle & Tean Times.
". . . and furthermore,” huffed and puffed the outraged reader, “I’ll cancel my order for the Cheadle & Tean Times.”
Quick as knife, Dennis replied: “Right sir, I’ll tell the printer to do one less this week.”
Alex also reports: My daughter, resident in Cirencester, tells me that Thames Water has emailed her with a timely, if painful, warning, given the “heatwave”: Water Use Sores.
*****
Talk about Lights, Camera … Action! But send your Best Boy, Key Grip or Gaffer armed with all the horrid torture implements of Torquemada. I will still not divulge which voluptuous screen star was caught, er, exchanging bodily fluids with a senior Daily Express exec in St Bride’s Passage?
Oh, go on then: a crisp fiver for more information!
*****
My faithful retainer with a plaid jockstrap and green and white tam o’ shanter Zooms in from Auld Reekie with a nostalgic tale of when George Best played (and often didn’t) for Hibernian.
Way past his best and with a thirst for all things forbidden, George went AWOL from Hibs in February, 1980. When they finally tracked him down and sobered him up, the manager insisted he stayed in a suite at the Balmoral Hotel until an important match against Ayr United.
All went well until the eve of the game when George encountered another sportsman who liked a good time, French rugby star Jean-Pierre Rives, in the lobby … and then the bar.
Somehow, pop star Debbie Harry became embroiled and when a Hibs minder turned up next morning to take him to the match, Best was still well refreshed and obviously couldn’t turn out.
As he said in his defence: ‘Who would you rather play with, Blondie or Ayr United?’
*****
We tend not to worry too much about climate change on The Goss. But what with The Heatwave and all, we tracked down Iris (‘Don’t forget your gamp’), the former Express weather girl, to her retirement flat on the Air Ministry roof.
Breaking off from ordering her 2024 Tomasz Shafernaker in the Raw calendar, she added to the hysterical, apocalyptic weather forecasts dominating the airwaves.
You may want to lie down in a darkened pub for Iris warns that when the temperature exceeds 42C, drones are prone to unpleasant, persistent priapism (look it up). Just thought I’d mention it.
*****
Talking of the heatwave, all the wiles of Cleopatra, Salome and Violet Gordon-Woodhouse (Who? — Ed) wouldn’t induce me to name the suddenly thirsty newspaper exec, once renowned for his sobriety and probity, who fell foul of the law on his way home from a soirée in Kensington.
*****
We’re still dabbing rheumy eyes at The Goss over the retirement from the BBC of tennis popette Sue Barker. She was also, of course, the perky hostess of A Question of Sport and my man on the cutting room floor recalls an exchange between comic Frank Skinner and Sue which, sadly, didn’t make the final edit.
During a Picture Round an image was shown of a sportsman looking out to sea from Beachy Head.
Hey, Sue, said Skinner, have you ever sat on a cliff face?
*****
We always try to bring you the latest footie intelligence even if it is not really about footie — or intelligent.
Thus, I can reveal that Erling Haaland, Manchester City’s new squillions-a-minute No.9, has been settling in by doing a big shop at Sainsbury’s.
My girl on the checkout says he stocked up with, among other things, tomato ketchup, Robinson’s barley water, sea salt, frozen pizzas, Babybels and a large box of condoms (I thought he was a striker not a stopper — Ed).
In other news, Man United’s Bruno Fernandes shops at Tesco.
*****
Only on Judgment Day will the angels beguile me into revealing the name of the notoriously foul-mouthed snapper who thought it appropriate to spend two hours of contemplation in Heathrow Terminal 5’s Multi-Faith Room.
*****
The Drone’s Rancid Jockstrap Dept (ie Sport) poses a very pertinent question: will Arsenal FC be carrying an ad proclaiming Visit Rwanda on the left sleeve of its shirts next season?
*****
Grateful thanks and respect to Carol Midgley in The Times for recalling some delicious American political slogans which prove the U.S. is, irretrievably, an irony-free zone. Forget the anti-prohibition maxim Make Your Wet Dreams Come True, savour instead the Richard Nixon campaign badge They Can’t Lick Our Dick. As Midgley points out: they could and, indeed, they did.
*****
You’d think that after five months the Beeb’s Haitch Arr Dept would have caught up with the fact that two of its most talented contributors are now, er, working for someone else. Or maybe it’s the Mail’s fault. Whatever, Emily Maitlis (up to £329,999) and Jon Sopel (up to £229,999) are listed by the paper among Auntie’s grossly overpaid ‘stars’, despite decamping to LBC in February.
Also on the list is the industrious former Political Ed Laura Kuenssberg (up to £264,999). As she enjoys a three-month break before taking over the Andrew Marr show in September, she has plenty of time to reflect that she only earns £40,000 more than lightweight ex footie star Jermaine Jenas (Who? — Ed)
*****
Unlike the BBC, am I alone in not giving a flying furlong about the back story and antecedents of ‘Sir’ Mo Farah or whatever his name is?
*****
What is it with Alexander Armstrong? Or Zander? Or AA as he likes to call himself on his morning Classic FM show? Normally an agreeable TV personality, actor, singer and musician, he comes over all peculiar when he adds classical DJ to that impressive list.
Have you caught his eccentric delivery: the gabbled sentences, the quirky cadences, the eccentric inflections? Why, he even squeaks.
Of course, ‘talent’ rarely listen to their own work. If AA did, he’d realise that he sounds unbearably camp, darling.
