O Come, All Ye Faithful will have an asterisk next to it at York Minster this Christmas. The faithful are, in fact, being asked not to come to the cathedral’s Nine Lessons and Carols but to watch the service online so that casual visitors can have their seats. “Family, hold back,” urges the dean, Jonathan Frost, in an epistle that has got up many noses. This is down to Covid timidity. The Minster can seat 2,500 but while theatres and sports grounds are at full capacity, Frost is limiting attendance to 750 and would rather they were not regular Christians. Quoting an earlier archbishop, William Temple, he wrote: “The church is the only society on Earth that exists for the benefit of those who are not its members.” Laudable outreach, but as one worshipper grumbles: “He seems to forget all the volunteers and covenant-givers who keep this place going.”
Mark Zuckerberg’s rebranding of Facebook as Meta has upset Jeremy Corbyn’s favourite Greek economist, who is on the board of a leftie think tank with the same name. “Hands off,” tweets Yanis Varoufakis, whose Meta also goes by the name of the Centre for Postcapitalist Civilisation. A social media war will surely follow. Beware Greeks bearing GIFs.
LATE CHECKOUT
Loyd Grossman, the American broadcaster, has written a book about the Italian architect Bernini, a fascination since he first visited Rome in 1973. The love affair did not get off to the best start. Arriving at his cheap pensione, Grossman, above, found the staff carrying a dead body down the stairs. He told the Petworth festival that he squeezed past the corpse and went in, where he asked for his room. “Oh,” a flustered receptionist said. “We’re just, er, cleaning it.”
DOUBLE JEOPARDY
The campaign to make it illegal to photograph breastfeeding without consent met an obstacle in the Lords when Lord Wolfson of Tredegar argued it could spoil family pornography. The minister said it would be rough on a man who photographed his wife on the beach “for his own sexual gratification” and “unintentionally” included a woman he didn’t know with her breast out suckling. Wolfson’s holiday snaps must be fascinating.
Owen Paterson’s fall is bad news for Donald Trump. When the president was here in 2019, he invited the Tory backbencher to his embassy for a private chat. Paterson explained there was “a long-running link between North Shropshire [his seat] and the White House”, since David Orsmby-Gore, a predecessor, was sent to be Our Man in Washington in the 1960s. Maybe Boris Johnson will soothe his ego with a similarly plum posting?
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MENU NOT MUCH COP
The problem with the jet set world of a political editor is the variable quality of free food. ITV’s Robert Peston went straight from the G20 in Rome, where the scoff was “plentiful and yummy”, particularly the vitello tonnato, to the privations of Glasgow. “Not even up to Pret standards,” he grumbles of the trough at Cop26. “And the sausage rolls run out fast.” And they think they have it rough in Ethiopia ...