Sam McAlister, the TV producer behind the notorious Prince Andrew interview, says she connected with Billie Piper over their shared experience of being single mothers. Piper plays McAlister in Netflix film Scoop, which tells the story of the Newsnight interview from McAlister’s perspective. “She comes from a similar-ish background to me. She’s had a period where she was bringing up a child on her own, so I felt she really got me,” McAlister told us at the premiere last night. “She got the hard work. She understood the moments of peril, the moments of elation, the moments of feeling a bit tearful, being overwhelmed, needing your mum to help out with your childcare. We had actually a lot of things in common, so we really bonded.”
Piper has two children with controversialist Laurence Fox, whom she divorced in 2016 and recently described “enormous difficulty” co-parenting with him. McAlister’s old colleague Emily Maitlis, who is played in the film by Gillian Anderson, is making her own dramatisation of the interview with Amazon. Could there be a rivalry here? “We love to hear that women are at one another, but we’re really not,” McAlister told us. “Emily’s a brilliant journalist who’s written her own account of what happened to her. This is an account of what happened to me. They’re complementary. Enjoy them both.”
Actors Gillian Anderson, Rufus Sewell, Billie Piper, Keeley Hawes, Charity Wakefield, Luis Donegan-Brown and Romola Garai hit the red carpet last night for the premiere of Scoop, the film dramatisation of the Newsnight interview with Prince Andrew. Garai plays former Newsnight editor Esme Wren. “It’s about broadcast news and our relationship with that and whether or not we’re really prepared to just let that go,” Garai told us. Newsnight suffered major budget cuts last year after a drop in viewers. “I think it’s really important to draw attention to what really great teams of journalists can do,” she added.
Garai also told us Wren declined to speak to her when she was preparing for the role. “She’s quite a private person. She was like, ‘I think you guys can just get on with it’,” Garai said. Meanwhile, Dames Darcey Bussell and Arlene Phillips, actor Adjoa Andoh and musical theatre star Marisha Wallace were at MJ: The Musical at the Prince Edward Theatre. In Soho, actor Lucy Boyton and presenter Harriet Rose attended a screening of The Greatest Hits at the Ham Yard Hotel.
Voters just give Hunt a message for a few quid
Keen jogger Jeremy Hunt will be running the London Marathon to raise money for a new cancer treatment centre in his constituency, and his Just Giving page, which aims to raise £10,000, is getting lots of attention. Notable donors include his rival for the keys to the Treasury, Rachel Reeves, who gave a comradely £20, the Cabinet Secretary Simon Case who gave £50 and former home secretary Sajid Javid and his wife Laura who also gave £50.
Hunt’s former Cabinet colleague David Gauke plumped for a miserly fiver and urged the Chancellor to “uncork those legs”, a reference to the time Speaker John Bercow called Gauke for a question in the House of Commons with the phrase “it’s time to uncork the Gauke”. Disgruntled voters have also realised that for a few quid, they can post a donation message on Hunt’s Just Giving page. Sentiments include “GENERAL ELECTION NOW FFS”, “Given 100k isnt a big salary surely u could donate all of ur goal urself?” and “Brexit is a disaster as you well know & should acknowledge, but good luck”. The wonders of democracy.
