On to Phil and Fearn’s This Morning sofa on ITV1 to discuss smears alongside Neil and Christine Hamilton. The Hamiltons were invited as former victims, after a bizarre, false rape allegation in 2001, but Mohamed Al Fayed and the cash-for-questions scandal continues to dog the couple. Christine Hamilton, the self-styled Mrs British Battleaxe, was sipping a cup of char before the show when she noticed a Harrods label dangling on her teabag string. The speed with which Mrs Battleaxe snipped it off with her fingernails suggests the police wouldn’t need to look far, should Mr Fayed ever be found minus his gonads.
That celebrated haunt of left-wingers who prefer to plot on a full stomach, the Gay Hussar eatery in Soho, central London, has an unusually large number of diners loitering on the stairs to the lavatories. A photograph of Gordon Brown with Damian McBride is detaining guests.
The manager, John Wrobel, has rejected bids for the snap and is considering screwing it to the wall for safekeeping. He has agreed, however, to give a print to a BBC regular who suffered McNasty’s hairdryer treatment and would like a copy to smile at every night before he goes to bed.
To Maggie’s End at the Shaw Theatre in London, where a loud cry of “Nut him!” from the audience enlivened an onstage confrontation between the play’s Thatcher-hating hero and a Rusty Lady-worshipping New Labour home secretary. The voice sounded like a west London man in his late fifties. Coincidentally, I later saw in the bar the GMB general secretary, Paul Kenny, born in Hammersmith in October 1949.
Further to my snippet about Barack Obama accidentally wandering into the No 10 political office on his way to the toilet, I now hear that his trip wasn’t entirely by accident. Aware he’d need to pass their den to get to the loo, the unit’s plotters and poisoners asked Downing Street staff to keep topping up the president’s coffee cup. A mandarin mutters that the president may have found the real toilet when he entered the political lair.
Trade unions, whispered a snout, were involved in an unseemly spat at the Scottish TUC in Perth over the fatal North Sea helicopter crash. The RMT argued that it represents offshore workers, so should have moved an emergency motion. Unite claimed it has more members in the oil and gas sectors. Balpa argued that its pilots fly the choppers. Unite finally won the right to open the debate by stating that its members also make the aircraft. The struggle evidently continues to take many forms.
To Bradford for the Yorks and Humber annual TUC dinner, where the star turn was John Monks, now earning his euros as leader of Europe’s workers. A Mancunian who cannot resist a dig at Tykes over the Pennines as not so bright, he recounted a row in Pudsey council chamber over spending up to £1,000 on a chandelier for the town hall. “It’s all very well spending that money,” said the chairman, “but what I want to know is who is going to play the bugger.”
I wouldn’t say the laughter brought the house down, but Monks’s negotiating skills secured a safe passage to bed.
Kevin Maguire is associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
