All comedians, Victoria Wood once noted, feel the need to make a travel documentary when they turn 50. She did it, Michael Palin did it and now David Baddiel has been off to the Far East for a four-part Discovery Channel series about the Silk Road. Let’s hope that this time he didn’t leave a deprived village starving. A few years ago, Baddiel went to Africa for Comic Relief and was invited by a village chief to try the local millet drink. “No one else would drink it, but I thought it was delicious so I drank it all,” he said. “Turns out that was meant to be their drink for the entire month.”
Lord Hennessy of Nympsfield, the constitutional historian, is enjoying the wrangling over the detail of the EU referendum. “It’s like Handel’s Messiah,” he tells me, “full of long and rather tedious recitative that suddenly erupts into an aria that leaves you all a-quiver.” Any especially apt bits of Messiah? He offers: Why Do The Nations So Furiously Rage Together?
Political lines to take
Insincere gush is as much of a thespian tradition as not whistling, so when Kenneth Cranham was nominated for an Olivier award one expected him to suck up to Mark Rylance, his main rival. Not at all. “The thing he’s up for [Farinelli and the King], a lot of people said it was bloody rubbish,” Cranham, right, said. “Anyway, he’s got two of the awards already.” Jeremy Corbyn wants Rylance to win. After the actor won an Oscar, the Labour leader tweeted a photo of them together. This didn’t go down well with the former Labour-supporting novelist Robert Harris, who says: “As a general rule, the better the actor, the worse their political judgment.”
The NHS get-well card
Simon Stevens, head of the NHS, was thrilled to get a Valentine’s card last month from a group of hospital administrators. Enclosed was a list of helpful suggestions about regulatory reform. “It’s the only Valentine’s card I’ve had that came with a five-page briefing note,” Stevens said. Perhaps the NHS should start sending cards to patients on waiting lists. “Roses are red / violets are blue / we’re short of beds / so tough luck for you.”
It was only seven weeks ago that rumour spread that Lord Falconer of Thoroton was for the chop in Corbyn’s reshufflette. The shadow justice secretary survived by a whisker but, in an attempt to suck up to the boss, he has been growing a beard that is steadily moving towards Uncle Albert status. Perhaps he thought that one close shave was enough this year.
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And throw away the key
Poor Rob Marris, a shadow Treasury minister, stumbled over his words in question time yesterday. Intending to ask George Osborne about the tax bill that his favourite internet search engine has got away with paying, Marris called it “the gulag debacle”. The Labour front bench must have Soviet Russia on their minds.
They’ve been Trumped
A paper called The New Day was launched on Monday with a mission, says its editor, to “cover important stories in a balanced way, without telling the reader what to think”. Noble intentions and good luck to them. Yesterday’s big foreign story began: “Imagine America goes mad and elects Donald Trump as its 45th president.” That didn’t last long.