*****
Who’d be former Express writer Anna Pasternak, great niece of Boris (Pasternak not Johnson), who is engaged in an alleged plagiarism case in the High Court? She has accused American author Lara (no relation) Prescott of lifting chunks of her non-fiction tome Lara, The Untold Love Story And The Inspiration For Dr Zhivago to write a novel called The Secrets We Kept.
As with all matters involving m’learned friends, the potential bills are mounting: £2 million at least.
Alas, it doesn’t seem to have started well for Anna. My man in the periwig says her admission that she hadn’t actually read the novel she complains about didn’t advance her case.
*****
We realised Penny Mordaunt would make waves when she showed she knew her axel from her elbow by beating ‘reality star’ Gemma Collins in the TV show Splash with a twisted synchronised pike dive accompanied by a Salchow Loop. Trust Penny, who has just entered the Tory leadership race, to appreciate that angular momentum = rotational velocity x momentum of inertia.
Indeed, the sight of comely La Mordaunt in a Fair Isle cossie has made her a very popular figure in the Tory heartlands.
She is also a former magician’s assistant (‘I was always being sawn in half and cut into pieces’) and, as Royal Navy Reservist, she won a wardroom bet for the times she uttered the word Cock during a Commons debate on poultry husbandry.
Apart from that, she’s a bit bland and boring really. Apart from that, she’s a bit bland and boring really.
*****
Pity the poor hacks who toil creating stories on Reach’s Live digital sites throughout the country. It took two ’reporters’ on DevonLive to record that irritating chipmunk Phillip Schofield was interrupted mid sentence on ITV’s This Morning to make way for a Boris resignation update. Why should this be of particular interest to the West Country? Schofield, they explained, ‘spent much of his childhood in Newquay’.
*****
Many will feel that Michael Gove is wise not to enter the Tory leadership contest despite being narrowly squeezed out of the final run-off last time. He’s a rum ‘un is the Gover: a combination of a lean, hungry, dangerous Cassius and a treacherous Brutus (as Boris can testify). Some see him as an accomplished allrounder who has held no fewer than eight Cabinet posts. But here’s the thing: Gove has been sacked by three prime ministers. Tells you something, doesn’t it?
*****
The temperature rises the ice in G ‘n’ Ts melts faster, Mail subs reach for their Phew! What a Scorcher headlines and provincial hacks vainly attempt to fry eggs on pavements (a reporter on the Kent and Sussex Courier actually tried to do that last week). It’s a heatwave — official.
What else could go wrong? You’ve guessed it: unelected busybodies telling us to keep out of the sun, glug water instead of beer and (this is actual advice from the Met Office) wear wraparound sunglasses so there’s no gap at the side. Cue more helpful ‘advice’ from excitable weather women as they warn of more mayhem ahead. They will include ITV’s Amanda Houston who often introduces her forecasts with the inane: ‘I hope you are all well’.
*****
The reported (and failed) attempt by Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis swiftly to withdraw his resignation once he realised that Boris was going to stand down, perfectly illustrates the slipperiness of ’statesmen’.
It reminds Natalie, The Goss’s French intern, of her countryman, Talleyrand, whose name became synonymous with cynical, crafty diplomacy.
One evening in the French Revolution, after a particularly turbulent day of street fighting, victory bells rang out. ‘Ah,’ said Talleyrand, ‘we’ve won!’ ‘Who’s we?’ asked an incredulous aide. ‘I’ll tell you in the morning when I’ve found out,’ replied his master.
*****
Well, the runners and riders are gathering in the Parade Ring, snorting and snickering. Soon the ubiquitous Media will be inspecting teeth, fondling fetlocks and checking the credentials and probity of those who would be PM. After Boris they’d better be squeaky clean or, like Liz Truss, ahead of the field.
After all, she already has had a well documented extra marital affair with Tory MP Mark Field when she was a parliamentary candidate. It ended in his divorce.
Giddy-up!
*****
Boris’s disinclination to give up being prime minister until a successor as Tory leader has been named is typical. His stance recalls Huey Long, a long forgotten governor of Louisiana, who promised to resign but refused to do so. When an angry crowd besieged his home, he said to an aide: ‘Tell them I lied.’ Boris won’t like to know how it ended: Long was assassinated.
*****
One of the most distasteful aspects of Boris’s defenestration was the obvious glee with which it was reported by his enemies, especially the supposedly neutral BBC and the professional ankle-tappers on the Today programme.
Indeed, as Chris Mason announced the prime minister’s decision live, I could have sworn I heard the fragrant Mishal Husein having a decorous orgasm in the background. I still cannot banish the image of her lying back with a sated smile on her face and a post-coital Woodbine between her finely-sculpted lips.
*****
I’m informed that the well known anagram Olukemi Olefunto Badenoch, nee Adegoke, has been tipped as the next Tory prime minister but one. As always, remember who told you first.
*****
Reference to rats and sinking ships at PMQs (my, what a nimble and accomplished debater ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer is) reminds old hacks in the Drone newsroom of the irascible (ie: fucking rude) late Editor of the Western Daily Press, Eric Price. One sub, who stormed out after yet another acrimonious run-in, subsequently embarked on a Mediterranean cruise. He sent a postcard: Dear Eric, I’m on a ship leaving a sinking rat.
*****
Grateful thanks to The Times for revealing that sleaze and grubby goings-on are nothing new in Westminster. An entertaining list of all sorts of shenanigans, involving anything from cash-for-questions to coprophilia, includes the tale of MP John Deasy who in 1893 was accused of pulling a teenage servant on to his bed. His explanation that she had tripped and that he was only trying to kiss her better didn’t prevent him being forced to resign and fined £25.
