Sinn Fein has booked its fringe event at the Labour conference, starring the former leadership hopeful Owen Smith at a Quaker meeting house in Brighton.
A party staffer called to make arrangements and a friendly Quaker booked everything in before asking which organisation was hosting the event.
The staffer explained he was from Sinn Fein and braced himself for a backlash.
“Oh, Sinn Fein?” came the reply. “That’s great. I thought you were going to say Momentum.”
MASTER OF MISBEHAVING
Each tale about Michael Kidson, David Cameron’s history tutor at Eton, is more outlandish than the last. The Spectator has reviewed his biography, which describes his love of hurling croquet balls or blackboard rubbers at pupils, with a whole index entry headed: “Kidson, Michael: choice of missiles.”
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It also notes that Kidson was no great fan of one Victorian prime minister. He demanded that students write an essay on Benjamin Disraeli’s famous line about making it to Downing Street with the title: “How greasy was Disraeli’s pole?”
Discussing the bizarre logic of nursery rhymes has prompted readers to suggest considering them as a whole. Mr Morse writes to say: “I’d always assumed the water Jack and Jill went to fetch had been left at the top of the hill by the Grand Old Duke of York’s men as part of their manoeuvres.”
TV’S CUSHY NUMBER
Newsreaders are left dangling on air for “hours and hours” these days, says Stephen Cole, a former BBC newsman who said many were duped into the job by the cushy lives their predecessors had before 24-hour rolling news came along.
Speaking to a Media Masters podcast, he recalled being a staffer on ITN’s News at Ten, watching the likes of Trevor McDonald in their pomp. He remembers thinking: “You turn up after dinner, you might have a cigar, you’ve had a drink at dinner, then you work for 30 minutes and go home . . . I can do this!”
Cole went on to found the BBC’s Click Online technology show, but wasn’t always a technophile. Recalling his early days as a local news reporter he said: “At that point my idea of a hard drive was taking the car up to Birmingham.”
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WIFELY ADVICE FOR PHILIP
Radio 4’s PM wondered yesterday how the Queen will cope with Phil moping about the palace in his retirement.
Lady Howard, the novelist and wife of the former Tory leader Lord Howard of Lympne, told PM she was not overly chuffed to see more of her husband after he left the Commons in 2010.
“He very easily slips into the role of the slob and just watches a huge amount of sport on television,” she said. “I was extremely keen that he would find things to do that would take him out of the house.”
Armchair critics on Twitter accused a new BBC comedy show, The Mash Report, of using canned laughter this week, prompting a perfervid reaction as many pointed out that such tricks were a thing of the past.
Others went further, asking what’s so bad about laughter tracks, anyway. Margaret Brown joked: “Canned laughter helped us conserve vital supplies of laughter during World War Two.”
