Donald Trump invited Kanye West to Trump Tower this week. He possibly wants the rapper to perform at his inauguration, but may want him as secretary for agriculture for all we know. Another celebrity was angling for a role in Trump’s administration this week. Kelsey Grammer, star of Cheers and Frasier, won Snow Queen cigar smoker of the year in a ceremony at Boisdale restaurant in London. He threw his hat in the ring to replace Matthew Barzun, the engaging US ambassador who returns home next month. “I love this city and this country,” he told the TMS hobbit. “I’d love to do it. Ambassador Grammer has got a certain ring to it.” Like many of Trump’s appointments, Grammer has no political experience, but 20 years spent playing a comedy psychiatrist should come in handy.
SURVIVAL OF THE THICKEST
Ricky Gervais doesn’t think we should have had a referendum on the EU. He has suggested the electorate be thinned out by natural selection before we hold another one. “The average person’s an idiot,” he told The Last Leg on Channel 4. “On bottles of bleach we’ve got ‘Do not drink’. Take that off for two years and then have a referendum.”
Jeremy Vine also has doubts about the public’s intelligence. At the Institute of Economic Affairs’ Christmas party, he recalled a report on BBC Radio 2 about methane from cows causing more climate damage than air travel. Experts said we can save the planet if we all go vegetarian. Vine said: “Nick from Kent called in: ‘If cows are causing that much trouble, the only way forward is for us to eat them.’”
REBEL WITHOUT APPLAUSE
It was reported that Boris Johnson “risked incurring the wrath” of Theresa May by joking about her leather trousers at the Foreign Office Christmas party this week. He told assembled dignitaries that Britain must be cosmopolitan because “our wonderful prime minister wears lederhosen”. But May is a canny operator, even when it comes to jokes at her own expense. As Johnson made his seemingly rebellious remark, to gasps from his audience, an aide whispered to my mole: “We cleared that with No 10.” Not something May was ever likely to get her unterhosen in a twist about, then.
I joked this week that Queen Anne, who died in 1714, was America’s last female head of state. Giles Black has written in to claim the last female monarch on what is now US soil was Catherine the Great of Russia, who ruled part of Alaska until her death in 1796. By that logic, the title should really go to Queen Lili’uokalani, ruler of the Kingdom of Hawaii until it was overthrown in 1893. Or perhaps the singer Queen Latifah, if we’re being really picky.
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PACHELBEL’S CANNON
Sadiq Khan is to sell the three water cannon bought by his predecessor as mayor of London. They were never used after May vetoed it when she was the home secretary. Khan said that £323,000 had been spent on buying and upgrading the watery white elephants, including £970 to install CD players. It rather begs the question: what music does one listen to while water cannoning civilians? One reader suggested Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture (which features real cannons) while another optimistically went for Rihanna’s Umbrella. I prefer Sarah Martin’s nomination, for “anything by Wet Wet Wet”.
