Pitch invader Andy misses penalty
Andy Burnham may be blessed with the most boring voice in the Cabinet (is Alistair Darling jealous?) but the new Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport does have a wild side. A passionate Everton fan, he has revealed to the club’s TV station that he hasn’t always stayed on the right side of the barrier.
“I’ve been to away games all my life,” he says. “I invaded the pitch when Adrian Heath got his last-minute winner at Highbury. I’m just a normal Evertonian. I love this club and I get just as raucous as anybody on a match day.” That particular Highbury match took place in the mid1980s, which is just as well. As of the Football (Offences) Act 1991, such behaviour became illegal. Wouldn’t it be awkward if the man now responsible for your behaviour on the terraces had a record for his?
On Tuesday, remember, we wrote of Boris Johnson (MP for Henley) asking three parliamentary questions about London (not in Henley) at a cost to the taxpayer of about £420. We mused as to whether this might just possibly be related to his London mayoral bid, which is not really the taxpayers’ concern.
Alas, it would appear that we were gravely mistaken. For this, we must apologise. The Honourable Member for Henley has not, it turns out, cost the taxpayer about £420 by asking three parliamentary questions about London. Oh no. He has cost the taxpayer about £13,720 by asking 98 questions about London. All have been asked since September 2007, after he left the Shadow Cabinet. Boris, forgive us. We are happy to set the record straight.
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Apart from England and Scotland, are there other opportunities for Berwick? We learn that Europe’s most titled aristocrat, Doña MarÍa del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca Fitz-James Stewart y Silva, the 18th Duchess of Alba (phew), is also the Duchess of Berwick. So maybe it could join Spain.
Almost £8 million has been spent on refurbishing the new Press Gallery bar in Parliament and, today, it wants for only one thing: drinkers. To ensure that the spanking new space is not reassigned, lobby hacks are being encouraged to drink more. This seems unwise.
Somebody at Westminster Abbey evidently has a sense of humour. Today, as Grand Mufti Rowan Williams breathes a sigh of relief, and the General Synod ends, some thought appears to have gone into choosing the music for Evensong. The assembled clerics, we gather, will be crooning a gentle Deliver Me from Mine Enemies, by Parsons.
Kaiser Chiefs, our very favourite Leeds-based civil disorder-foretelling rock combo, have lent their support to the campaign against the expansion of Stansted airport. This attracts the ire of FlyingMatters, the pro-airport lobby group, which gets in touch to point out that, for the band’s 2007 tour, they probably flew about 480,000 miles.
Postscript
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Mike Batt, the man behind the Wombles (if you’ll pardon the expression), has a new passion – monks – and it seems he is not alone. Batt discussed a “monk-based project” with Universal Records in October and, after hearing no more, was interested to discover that the record label is now recruiting monks to record Gregorian chants. “They have told me their monks have nothing to do with my monks,” he says, “but the race is on to see who gets theirs first.” Dramatic Records, home of Katie Melua, may be the actual winner. The company is releasing an album by The Arctic Monks titled Hey, Hey, We’re the Monks. We await the involvement of Simon Cowl (sorry).
Normally he’s the smooth-talking host, but it seems picking up his OBE from the Queen was a little too much, even for Des Lynam. “I was strangely nervous,” he says. “You want to do what you are told absolutely right.”
Caroline Aherne, creator of BBC Two comedy The Royle Family, is planning a return with a television film about Britain’s fattest man. Royle Family executive producer Andy Harries tells Broadcast, the trade magazine: “It’s early days. It is about the UK’s fattest man – he’s trying to work out if the kudos of having that title is worth sacrificing his life for.”
Gary Coleman, the 4ft 8in star of the comedy Diff’rent Strokes, has married a woman nearly a foot taller at 5ft 7in and, at 22, 18 years younger. “He’s ten feet tall to me,” she says.
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