2 days ago
Make Nigel's shirts great again
A Reform FC XI defeated the local Wetherspoons team 3-2 in a charity match in Clacton last month, with party leader Nigel Farage as manager. The talk in the bar afterwards was of the Reform team's teal-coloured 'Farage 10' football shirts. Now Farage has ordered a large quantity to sell at the party's annual conference in three weeks' time or via social media. Could Farage's £39.99 footy shirts be Reform's answer to the Maga hat?
Unsinkable Tories
The Conservatives are back in Manchester at the city's Central Convention Complex for their party conference this October. By then the Titanic Exhibition – which tells the story of the 'unsinkable ship' and runs there until August 24 – should have been cleared away. You can insert your own joke in here.
Hoyle's job security
House of Commons speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle has his critics but he is more secure in his post than most MPs, it has transpired. A close study of the House of Commons rule book – the Standing Orders – says that 'at least one man and at least one woman shall be elected across the four posts of Speaker and Deputy Speakers'. This means that Hoyle is legally safe, because of his three female deputies.
Beware a reshuffle, Sir Lindsay!
Scully's nuptials
Former Conservative MP Paul Scully married his fiancée Maxine in Thames Ditton last week. The fun started at the wedding breakfast. 'At our reception, our vicar got talking to one of Maxine's colleagues who invited him to her own wedding the following week,' he tells me. On the way to their honeymoon, the newly-weds were held up by US vice-president J D Vance's 25-vehicle motorcade as it drove through Burford. Scully continues: 'Then our exhaust box fell off just opposite Jeremy Clarkson's pub where we had to wait for the AA'. The couple are now back home, after collecting their car from Kwik Fit. This augurs well for a long marriage.
Janet stays at arm's length
It's probably best to shake hands with broadcaster Janet Street-Porter if you bump into her. 'Why do people have to hug me all the time? ' she rages in Women's Own magazine. 'Hugging strangers p----- me off. I've got people who want to hug me, like close friends, so why would I want other people to do it? I don't want someone in the supermarket hugging me, thank you very much! I love that people get excited when they see me but there are two rules – don't prod me and don't hug me.' Righto, Janet!
Reform feminism
Divisions have opened among Reform UK's female politicians, after Greater Lincolnshire mayor Dame Andrea Jenkyns referred to them as 'Farage's fillies', in an echo of 'Blair's Babes' and 'Cameron's Cuties', at a press conference this week. Reform MP Sarah Pochin is having none of it, telling GB News: 'I certainly am not a 'Farage filly' and I would not want to be referred to as one.' She adds: 'I have always been treated as an absolute equal by Nigel Farage and I am absolutely happy that that won't change.'
Miranda likes a cold dip
Actress Miranda Richardson, who played Elizabeth I in Blackadder, says she has become 'rather addicted' to wild swimming. 'I've started looking at any body of water now and saying: Yeah, why not? Even if it's just to sit in it,' she tells Saga magazine. Now she swims outdoors whenever she can and is a regular at London's Serpentine Lido. 'I'm much nicer to people for a short time after I've been swimming,' she says.
Prue's menu
Chef Dame Prue Leith has had enough of modern-day foodie nonsense, telling The Oldie magazine of one memorable restaurant dish: 'I ordered 'sustainability-certified North Sea halibut loin, coated in tempura-style batter made from Hook Norton Ironstone lager and Bill's free-range organic eggs, served with locally grown Maris Piper potatoes, triple-fried in Cotswold Gold corn oil'.' She added: 'Translation: fish and chips.'
Disconnected Hope
I have just got back from a relaxing off-grid break in a cosy National Trust cottage, above the treeline in the wilds of Snowdonia. It was so remote that the cottage had no Wi-Fi, no mobile phone signal and only Channel 4 on the sitting room television. Have any Peterborough readers put up with worse privations on holiday?
