It's all French to Boris Johnson

Telegraph

04-04-2025

João Vale de Almeida, the EU's former ambassador to the UK, United Nations and United States, launched his memoir The Divorce of Nations at the Portuguese Ambassador's residence in Mayfair on Thursday night, with happy memories of his encounters with former Daily Telegraph Brussels correspondent Boris Johnson in the Brussels press room when he was an EU spokesman in the late 1980s.
The pair would engage in 'frank dialogue', Vale de Almeida said, adding: 'The rule at the time was that you had to ask questions in French and the answers had to be in French. Boris would ask questions about straight bananas in his shaky French and I'd do my best to answer.' This may have led to some of the EU's explanations in Johnson's stories about bonkers Brussels Eurocrats being lost in translation.
The real Banksy
Trouble in the West Country where Arron Banks, who is running as the Reform UK candidate to be mayor of the West of England, says the local Green-led council has banned him from referring to himself as 'Banksy'. Banks, one of the original 'Bad Boys of Brexit ', who helped fund Nigel Farage's campaign in 2016, says it is 'for fear of upsetting the other 'Banksy' who makes his money from stencilling buildings with witty doodles. Banks is not ruling out legal action.
'I've been called Banksy as a nickname for 40-plus years; the other Banksy is a street artist that illegally paints on property,' he says. Banks is now considering stencilling Bristol council offices with a 'Banksy for Bristol' stencil. 'What's good for the goose, is good for the gander,' he says.
Peers' North-South divide
Under-threat hereditary peers lack a North-South balance. 'So far as I am aware, at present we have only one hereditary peer in the House from Yorkshire,' Liberal Democrat peer Lord Wallace of Saltaire told peers. 'The North of England is very under-represented.' Wallace blames 'a tendency for young generations to move to the Home Counties over the years and to go to school in the Home Counties as well. So the regional representation of the hereditaries is not particularly good.'
Time for some levelling-up?
Parliamentary language
Veteran actor Nigel Havers, 73, about to tour the country in a one-man show called Talking B-ll---s, says: 'I wrote an autobiography a few years back and I wanted to call it B-ll---s, and the publisher said 'You can't say that!' I said, 'Why not? It's not a swear word.' Havers points out that it can be uttered in the House Of Commons.
Havers is right. Former deputy speaker Dame Eleanor Laing ruled in 2021 that 'b-ll---s' was acceptable in a Commons debate if not aimed at another MP.
Mel's pulled punches
Shadow chancellor Mel Stride's job is to scrutinise the work of Chancellor Rachel Reeves whenever he can. But the pair get on well, and met for a cup of tea last month. And he does not like the ' Rachel from Accounts ' nickname. 'No, I don't particularly,' he told me on GB News' Chopper's Political Podcast yesterday. 'Personally, my kind of politics tends to be a little bit less personalised. I'm more interested in tackling the things that people are doing or not doing.' I fear Stride's decency is from a different political time.
One club Rice
Sunderland's most unlikely celebrity football fan Sir Tim Rice, who grew up in Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, has been explaining his allegiance to the North-East club since the age of seven. 'I saw the name Sunderland... a beautiful sounding word, conjuring images of beaches and palm trees. I thought, 'My team's Sunderland!' he says. With the club currently pinning hopes on a Premier League return, Rice says: 'You can change everything in life, but you can't change your football team. I have remained loyal.'
Easter egg
An early Easter egg has been delivered to Salisbury Cathedral, produced by a peregrine falcon in the cathedral tower. Falcons first nested there in the 1860s and are back again after disappearing for 90 years. Members of the congregation are watching the peregrines sitting on the egg on a webcam. But congregants hearing the flap of mighty wings should be advised that it is not necessarily a Lenten angel but more likely a bird of prey looking for some lunch. Ladies of a certain age are advised not to wear rabbit or fox fur to Easter morning communion.
Radio 4's declining standards
Veteran BBC broadcaster Edward Stourton, 67, tells the Oldie magazine that Radio 4 is getting more middle class. 'I think all of us have become less posh as the years have gone by. When I hear old archive bits of myself, I sound like the Queen.' Still, Stourton is having fun. Asked what he takes with him on his travels, he replies: 'A book. And a sarong, which I wear at home in the evening.' What's wrong with a kilt?