Londoner’s Diary
Ex-footballer-turned-pundit and podcaster Gary Lineker was a fish out of water at the National Theatre’s charity gala party last night, not that it seemed to put him off. “As an obvious luvvie, I should be in a place like this,” he quipped. Lineker’s political tweets about everything from immigration to the water companies have got him in endless trouble with BBC bosses. “As someone who’s played in many theatres but not these kind of theatres, I love the theatre, and I come a lot. I’ve been to the National many times and seen some great plays. I watched Dear England here,” he said of James Graham’s play about England’s near miss at the 2020 Euros.
“It captured a moment where people started to unify for a few days before it went tits up again! We might need to do an update if England win the Euros this time. He [Graham] will have a play for life if that happens,” he added. Lineker is also keeping an eye on the progress of the England women’s team. “There are not many women left who don’t love football,” he said. “Women now love football because of what the Lionesses have done.” But for those who haven’t got the memo, Gary says “It’s fine not to know about football. It’s all right, it’s allowed!”
Changing of the guard?
Will there be yet another changing of the guard at fading magazine conglomerate Condé Nast? The corporation has been shaking things up at its range of titles and accumulating more power in the New York head office. Earlier this year bosses swapped British Vogue editor-in-chief Edward Enninful for a “head of editorial content” in London. But there is one jewel in the crown left: The New Yorker. The long-form mag still shines under the editorship of David Remnick who has run it for nearly 30 years. Yet Remnick says “no institution worth its salt fails to think about the future” and there is speculation about who might replace him. We hope the CN big wigs break their recent habit and make a good decision. The best contender, of course, is Barack Obama, right — but these days they won’t be able to afford him.
Zadie Smith made her student cry
Some of our greatest living authors — Alan Hollinghurst, Deborah Levy and Zadie Smith — were drawn to a pottery studio in Kensal Rise last night for the new “Conversations With Writers” series organised by psychoanalyst Josh Cohen and critic Leo Robson. First on the bill was Smith, who spoke about her “unusual” teaching method at NYU. “They said workshop, so I took a story of mine that I’d written when I was young and was bad, and marked it up in front of the class. And I took a story of theirs and did it on a lightbox. And the student started crying. NYU explained to me that that is not what they meant. So I went down several gears.”
Jenrick one of the common people
Robert Jenrick, who resigned from the government last year, is a smart bet for next Tory leader. But he could be more discreet about his ambitions. At a boozy think tank event on Tuesday, he said: “Some people say that our prime minister is out of touch with the common man. I tend to agree, with one aspect at least, our teetotal prime minister has no idea that a pint of lager at the Red Lion now costs seven quid.”
Why are they so loud?
At every PMQs the public lose a little more respect for MPs as they jeer and heckle like school kids. But it turns out that this is not just bad manners and Tory MPs are actually encouraged to cheer as loudly as possible for the PM in return for the chance of winning a bottle of champagne from the Whips. Apparently the informal arrangement came in more than a decade ago.
