When Nigel met the Pope
Always look on the bright side of life
Sir Michael Palin is just back from Venezuela, and has a new book coming out on his travels there. He recalled this week an earlier visit to the South American country when he and a camera crew were detained for hours by armed officers. 'They had automatic weapons and black outfits and they looked very, very nasty indeed,' he told the Camden New Journal. Eventually accompanied to a nearby restaurant by their guards, the mood lightened considerably when they looked him up on YouTube. 'Then they found Monty Python and we knew we were going to be safe,' he cheerfully adds. 'At the end we all had photos taken together.'
Taking the biscuit
Sad news reaches me about the Bath Oliver, a biscuit invented by 18th century Bath physician William Oliver to treat gout. Production was suspended during the Covid pandemic but brought back after protests led by Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg. However, Bath Oliver maker Pladis has now quietly axed the biscuit. A spokesman tells me: 'While we know for some people this was a much-loved biscuit, [but] we took the decision to focus our efforts on our other savoury crackers and foods.' A disappointed Rees-Mogg tells me: 'There is no finer biscuit with which to eat Somerset cheddar cheese. This is an act of cultural vandalism by one of those silly companies with a silly name.'
Healey's cowboy
Visitors to John Healey's office in the Ministry of Defence should look out for a glitzy piece of Americana on his desk. Where else would the Defence Secretary display a solid bronze cowboy statue given to him by Pete Hegseth, his US counterpart, last month, according to Government's disclosures. It had better have pride of place like the bust of Churchill in Donald Trump's Oval Office.
No satisfaction, but I try
Chris Jagger has been remembering how his elder brother Mick sent him an early copy of the Rolling Stones hit Satisfaction which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year. 'Keith Richards had woken up in the night, reached for a trusty acoustic guitar and phrased the riff into a cassette recorder, and then returned to the Land of Nod,' he says in today's Oldie magazine. 'In the morning, or probably afternoon, he came to and saw the cassette tape was at the end of the spool. So he rewound it and, to his surprise, the riff was on there, followed by 40 minutes of snoring. As Allen Ginsberg once said: 'Be a good secretary to your own consciousness'.'
Crying fit
'Royal town crier' Tony Appleton – who has met Elizabeth Taylor, Mohammed Ali and Margaret Thatcher and often announces royal births outside St Mary's Hospital in London – heralded St George's Day at a special reception in Speaker's House in the House of Commons this week. He was dressed in his red uniform, which weighs over a stone, tricorn hat and ostrich feathers. The 89-year-old told me he stays fit by swimming 50 lengths a day in his local pool as well as pedalling 30 minutes a day on an exercise bicycle. He recently lost a stone and a half following a Slimming World diet by giving up cake and biscuits. Who needs Ozempic?
Jeremy's tattoo
BBC presenter Jeremy Vine now has a tattoo, aged 60. He says: 'My daughter Anna wanted a tattoo for her 18th birthday from the Smiths song Still Ill. So she's got the words, 'For there are brighter sides to life' on her arm. On mine, is the other half of the lyric 'And I should know, because I've seen them.' Vine tells me he is not planning any more. I can remember over a decade ago when David Dimbleby, then 75, had a scorpion inked on his shoulder. How old is too old to get a 'debut' tattoo?
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The Independent
8 minutes ago
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