Former BBC political bigwig Andrew Marr has said it is liberating not to have “18 layers of grey-faced managers sitting on my shoulders the whole time” since leaving for LBC earlier this year.
Marr, who used to present the flagship Sunday politics show, said last night that social media was making it “harder and harder” to report politics on the BBC. “Whatever you say gets analysed, ripped apart,” he said. “Poor Laura Kuenssberg has had an absolutely miserable time,” he went on, saying the former political editor was accused of being the “Prime Minister’s mouthpiece”. However, he added: “I will always be pro-BBC”. At a recording of the Political Party podcast. Marr said that keeping to impartiality rules was “incredibly frustrating and ageing”. He felt “10 years younger” since leaving.
Reflecting on his career, Marr said his “biggest failure” was being “too praising” of Tony Blair over the Iraq war as BBC political editor. “I think it was one of the greatest foreign affairs catastrophes in modern times,” he said.
Marr also recalled drenching then-home secretary Theresa May in milk when he spilled a jug at an after-show breakfast. After some frostiness, she forgave him.
Troubled Hay set for new chapter
After a long wait, trouble-hit Hay literature festival has today announced a new CEO. Julie Finch, former boss of the Cheltenham Trust, starts in August. Previous Hay director Peter Florence had to quit after a bullying probe last year. Separately, in 2020, a curator alleged that she was sexually assaulted by a member of the United Arab Emirates royal family when setting up a festival-branded event in the country. Finch is promising changes, to “reimagine the role a festival can play in our cultural landscape and contemporary society”, with a sustainability focus. Hay festival runs later this month.
‘British politics is uniquely sexist’
She once objected to being addressed as Mrs Clegg, and now Miriam González Durántez, lawyer and wife of former deputy prime minister Nick has hit out at sexism in British politics, saying: “I have seen it myself as the wife of a politician where women beside them are supposed to play the flowerpot role.” On the latest sleaze row, she added: “I haven’t seen any other company where employees are allowed to watch porn or that anybody could complain about a woman crossing and uncrossing her legs.” Quite so.
Stars have a brush with city’s wildlife
A fox just walked into my kitchen and ran off with one of my trainers. It was a mint green suede Nike AF1. 🤯🤯🤯 pic.twitter.com/VNjp37oFtc
— Annie Mac (@anniemacmanus) April 30, 2022
There seemed to be a spate of foxes in celebrities’ London gardens over the bank holiday weekend. Hampstead resident Ricky Gervais posted a video of a skulk of adorable foxes in his large garden. And over in west London, former Radio 1 DJ Annie Mac managed to stay completely calm when a fox came in from her back garden and filched her shoe. “A fox just walked into my kitchen and ran off with one of my trainers. It was a mint green suede Nike AF1,” she said. If anyone sees it…
SW1A
Keir Starmer is said to be recruiting big names for Labour. And David Miliband is teasing centrist fans by speaking at an east London event marking 25 years since New Labour’s 1997 victory this week. “News was the weather; ideas were the climate,” Miliband tweets gnomically. That’ll get them hot under the collar.
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Canvassing for local elections can be a dangerous business. Just ask MP for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine Andrew Bowie, who badly bruised his face while out knocking doors. “As much as I’d like you all to believe I was set upon by raging nationalists,” he said, “the truth… involves a dog, a tight lead, a bird… and a kerb”. Ouch.
The mood's electric for Monaco race day
Motor racing went electric over the weekend at the Formula E World Championship. Prince Albert of Monaco and Formula E chairman Alejandro Agag were at the gala dinner at the Yacht Club de Monaco. David Gandy looked ever dapper in the paddock. Driver Sophia Flörsch and host Tomi Adebayo tried out cars. Also at the galas were driver André Lotterer with model Ania Porzuczek, and drivers Jean-Eric Vergne and Nico Rosberg, with his wife Vivian.