*****
Much head scratching in the Trainees’ Suite at the Drone’s Thames-side HQ. You can tell Awards nominee Rosalie Rambleshanks is hard at work: her lips are moving as she writes. Is it another exclusive? An amusing Art Attack? Common sense advice from Aunt Marje?
No. In fact our doyenne of trainees is completing her nomination form for this year’s British Journalism Awards at the Hilton in Park Lane in December.
Bonne chance, Rosalie!
Have you completely lost your mind, Dumpster? — Ed
*****
The Express reports that three Italian battle tanks destined for Ukraine were stopped by traffic police on the Salerno to Caserta motorway. My snout in the Capodimonte missile silo says the Italian Defence Ministry is denying that they have been taken off the road to have reverse gears removed before delivery to the front line.
*****
Crisis at the Drone where Covid, holidays and hangovers have hit staffing levels, especially in the subs’ department. Chief Sub LP Brevmin explains: ‘This has led to long, rambling reminiscences from grizzled hacks appearing, apparently unsubbed, on the website. We apologise for this: normal service will be resumed asap.’
*****
Who was the Express editor of whom it was said he was a flawed rhinestone who rose without trace?
*****
Sad, isn’t it that Sonny Barger, rootin’ shootin’ High Priest and founder of the dreaded Hells Angels turned out to be a bit of a wuss? Barger, who has just died aged 83, revealed that, actually, he didn’t like riding the Angels’ archetypal Harley-Davidson motorbike.
He told my man with the oily rag: ‘I ride them because I’m in the club and that’s the image. But if I could I would seriously consider a Honda.’
*****
They’re a cunning lot at the Palace, aren’t they? Conduct a rigorous inquiry into alleged bullying of staff by the Duchess of Sussex and then shelve it. So what if the investigation revealed that it was more Meghan’s direct, US-style management techniques and not bullying as such? And what if it concluded that royal snowflakes and toothpaste squeezers were really just too sensitive?
A royal correspondent writes: ‘This is no joke and if it is, I just don’t get it. By binning the report the Palace has ensured that the public will believe that the allegations were true. After all, mud sticks.
‘I never met Meghan but on the telly she always seems a nice, caring modest person who (Enough — Ed).
*****
What could have caused such a serious rift in the fairytale marriage between Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall? Anyone hoping for a story of high drama, double-crossing and power politics will be left sorely disappointed.
The reason for the divorce? Friends say Jerry cannot stand the children Rupert shares with Wendi Deng.
She doesn't mind the older set so much but rumour has it that the breaking point in the marriage came when she excluded Wendy's batch from a big family get-together.
This was especially galling for Murdoch, as he'd been so generous with Jerry's kids. He even gave her son Gabriel's media company a rather handsome contract to produce the Sunday Times Culture Show for him.
*****
Word filters through from the mists of Scotland that comic publishers D.C. Thomson are soon to be renamed P.C. Thomson. This follows a woke decision to change the names of several Bash Street Kids characters so as, er, not to upset anybody. Fatty, thus named for 70 years, becomes Freddie and Spotty is now Scotty. What next Dennis the Me Nice?
*****
Has there, by chance, been an outbreak of common sense on the Mail or are they just catching up with The Goss?
You will recall we poo-pooed Mail subs’ use of commentator Dan Maskell’s catch phrase Oh, I Say! to head tennis nibs. After all, he did die in 1992.
Now, though, this has been amended to Ace! on current tennis ball sidebars as illustrated here.
May I say Advantage Dumpster?
*****
Strange that the Mail should use such an in-house Fleet Street phrase in the City head Reverse ferret at the G7 — especially as, typically, the story gave no clue why. The uninitiated must have been baffled, not an uncommon feeling in Mail readers.
Of course, it emanates from one Kelvin Calder MacKenzie who, Drones will recall, was never afraid of the loud, almost triumphant, volte face.
He loved sticking a ferret down the trousers of smug, self-regarding public figures but when he judged the mood had changed, the immortal cry would ring out.
Apparently, it originally referred to the Yorkshire ‘sport’ of ferret legging whereby string is tied around the ankles of a contestant’s trousers, two ferrets are popped down and the waist belt tightened. Losers quickly demand a reverse ferret; the winner is the fool who lasts longest. The world record is five hours 30 minutes.
*****
Neil 'Wolfman' Wallis has become an avid churchgoer apparently and has been baptised at the age of 70. He now tweets lots about the church and religion … will he go to confession I wonder? He'll be in there a long time.
Some people might say it'd take Niagara Falls to wash his sins away. God really does move in mysterious ways.
Shades of the late People journalist Terry Lovell maybe ….
*****
JOURNALISM IS THE DEVIL’S WORK (Press Gazette 7.8.03)
Terry Lovell told Press Gazette he was quitting his job because he found it incompatible with his beliefs as a born-again Christian.
He told George Dearsley: 'I honestly could take no more. The cheating, the lying, the conniving and the utter pointlessness of many of the stories, I was no longer able to justify.”
He claimed one could be a committed Christian or a tabloid journalist, but the two could not co-exist.
“You are sent out to meet people knowing that to get your story you may have to take them out for drinks, listen to dirty jokes and foul language and pretend you are enjoying yourself to win the punters’ trust. All the time if you are a Christian, it is destroying you,” he said.
*****
It's no surprise Times' deputy editor, Tony Gallagher, folded so quickly when pressure was placed on him to pull a story. Carriegate isn't his first rodeo.
