Tearoom talk is of a spooky offer from the Bassetlaw boy John Mann. The terrier-like Labour MP has just qualified as a grave inspector. Mann completed a course after run-ins with council busybodies insisting that headstones be taken down if they lean. The MP reckons no one’s been killed by a falling tombstone for at least a decade. So he’s now accepting bookings from comrades to visit churchyards, with spirit level and tape measure, to adjudicate in disputes. A case of if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
Overheard sounding suspiciously as if he was seeking to impress a young lass was silver-tongued Pete Wishart, the musician-cum-Scot Nat. The one-time Big Country keyboard player evidently dresses to impress, if his patter is a reliable guide. My radar-lugged snout in Marks & Spencer clobber listened enviously as the ageing Westminster rocker boasted of wearing an Armani suit, Hugo Boss shirt and £100 underwear. Yes, £100 pants. The Barnett Formula may be more generous than we realised.
Word arrives of how the Father of the Nation chatted animatedly at a reception to a female author. Nothing unusual in that, I hear you say. The pair talked about writing, pressures of public life and the world in general, as one does on these occasions. So why did Gordon Brown shuffle off in such a hurry when another guest whispered her name into his ear? Perhaps it was because the nice smiley lady was Frances Osborne, wife of the Tories’ “Boy” George Osborne.
Sticking with Uncle Gordie while returning to clothes, I stumbled across an explanation as to why Brown looked so uncomfortable on the Paris pitch when medals were handed out at the Rugby World Cup final. The ill-fitting black coat he wore, tight around the chest with the arms too short, wasn’t the Premier’s own but borrowed from a French official. Nicolas Sarkozy, watching Brown shiver, ordered the nearest 6ft monsieur to hand it over. When Uncle Gordie later disappeared down the tunnel, the official was spied running after him and shouting for his coat back.
UnRuthless Kelly (below) is the latest victim of Whelan‘s revenge, the bus secretary’s Bolton backyard stripped of a £1,500 annual subvention from Unite. Brown’s old spinner, the union commissar Charlie W, seems to be scratching out Blairites in his address book, with the Pepsi Kid, Alan Milburn, also gone. Who will be next?
Lobby gossips assert the ghostwriter of Grauniad Online’s pastiche of a thirsty political hack, Bill Blanko, is Rob Gibson, the agency scribbler exposed by this column as scribe (secretary in Mugglespeak) of the Gallery pinny brigade. But my money is on the Sky foghorn Jon Craig, a chap who didn’t come into journalism to eat sandwiches for lunch or drink the house wine. Craig issued a non-denial denial of the type he regularly slates ministers for. That’s confirmation, in my book.
Kevin Maguire is associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
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