After a troubling 12 months in which they overthrew two prime ministers and watched their support from voters evaporate, Conservative MPs are keeping cheery. They’ve just been on a trip to a fancy £400 a night hotel in Windsor this week, where the prime minister agreed a new Northern Ireland deal with the EU.
Last night new Tory party chairman Greg Hands presided over a pub quiz, with a flurry of questions about past Labour party scandals and embarrassments. We hear housing secretary Michael Gove and his team won the day (and he was credited with most of the correct answers).
Labour have hit back with their own scandal-focussed quiz sheet for the Tories, with questions about BBC chairman Richard Sharp, former chancellor Nadhim Zahawi and partygate. Good to see the parties grappling with the major issues of the day.
Out with the old, in with the bin
With a London mayoral election looming, Count Binface says he is considering a run in “the earth capital”. Binface, who has previously stood against Boris Johnson and Theresa May, told us he is pondering “the double”: a run for both Parliament and City Hall. “The choices on offer are so limited that people are crying out for change”, he says, describing himself as “the sanest one on the block”. So it’s not all trash talk.
Goodbye Beeb, say Ken Bruce and Ritula Shah
It’s all change at the BBC, where Ken Bruce did his last shift as Popmaster today. Fellow radio presenter Ritula Shah also said goodbye this week. “A generation of us are on our way out,” she told us. “It’s hard, and yes, the BBC is changing — it needs to think about its own survival. Radio is a really intimate medium. You feel you know the person, so when someone like Ken Bruce moves, people are upset,” she said.
A night in honour of Merlin Sheldrake
We caught up with fungi expert and self-confessed “microbe nerd” Merlin Sheldrake last night at GEIST, a new intellectual salon hosted in the loft of My Beautiful City, a creative agency in Bloomsbury. Founders Lillie Rage and Sara Sjölund invited Sheldrake as their guest of honour. The evening drew a well-heeled crowd including Otis Ferry, Arizona Muse and Freddie Windsor and spilled into a no-frills dinner from food writer Anna Boglione.
Life is a cabaret, old chum
At a gala night for Cabaret yesterday, actor Asa Butterfield supported his Sex Education co-star Aimee Lou Wood, who plays Sally Bowles in the show. Layton Williams and Ore Oduba also went. Lou Wood cried during a standing ovation. Elsewhere, actor Tracy-Ann Oberman welcomed famous friends to the press night of The Merchant of Venice 1936, a Shakespeare adaptation in which she stars. Laura Whitmore was at the opening night of Woodstock In London.