Gallagher was editor of The Sun when it ran that explosive front page about former Guardian CEO David Pemsel. Pemsel had been lined up to take a top job at the Premier League, but The Sun had come into possession of a bunch of leaked texts showcasing the married lothario's cringe pick-up lines to a young employee – and published them.
Unfortunately, Gallagher hadn't been aware that Pemsel was a big pal of Rebekah Brooks' and that she and Pemsel had secretly been doing the spadework to negotiate a football broadcasting rights deal for The Sun's sister radio station talkSPORT for when Pemsel took up his new role.
Gallagher's scoop naturally threw a pretty massive spanner in those works. Even though The Sun and The Times both quickly pulled their stories (blaming GDPR, rather than the gargantuan clusterfuck it had caused internally) it still wasn't enough to salvage the situation. Pemsel lost the new job, Rebekah lost her big deal and Gallagher was forced to issue an apology.
*****
It's always sad when a couple in the public eye can't make a marriage work, so our thoughts are with Rupert Murdoch and Jerry Hall on the news of their deeply predictable divorce.
Condolences too to Murdoch's daughter, Prudence. Last time Rupert was single, he turned to Prue to act as something of a gym buddy, keeping him motivated with his fitness regime. The daddy-daughter pair wore matching activity trackers and synced their results to keep tabs on one another, making sure each was getting in their requisite cardio.
Eventually Prue had to turn off the share function after noticing her father soon started to enjoy regular, rather vigorous bouts of activity around the 9pm mark.
*****
Who was the Daily Express Night Executive studying a layout on the Backbench, when he was suddenly taken aside by a fresh, young and eager, black-suited and booted Editor in his first week, who broke away from cruising the newsroom with a moving loop of fawning bright career chasers discussing the paper?
They discussed the book, and the new, widely-tipped saviour of the Express, winked to our man: “This is how it will be, you and me, one-to-one, two important people on the paper, making the decision on what goes in and how. Not all that back there. This is the future.”
The next night, our mystery executive had a picture choice for Page One and showed it to our mystery Editor for the one to one future. Black jacket flapping, the Number One Editor immediately took it to the art desk, where a large fawning flock had gathered.
“Now then, what shall we do with this?” he asked them.
*****
The ending of the association between Wimbledon and Robinson’s, manufacturer of the famed lemon barley water, after 86 years gives lazy, piss-poor Mail subs the excuse to use the phrase ‘Oh, I say’ for the second time in recent days — even before the tournament has started.
How many more times will they reach for this clapped out cliché, last used by commentator Dan Maskell in 1992, the year of his death?
*****
Just a thought from the Express lads enjoying the Flying Fuck Hospitality Package at the Headingley Test: considering that England are now playing with more elan, verve, panache, brio, spirit, style and… (Enough — Ed) under happy-go-lucky new skipper Ben Stokes, does this mean that traditionally dour Yorkies don’t make good captains? Discuss.
In other news: Kiwis’ ace bowler Trent Boult was said to be bowling ‘peaches’ in his devastating opening spell. Is that strictly legal, Benedict?
*****
The mystery about how and why The Times pulled their Carrie and Boris story rumbles on. It feels like it would have had to have been a pretty fiery call to get a paper of record (whose own reporter Simon Walters supposedly stands by the story 100%) to yank it. But the incident clearly hasn't caused much in the way of bad blood between The Times and No.10.
Boris Johnson turned up to the News Corp summer party on Monday, mere hours after coming round from a general anaesthetic, to put in a bit of face time there.
However it was Guto Harri, No.10's comms director, who was the one laying it on thickest. He was seen prancing around the party telling everyone there how much "we" love The Times.
*****
Much consternation at Channel 4 over the rumoured return of Carol Vorderman to Countdown. The Instagram Queen is said to be taking over presenting the show from Anne Robinson who is leaving next month.
A TV insider tells The Goss: ‘Words fail me. This just does not add up and I am tempted to tell you to go forth and multiply. Appointing Carol would be very divisive and would take away from the camaraderie in the present team.’
A Channel 4 spokesperson said: ‘We’re non-plussed how these rumours get about. It’s bollocks.’
Nevertheless, watch this space.
*****
Notice how effusive broadcasters are in thanking guests they lure on to their increasingly turgid shows? Today’s Amol Rajan, who likes the sound of his voice almost as much as Nick Robinson likes the sound of his, ended one of those bizarre interludes when BBC employee interviews BBC employee by saying: ‘Chris Mason, thanks so much for giving us your time this morning.’ Eh? Mason is paid (north of £250,000) to give his time.
Imagine Sir Larold lurking in the foyer of the Lubyanka. ‘Welcome, Billy. Do come in and try not to take it all so personally.’ Or: ‘Thanks for popping by, Bings. Keep the duck noises down: Leith’s got one of his headaches.’
*****
My man up the belfry reports: Bookies are pondering what offers to give a retired vicar in the Cotswolds who clearly knows Boris Johnson better than most (what a burden to bear.) The Rev was asked by Stanley Johnson to coach his ghastly sprog so he could win a King’s Scholarship to Eton with fees consequently next to nothing.
Boris, born in New York City in 1964, duly passed the exam and told his tutor he had two ambitions: to be prime minister and then US president. So convinced is he that Boris is serious about this, the vicar has 25 crisp oncers ready to hand over once odds have been established. He is expecting a generous 1,000-1 and the bet might not be quite as fanciful as you’d think.
