Storylines repeat themselves: first as a throwaway thriller, then as real life. John Harthman, a reader, has directed me to a 1980 novel by Ted Allbeury called The Twentieth Day of January, which is about a Republican populist getting elected president of the United States. It turns out that his chief adviser is under the influence of the Kremlin, a connection that is unearthed by a British intelligence officer.
When confronted with evidence that the Russians have sexually compromising pictures of him, the president-elect takes an overdose, which the CIA passes off as a heart attack. Surely that’s too implausible . . .
When Sir Christopher Meyer, the former diplomat, was posted to Moscow, the KGB tried three times to entrap him in a delicate position (twice with women, once a man). A photo of his famous red socks slung over the bedpost could have been damaging to British interests but our man resisted all offers. How? “I thought of the Queen,” he says. A vision to stiffen the upper lip.
LABOUR EXIT STRATEGY
Six months ago Katie Perrior left iNHouse, the PR agency she co-founded, to be director of communications at Downing Street. Perhaps sniffing a stitch-up, Melanie Onn, a Labour MP, has tabled lots of parliamentary questions recently to ask what lucrative contracts iNHouse has got from the government since the boss joined Team May. So far she has drawn a blank but iNHouse has been helping one political party: Labour asked it to run media training for MPs. Presumably so they can handle all those questions about why they keep resigning for jobs outside parliament.
Delegates at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week will be able to take part in a simulation of a refugee’s experience, in which they crawl on their hands and knees away from a pretend advancing army. A noble exercise in empathy, weakened only a little by the fact that a hot dog with a handful of crisps in Davos will cost you £35.
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ENDING ON A HIGH NOTE
Greg Clark, the business secretary, is a surprising fan of musicals. Addressing a creative industries gathering last week he flattered the room by declaring: “Here’s to us. Who’s like us? Damn few.” The words, he said, were from “the great American writer Stephen Sondheim”. So they were, but they were nicked from an old Scottish toast that ends “and they are all dead”. Perhaps he felt that would have put a dampener on the event.
Theresa May has achieved a dream: to be the cover girl of Vogue, a magazine she chose as her luxury for Desert Island Discs. Not every MP has greeted this coup with the respect it deserves. Tim Farron, the semi-anon Lib Dem leader, suggests that the magazine should change its title to Vague for one issue to match the PM’s vision of our future trading relationship with Europe.
OZZY’S EPIC ROAD TRIP
Ozzy Osbourne has failed many tests in his eccentric lifetime, not all of them for illegal substances. In the latest issue of Q magazine the heavy metal singer says he kept on failing his driving test because he was “so out of it”. On one occasion, weary from a night of biting the heads off bats, Osbourne nodded off during his test. “When I woke up there was a note on the seat,” he recalled. “It said: ‘You have failed’.”
