Cracks show in PM's team over best gags

Times

5 hours ago

Pity the prime minister's joke writers. For a start, they could be a team of Barry Cryers and they'd still be at the mercy of Sir Keir Starmer's delivery, but they also feel that their man doesn't give them enough credit for all his memorable jokes (yes — all of them). Chris Ward, the PM's PPS, told Five Live that Starmer will 'disown' a joke in rehearsals before finding it does well in the Commons. 'Then you'll bump into MPs and Keir's been going round saying 'I wrote this fabulous joke', ' Ward said. 'Which annoys all of us.' Ward added this is 'the right of the PM' — but Starmer will need to keep his allies on side, lest they decide they want to have the last laugh.
Reform are trumpeting every win they get, so, at business questions, their MP Richard Tice raised Nigel Farage's victory in a poll of Britain's sexiest politicians by the adulterous dating website Illicit Encounters. He also acknowledged that Labour's Angela Rayner topped the female category and suggested to Commons Leader Lucy Powell that the pair celebrate by having dinner together. Powell said this would not be possible. 'I'm sure the deputy prime minister has a very full diary,' she said, 'washing her hair and the like.'
While up in the International Space Station, the astronaut Tim Peake briefly thought he'd made contact with alien life. He tells All in the Mind that he looked out of the ISS's window and saw unexpected lights. The sun obscures the stars, so the appearance of three lights could only be an approaching spaceship. With no human visit scheduled, Peake thought he was about to meet ET … until his Russian colleague came in and said the lavatory was leaking. Peake explained: 'The 'spaceship' turned out to be urine that was freezing and crystallising and reflecting the light back from the sun.' So not first contact but a close encounter of the number-one kind.
The bastions of the establishment are turning their backs on dress codes as we all wilt in the heat. The MCC even relaxed theirs at Lord's on Wednesday, lest men fry in their egg-and-bacon jackets. Not all places are as compromising. At Henley Royal Regatta, during a heatwave one year, an announcement was made: 'Members may remove their jackets — gentlemen will prefer not to.'
The Rev Richard Coles's Radio 4 persona made him Britain's most famous parish priest, but he has unclerical tales to tell of his pre-frocked life as a member of the Communards. These include a multi-month blowout on Ibiza involving ecstasy, acid and paying for increasingly audacious forms of transport. 'We got barred from Avis for life because we got through a lot of vehicles,' he tells How to be in Love. 'Also, I bought a speedboat, and I don't know where it is. It's still there as far as I know.' Fortunately, the band were barred from buying a light aircraft. 'We went to the airport,' he recalled, 'but they wouldn't let us in because we'd forgotten to put our shirts on.'