*****
OK, so which former Express executive invited a distinguished writer on the paper to ‘step outside’ as a handbags at dawn dispute threatened to spiral out of control? And, as they headed for the door, which cheeky sub exhorted: ‘Hit him with his hairdryer, boss!’*****
Anyone seen Laura? You remember her: Laura Kuenssberg, the BBC’s Political Editor who stood down at the May elections in favour of Chris (Nice but Dull) Mason.
She is due to start presenting her Sunday morning show in the Andrew Marr slot from the Beeb’s extravagant new £10million news studio in September.
But what is she doing now to justify the £300,000 plus annual salary you and I are paying her between now and then? How is she filling her time? A three-month holiday, perhaps. Background reading probably. A bit of home baking. Trialling a new bob, regular facials. The odd workout.
I could have sworn I spotted her checking out the Final Reductions rail in TK Maxx in Long Acre and there have been reports of volunteering in a Watford food bank and behind the till at a Northants garden centre.
The usual Crisp Oncer awaits the Hawkeye who spots her.
*****
Isn’t it good to see the BBC supporting print journalism? Or it may be that Auntie can’t generate enough ‘news’ of her own and needs a helping hand. How else to explain why, according to a Freedom of Information answer, the Corporation buys 43,743 copies of The Times each day and 40,670 of the Daily Mail. The figure for the Express is not available but is thought to be 17.
*****
Hacks of a certain vintage will recall, with affection, Douglas Thompson, for many years Los Angeles correspondent of the Express. After the genial Scot relocated from Hollywood to Essex (as you do) he became a prolific author of showbiz biogs.
Now Broadcast magazine says he is to be executive producer of a six-part TV series called April the First about April Ashley, the model who had male-female sex realignment surgery in the Sixties.
However, The Times points out that Broadcast omits to record that Dougie was ghost writer of The First Lady, Ashley’s autobiography which in 2006 was pulped because it was considered to be, how should I put it, uncanningly similar to April Ashley’s Odyssey by Duncan Fallowell.Which two (male) Express execs settled a three-month feud over a shared office by stripping naked?
The dispute started when both put their names on the door after being ‘awarded’ the office (one desk, one chair) by the mischievous Nick Lloyd. It escalated acrimoniously until neither would speak to each other.
The row rumbled on until they embarrassingly met by accident in an hotel sauna during an office think tank. The pair spent 10 minutes studiously ignoring each other until mutually agreeing to a rapprochement.
My man with the grubby towel and the bath salts recalls: ‘It wasn’t only the hands that were shaking as they made up.’ (TMI — Ed)
*****
Speaking of ‘Sir’ Nicholas Lloyd, ones monocle dropped into ones porridge when The Times revealed that he has just celebrated his 80th birthday. His wife Eve Pollard (whom God preserve) is a youthful 76. How tempus fugits.
*****
Hatscot! Do you think that bright-eyed Mail subs hugged themselves for their originality in using this play on words to headline Ladies’ Day coverage? Just like we did 40 years or so ago?
*****
The letter from Patience Shanks (my, what a fine writer she is) about securing an appointment with her doctor struck a chord.
The indifference of GPs to us poor patients has been shown in sharp relief during the pandemic. Face to face? Oh, how very droll.
So I hear of a former colleague who, unaccountably, actually managed to see his doctor about a leg injury he had picked up.
But our pal became increasingly infuriated in the consulting room as the quack ignored him and carried on furiously typing into his machine (a love note to the practice nurse, perhaps; a dissertation on The Importance of the Bedside Manner).
So he decided to take charge.
‘Look, doc. I’ve come to see you because I’ve just been to the Florida Everglades where I was attacked by a giant alligator. I managed to hurl it on to dry land, wrestle it to the floor and subdue it but it took a chunk out of my leg.’
Doctor, absentmindedly still typing: ‘Florida, eh. Was the weather nice?’
*****
Welcome to the world of bollocks. The Express gives space to the views of ‘royal family branding expert’ Professor Cele Otnes (Anag, surely — Ed)
*****
Word among chaps groping for the soap in the murky waters of the communal bath is that the cost of living crisis is hitting two Express pensioners who are ‘fans’ of the uninspiring footie side, Lincoln City.
They have been priced out of the new season ticket premium package where the seats, by popular demand, face away from the pitch and have been confined to a stand where they are forced to watch their under-performing team instead.
*****
As entries pour in for Alan Frame’s exciting Star in a Car contest (trust him to still have a horde of Crisp Oncers), I am reminded of the eccentricities which bedevilled similar competitions on the old News of the World.
When readers were enjoined to Write Your Name And Address In The Box Below there were always some who, indeed, did just that. And, memorably, on one occasion a contestant dutifully cut out a coupon, put it on one side and then sent in the rest of the page.
I know. I was there.
*****
Veteran tennis commentator Dan Maskell last employed his famous catchphrase ‘Oh, I say!’ at Wimbledon in July, 1992 (he died later that year). Yet the Mail now uses it, without explanation, as a headline on two sidebars to the story about Sue Barker’s retirement from presenting the tournament on the Beeb.
Does this mean that some gnarled senior hack on the back bench insists on using phrases at least 30 years old that younger people would not recognise or are youthful subs provided with a list of ancient clichés to make the average Mail reader feel comfortable?
Or is it just the paper’s piss poor revise ‘system’? Discuss.
*****
Pity loveable Sky Deputy Political Ed Sam Coates (imagine being considered inferior to Beth Rigby!) who has been struck dumb. Well, he’s lost his voice anyway.
