Greg Barker, an undistinguished former MP best known for using a staff microwave at the department of energy and climate change to warm his dog’s cushion, was awarded a peerage last week but there was still no ermine for Ann Widdecombe. Archbishop Cranmer, the religion blogger, writes that Baroness Widders would “enhance the moral integrity and political credibility” of the Lords (and get up the noses of “a few tedious bishops”), far more than a load of sycophantic special advisers. I wrote on Saturday that Douglas Hogg owed his new peerage to the favour of his former “spad”, George Osborne. Might Widders’ continued absence be down to the fact that Michael “Something of the Night” Howard’s spad was David Cameron?
Brian Cox makes a living out of exploring the heavens but he has no desire to travel in space. At an event in the Olympic Park, the physicist said he once spent an afternoon in astronaut training for a TV series and came out black and blue. “I was floating around for just three hours and it took nine months for my ribs to stop hurting,” he said. “I don’t think I am made of the right stuff.”
No sin but to be rich
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Struggling by on just two political salaries and £275,000 a year for writing a column, Boris Johnson is busy writing a book about William Shakespeare. “Why you, when there’s nothing new to say and every academic worth his or her salt has already written one?” he was asked recently.
“Ah,” the Bard of Bullingdon replied, “but I did win the Shakespeare prize at school.” Hodder & Stoughton is said to be paying him £500,000, which perhaps answers the question about whether Johnson, to quote Twelfth Night, is a witty fool or a foolish wit.
Churchill lobs it back
FE Smith, the former lord chancellor, has become a regular of this column.
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Today’s story, sent in by Geoff Hodgkins, features another TMS favourite, Winston Churchill, who was lolling in a chair in the Commons looking well-lunched when Smith passed by and asked if he was expecting a boy or a girl. “If it is a boy, I shall call him John and if it is a girl, I’ll call her Mary,” Churchill replied. “If it’s merely wind, I shall call it FE Smith.”
The problem that even the most celebrated actresses have in Hollywood when they get to a certain age is summed up by Meryl Streep in the new issue of Saga magazine. “When I turned 40, I was offered three ‘witch’ roles in the same year,” she says. “Three! I thought: ‘Oh boy, I’m clearly not the love interest any more.’ And I was 40. I was still really cute.”
Ordnance office
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Chief whips need a balance of menace and emollience to stop conversations with difficult backbenchers turning explosive. This was brought home to Michael Gove early in his time in the job last year when he summoned Bob Stewart, the Beckenham MP and former UN commander in Bosnia, for a telling-off. Stewart, one of the awkward squad, likes to tell people that he began the chat by putting a hand grenade on Gove’s desk and threatening to pull the pin if he got testy. Maybe Mark Harper, who succeeded Gove, should keep a bucket of sand under the desk, just in case.