As he retires from Covid briefings, the deputy chief medical officer Jonathan Van-Tam has returned home to Lincolnshire, where he has received the freedom of Boston. The borough’s 31st freeman, JVT, was keen to know what rights it conferred. “The freedom of the City of London,” he notes, “means that if you were found the worse for wear through drink, the constable would put you in a taxi home rather than take you to the cells.” Perhaps he hoped this would allow him to celebrate in style, but the mayor said Boston’s freemen could only drive their sheep into town without let or hindrance. At least that finally gives him herd immunity.
Mr President, you can write!
After his extraordinary Commons speech on the fall of Kabul, the soldier-turned-Tory MP Tom Tugendhat was praised at home and abroad. “I did get a couple of notes from heads of state and foreign leaders,” he told The Political Party podcast at the Duchess Theatre in London. He wouldn’t name names, but his description of one former US president did whittle the field down. “I have to say I was really surprised,” he said of this correspondent. “I was like, ‘Cripes, I didn’t know you could write.’ ”
The comedian Matt Forde was amused when David Cameron volunteered at his local food bank, as he imagines that the donations in Chipping Norton must be a cut above. “That must be the poshest food bank in Britain,” he says. “It’s the only one with a game counter.”
King rat
A Channel 4 documentary is to claim Edward VIII leaked French military secrets to a Nazi informant. That would not have surprised the British authorities. At the Royal Archives, Andrew Lownie, a historian, found new details on how little the abdicator was trusted. Lownie tells TMS that, in May 1940, Edward’s military superior, Major General Howard-Vyse, informed George VI’s private secretary that the ex-monarch was being excluded from all intelligence. “No military information is to be given to HRH over the telephone, other than confirmation of what is already common knowledge,” he reported. “And as little of that as possible.”
The Everton manager Frank Lampard was disliked by Liverpool fans even before he started work. On his podcast, the comedian Frank Skinner says Scousers took against “Lamps” when he said he voted Conservative. “Now that he’s the Everton manager,” says Skinner, “the Liverpool fans refer to him as Frankie Dettori.”
Sexey beasts
Yesterday’s item on the priest Fergus Butler-Gallie’s discovery of the Sexey’s hospital in Bruton generated an informative email from Elisabeth Balfour, editor of The Dove, a local magazine. She says Bruton has more Sexey things. “The late Ned Sherrin was proud of the fact that he attended Sexey’s school,” she says. In fact, the whole area appears to have been named by the writers of the Carry On films. “Butler-Gallie’s research perhaps didn’t go far enough,” says Balfour. “For example, he’s clearly missed Lusty Gardens.”