Drone Medical Editor Larry N. Gitis-Shanks writes of the self-appointed Town Crier of Downing Street: ‘This is usually due to over-use and strain of the vocal chords. In this case it is probably caused by hanging round Downing Street in all weathers shouting fatuous questions at the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues.
‘Typical treatment includes bed rest, lemon and honey and the prohibition of caffeine and alcohol.’
In other news…
*****
Another publication’s daily diary (The Times, since you ask) has caught up with the Drone which last year, you’ll remember, presented the dramatis personae of P.G. Wodehouse characters or faded actor-managers masquerading as the place names of villages in Lincolnshire.
Time for an encore! Let’s hear it, then, for: Cherry Willingham, Boothby Graffoe, Silk Willoughby, Scott Willoughby, Willoughby Heath, Buxton Pedwardine, Ewerby Thorpe, Boothby Pagnell, Burton Coggles and, my personal favourite and home to a nice nine-hole golf course, Carlton Scroop. Bravi!
*****
Following the Drone exclusive, eagle-eyed readers have taken to social media to ask if Silas Perkins, who lost an eye in 1910 when a duck called Rhadamanthus exploded in Des Moines, is related to the retainer of the same name who has been serving Lord Drone for many years.
Indeed he is.
Both descend from Christobal Perkins, cabin boy to Christopher Columbus on the good ship Santa Maria when America was discovered in 1492. There are Perkinses all over the States.
The name derives from the Anglo Norman and originally meant, ahem, little peter.
*****
Tick tock! Noon approaches and a Rambleshanks intern (Rhett, Reynard, Rhianna whatever) simpers in with a cup of Rosie (sic) and a Bath bun.
Your diarist kicks off his Gucci loafers, sinks into his DFS recliner and savours PMQs.
Which limpid-eyed Labour lovely will be flashing her pins at ‘Beleagured Boris’ (TM: Beth Rigby) this week?
Not auburn-tressed Angela Rayner for a change; not coquettish Pixie Balls surely. No, it’s gorgeous, pouting Anneliese Dodds.
Has ambrosia ever tasted so sweet?
*****
P.Rodnose (I was on a break) writes: The Goss item about the Jubilee thanksgiving service referred to Boris reading from ‘Philippines’. This should have been Philippians, the people of Philippi, the first Christian congregation in Europe, and not an Asian country of more than 7,000 islands where the dialling code is +63. Smart arse — Ed.
*****
Talk about woolly thinking! Anti-Jubilee republican firebrands have been holding knitting sessions as a public snub to Her Majesty.
A Palace spokesman says: ‘This is virtue signalling at its worst. Oh, damn! I’ve just dropped a stitch.’
*****
Step forward whoever was responsible for the Jubilee service at St Paul’s. The music, as always, was sublime and I spotted some familiar faces in the choir, those who also sing in our own St Bride’s, that other Wren masterpiece.
The accolade for satirist of the day must go to the genius who chose Philippians 4, 4-9 for Boris Johnson to read. ‘Do not worry about anything … fondly beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable … think about these things.’
There are many Tory MPs doing exactly that during this recess. They will have taken soundings from constituents and whatever the intellectually challenged Ms Dorries or Squire Rees-Mogg might tell you, the public is angry.
Start praying Boris.
*****
As a pink-cheeked ingenu confident in the originality of modern Fleet Street, I rather thought we’d get through the Jubilee weekend without resorting to a Long To Rain Over Us headline. Trust Mail Online to mess that one up.
*****
Continuing my series on Intros You Hoped You’d Never Have To Read: Fears are mounting of a national bunting shortage as demands rocket for the Jubilee as Covid lockdowns in China cripple supplies — Daily Mail
*****
My item about A.N. Wilson saying that ‘the best journalism has all been written when a bit blotto’ prompts someone who used to hang around the Express Back Bench to recall the nights when it all became a little fractious and things looked to be turning to rat shit.
He says that Richard Dismore would survey the mayhem, stroke his chin and murmur sagely: ‘Oh, dear. This is all going to end in beers.’
*****
I know that the Drone’s woke readers (Eh? — Ed) deprecate tales glorifying the drinking, sloping, falling over culture in the golden days of Ye Olde Fleet Street but these reminiscences by A.N. Wilson in The Times certainly tug at my nostalgic heart strings. And, to those who remember Akass, McIlvanney et al, they are so very true.
When I started in Fleet Street, the best columnists in Britain were not sitting at home with their laptops, as they do today, sipping nothing stronger than acqua minerale. They were in smoke-filled bars knocking back triple whiskies and lunching on a bottle of claret per person. They returned to their offices, maybe a little the worse for wear, but having discussed the subject of their articles with colleagues and in a mysterious way cleared their heads. The best journalism has all been written when a bit blotto.
Lunchtime or afternoon drinking are now spoken of with especial horror by the puritanical, and you would be hard-pressed to find a journalist or a publisher who drank at lunchtime, as they always used to do.
A recent letter in the Drone questioning whether our bylines were made up prompted a flurryette of denials. But we’ve nothing on the Express. Recent bylines on their website include: Temie Laleye, Verity Sulway, Aurora Bosotti, Solen Le Net, Chanel Georgina, Thibault Spirlet, Sophia Mencarelli and, most ridiculously, Catherine McIntyre.
*****
Much consternation among ex-Express hacks over the company’s giving a Crusader Merit Award to ‘deserving former executives’. According to a copperplate citation on vellum which accompanies it, the badge is for ‘Loyalty, Long Service and Good Conduct’.
