Prue Leith has daunting shoes to fill when she plays the Mary Berry role in Channel 4’s reboot of The Great British Bake-Off later this year but she will surely not need chemical enhancement to get through it, unlike when she made her TV debut. Leith reveals in Cotswold Life magazine that when she first presented a TV cookery show in the 1970s she was so nervous that the floor manager intervened. “I can see you hate it. That’s because you’re frightened,” he said. “Try this.” And then, as if he were a doctor for a Tour de France team, he slipped her an unidentified pill. Leith swallowed it and felt fantastic but her brother later told her: “Your eyes were rolling all over the place. What were you on?” It was many years before she dared to do TV again.
You learn fascinating things from MPs’ maiden speeches. Sandy Martin, the new Labour member for Ipswich, boasted this week that the world’s first lawnmower was built in his constituency in 1832. That must go down well with the grassroots.
WELL ALOHA
Summer drinks in the attorney-general’s office used to be a sober affair involving nuts and sherry in very small glasses. This week, however, MPs were necking pints of something lurid, sticky and potent. Jeremy Wright’s party had a Hawaiian theme with plastic pineapple trees and strings of flowers, which Michael Fabricant eagerly draped around his neck. “Shall I take my trousers off, put on a grass skirt and show you my hula-hula?” the Lichfield MP asked. “Oh not again, Michael,” the room sighed.
Two years after leaving the Today programme, James Naughtie is still earning up to £200,000 as a bits and pieces man for the BBC: some way shy of his old sidekick John Humphrys’ £600,000 plus but far from boracic. Apart from the odd special report or election night engagement, Naughtie’s role is to host Bookclub on Radio 4, a half-hour show once a month. Who knew that turning over a new leaf could be so well paid?
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ROLE PLAY
“It’s good to be here,” Justin Webb began at an ICM polling event yesterday, “rather than in my usual job — discussing my pay in front of the British public”. The amiable broadcaster talked a bit about when he was the BBC’s man in Washington and how the natives loved his British accent. “I spent a lot of my time in America impersonating Hugh Grant,” he said. “Though not in every sense.” I’m sure kerb-crawling is not allowed on expenses at the Beeb.
Some politicians are not very worldly. Charles Walker, the Tory MP for Broxbourne, has recently discovered aubergines and now he can’t get enough of them. “I always thought that moussaka was an impossibly exotic dish but it has a lot going for it,” he told fellow MPs in a debate on Tuesday, advising them all to try it. Just wait until he discovers garlic bread.
WATCH YOUR STEP
Mel Stride, the new financial secretary to the Treasury, has been mentioned in some quarters as “one to watch” among the little-known ministers. He tripped over his own feet on his debut at the dispatch box this week, however, announcing that Britain “has one of the most progressive tax systems in the entire country”. Unless he’s comparing Revenue and Customs to Gary Lineker’s accountants.