But not all former execs, who might feel they should be eligible for the award, have received it. At the last meeting of the World’s Greatest Lunch Club only two members were wearing the iconic badge.
Now, out of respect to, and sympathy with, their colleagues they have decided not to sport it in future, despite a company exhortation to: Wear Your Crusader With Pride!
*****
Which nascent keyboard warrior, né Express hack, has just become more popular than Fleet Street icon @kelvmackenzie when it comes to Twitter followers? Our man has 23.7k compared with Kelvin’s 23.6k. Mind you, as Peter Andre might say, everything’s relative: Barack Obama has 131 million.
*****
Paul Brand, the preening and self-regarding ITV News UK Editor, has been promoting himself as a Scooperstar at the cutting edge of Partygate exclusives, especially the unearthing of a pic of Boris Johnson at a No.10 lockdown party.
Now attention from conspiracy theorists have forced him to deny that his husband, Joe Cuddeford, a deputy director at the Cabinet Office, is his source.
Glad to help you clear that up, Paul!
*****
Which former Express exec is ‘in the painful process of replacing my lost phone’ after it fell into the sea when a wave hit the ferry he was filming the Scottish coast from?
The executive, who asked not to be named, told the Goss: ‘Alas, several important Instagram posts were lost and are now in Davy Jones’s locker.
‘By the way, do you think this blusher’s too much?’
*****
Amid a European war, a cost of living crisis, Partygate, Beergate and whether Rebekah Vardy uses too much blusher, trust Mail Online to plumb new dark depths of inanity.
Pity the poor hack (Maria Chiriando since you ask) entrusted with writing a ‘story’ under the headline:
Etiquette expert reveals the best way to STAND at a cocktail party to look smart and stop your feet getting tired
*****
Our Grantham correspondent sidles up, via email, with informed, no nonsense intelligence regarding the £300,000 statue of Baroness Thatcher, the town’s favourite daughter, which has just been controversially erected.
Our man, who speaks with rigorous authority because his grand daughter attends Thatcher’s old school, says: ‘It is true that an ageing lefty (allegedly) threw eggs at the statue but disregard news that someone has set up a stall nearby selling eggs at a tenner a pop.
He’s a sad hack doing what sad hacks do to get a ‘story’.
*****
Some of the best reading in the broadsheets can be found in the Obituary pages. (Sadly this is one of the most popular features of the Drone apparently). The following excerpt from an obit of Australian star cricketer Andrew Symonds, killed in a car accident aged 46, was carried by The Times: 'Yet for all his lavish gifts on the cricket field, he often gave the impression that he would rather be elsewhere, preferably fishing or hunting wild pigs. His favourite reading was not Wisden but an Australian pig-hunting magazine called Bacon Busters. "It's a pretty blokey mag but they have women in it too. There's a 'Boars and Babes' section with women in bikinis sitting on big old pigs," he said approvingly.
*****
Once more unto the Interweb where my eyeglass espies the following tweet from Kelvin MacKenzie of this parish: 'Off to Claridges where Boris, Priti and Blair were among guests of Lord Rothermere celebrating the Daily Mail's 125th birthday. My eye was taken by an ex No.2 at the MoS who was so pissed he had to be escorted from the room- even before the speeches had begun. Is this a record?’
Probably not, Kelvin. I doubt this beats the time reporter Michael ‘Oafers’ O’Flaherty got so pissed he retreated under a table, as one does (see Drones passim) during a meeting of Express bigwigs at the Savoy. Seeing a pair of ankles pass by he sprang out and bit them. Bullseye! The ankles belonged to none other Express Newspapers chairman Lord Stevens.
*****
My item about Scooperstar Peter Earle not proving, but admitting, that he worked for the News of the World prompts a reader to recall one of Earle’s contemporaries in the Bouverie Street newsroom.
He had a byline tailor-made for one who recorded the sexual shenanigans of the time: Ron Mount.
*****
The dying notes of Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante ping the latest addition to my email inbox. It is from a recovering hack enjoying the cocktail of the day in the Palm Court of the Flying Fuck.
He says the Goss’s Second Mentions item unaccountably reminds him of someone called Pat Welland who neatly embraced one of the Express’s recurring attempts to ban clichés by getting the phrase ‘shark-inhabited waters’ into print.
*****
My gleaming new iPhone 15 trills its distinctive theme (Mario Lanza’s Drink, Drink Drink from the Student Prince, since you ask): it is my ‘spy’ in the North East, Bonnie Lass, with a breathless update on the Beergate controversy engulfing the Labour hierarchy.
Apparently, not all the 300 (30 surely? — Ed) party hacks were wolfing down exotic Indian takeaways and necking Spanish lager at Durham Miners’ Hall that night.
A ‘source’ tells Bonnie: ‘Actually, Starmer and Rayner prefer pork pies.’
*****
My man Perkins shimmers in with the drinks tray. He has been on the Interweb and has spotted a Twitter account called Second Mentions which tracks the most inventive ways journalists avoid using the same word twice.
Examples can be silly: The Times calling tea “the bitter brown infusion”, or The Guardian describing a fox who ran on to a football pitch as “the four-legged interloper”. But they’re also poetic: the Daily Mirror once called the moon “the tide-changing rock”, and The Sun described a sex doll as a “lust vessel”.
Avoiding repetition has always been tricky for writers, says The New Yorker. In the first book of Paradise Lost, John Milton calls Satan at least seven different things, from the “infernal Serpent” to the “superiour Fiend”.
Time for a schooner of fermented fruit of the vine, I fancy.
*****
Remember the other day, when an MP named and shamed a bunch of London lawyers for representing shady Russian clients in cases against British journalists? Then, a few days later, another UK law firm hastily pulled a page on their website specifically courting tax-efficient Russian VIPs? And then the whole thing blew over and no-one's really mentioned it since?
Perpetual own-goal scorers, Schillings, have very helpfully reignited the story. Letters were fired off around Fleet Street to forcefully remind journalists of their stated position that they DO NOT represent any sanctioned individuals (Russians or otherwise) but that — even if they did — it would "offend the rule of law" to point it out.
The weirdest thing about this sudden outburst? Schillings was one of the few firms that nobody was really pointing fingers at. Until now.
*****
Have you got any juicy gossip, chums? My ear trumpet is open all hours for info. Complete indiscretion guaranteed. A secret is always safe with the Drone! Why is it that Quentin Letts gets such a bad time in the readers comments section of the online version of The Times? His sketch from last week’s PMQs attracted the following: guff; verbal graffiti; is he suffering from a form of long covid; time to quit and head back to the Mail; scraping the barrel; remarkably unfunny, and pitiful. At least 90 per cent of the comments were in the same vein. Maybe it is time for him to head back to Derry Street.
*****
Whisper it, but it’s almost 48 hours since Carol Vorderman posted a social media selfie in a tight leather figure-hugging catsuit, Louise Redknapp bemoaned the end of her marriage to Jamie but vowed to ‘move on’ and Ulrika Jonsson revealed more unnecessary details about her rackety love life.
Ping!
Oh no, readers! Ms Jonsson has just shared scintillating secrets of her sizzling sessions with a toy boy.
*****
The Goss pauses, amid revelations of MPs’ foibles, the ramblings of redundant royal hacks and the rigours of Vladimir Putin butt plugs, to remember Scooperstar Peter Earle, the anniversary of whose passing has just, er, passed.
Earle (reaches for handy cliché) bestrode Fleet Street like a colossus breaking, among others, the Profumo story.
Once he proclaimed to a woman who answered his insistent knocking: ‘I’m from the News of the World.’
‘Can you prove it?’
‘Madam, I’m admitting it.’
*****
READ this then burn it because it’s a closely-guarded secret, particularly in view of certain sexual matters pertaining to Parliament. Our sleuth Keyhole Kate has been given an insight into some of the objets d'art that litter ‘Lord’ Evgeny Lebedev's Hampton Court pile (the aptly named Stud House).
His dining room table is festooned with candelabras designed by Theo Fennell, depicting characters indulging in various acts of sensual erotica. Among the many pieces of modern art sits a sculpture of what appears to be a pile of naked bodies engaged in some intimate entanglement.
But the most interesting artefacts? The collection of butt plugs with Vladimir Putin's face on them. Our Kate was so shocked she had to make her excuse and leave. Backwards.
Cocklecarrot has asked me to bung in an ‘allegedly’ somewhere in this snippet. Allegedly.
*****
Our old friend Geoffrey Levy will miss seeing Boris Becker around his neighbourhood in the leafy lanes of Wimbledon adjacent to the All England Club where both live (or in Becker’s case lived before swapping it for chokey.)
Still, the old boy still has Ant of the unfathomably popular duo with someone called Dec living diagonally opposite. A Geordie like his lovely wife Stephanie. It could be worse, Simon Cowell nearly moved nearby. The place has obviously gone downhill, Levy used to have former Met commissioner Sir Peter Imbert as a neighbour.
*****
Piers Morgan's viewing figures over TalkTV's launch week – Mon: 397,000; Tue: 216,000; Wed: 123,000. If he continues to shed viewers at a steady rate, he'll be sub-5,000 viewers by the end of next week.
Across TalkTV’s other shows, Tom Newton Dunn’s The News Desk crashed to just 15,300 without the star attraction of the PM, and Sharon Osbourne has fallen below five figures to a paltry 9,700. Last night she left in tears, returning to her home in the US because her husband Ozzy has Covid.
This is despite a marketing spend for TalkTV which is plastering Piers Morgan’s face all over posters nationally, taking full page adverts in The Sun and The Times plus advertising commercials all over other television channels. Maybe that is what is putting people off?
*****
Much hilarity and bafflement at the Drone’s riverside offices over a controversial assessment of Country Boys, a popular feature in the Vibrant, Highly Informative And Amusing Website That Never Ceases To Entertain (TM: R. Slicker)
A distinguished former Royal Correspondent has confided to chums that, although he reads the monthly column regularly, he never gets any of the jokes.
Asked to comment, Country Boys ‘writer’, Oliver says: ‘Of course he doesn’t get the jokes: there are no fucking jokes!’
Just between us there’s another dispatch below.
*****
I am reliably informed by my glamorous assistant Keyhole Kate of an incident aboard a BA flight to Venice during the Easter hols (Business Class, naturally).
It involved the former deputy speaker Nigel Evans who was so outrageously pissed that cabin staff refused him more drink.
Evans, an avowed Friend of Dorothy, was with a young toy boy who was clearly embarrassed by the antics.
The customary Crisp Fiver to my informant once my Postal Order arrives.
*****
There is the faintest whisper in Derry Street that the Angela Rayner story was bar talk by hacks and did not necessarily come from an MP. Also, the story was written in the style of the Sunday Sport which has not gone down well with the top floor.
