T ile Questing Vole S hould we really have been surprised at
leaked wire-taps revealing that Mo Mowlam has what the wholesome housewives of Middle America call 'a pottymouth'? Or that while secretary of state for Northern Ireland she called Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness 'babe' on the telephone? This was the affable Miss Mowlam to a tee. She calls everyone 'babe' — or, at least as often, 'babes'. It appears to be a linchpin of her negotiating technique. And some negotiating technique it is, too. A friend of Mrs Vole recalls passing through St James's Park one bright spring day and coming upon Miss Mowlam purring with delight in the course of receiving an al fresco foot-massage from Lord Falconer of Thoroton.
The former Times editor Sir Peter Stothard, Tony Blair's officially sanctioned 50th-birthday Boswell, has produced a book-length chronicle of his weeks alongside the PM with the delightfully self-effacing title. Thirty Days: With Tony Blair at the Centre of the World. Its account of the most recent meeting between Mr Blair and Gerhard SchrOder, however, won't do the PM much good with the bunny-hugging section of the electorate he so assiduously courted over foxhunting. 'Their last dinner together two weeks ago,' reports Sir Peter, was 'white asparagus and veal in a Hamburg hotel.' Veal? Orphaned baby cows locked in solitary confinement in wee dark boxes? This from the Prime Minister whose wife came over dewy-eyed on TV at the prospect of her adult son going away to university? 'Oh my!' exclaims a spokesman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. 'That's a very big slip-up. Everyone knows that it's an obscene process. The notoriously cruel veal crates have been banned here since 1990, but they are still widely used in Europe.' Robust carnivores may applaud Mr Blair's brave stand on this emotive issue, but I think he can expect to hear from Peta and co.
The BBC's big-budget drama film Sylvia and Ted — which stars Gwyneth Paltrow as the poetess maudite Sylvia Plath opposite Daniel Craig's Ted Hughes — could prove more trouble for the corporation than it's worth. A friend was recently invited to be part of the focus group attending a test screening
and, though, she reports, Miss Paltrow performed adequately and Mr Craig superbly, the company representatives present were far more concerned with another matter. 'We were asked to fill out multiple-choice questions about which characters we felt sympathetic towards, and how much,' she says. 'Everyone in our focus group seemed to agree that it made Ted Hughes out to be more or less to blame for Sylvia's suicide. They were very worried about that. They said they were considering changing the film's working title from Sylvia and Ted to just Sylvia.' This is an incendiary issue among Plath fans — and the BBC will reap the whirlwind if they are seen to fuel a revival of the ugly campaign of vilification against Hughes which followed her death. The poets' daughter, Frieda Hughes, has already condemned the project as exploitative, and denied permission to quote from Plath's work. According to my informant, this hobbles the film horribly — Plath's 'greatest hit', 'Daddy', makes an appearance, but otherwise it looks like the story of an excitable undergraduate rather than one of the great woman poets of the 20th century.
With the fickle eye of the media straying from Baghdad, the bigshots are pulling out. Those who are left reminisce about the great men who have gone, and try to work out which of them was most gloriously wrong. It is fair to say that Robert Fisk of the Independent has put some distance between himself and other contenders. At one stage, in March. he told his colleagues, 'Saddam has surrounded himself with a ring of steel. It will take months, and then the Arab League will come in. The Americans will sue for peace.' T enny Kravitz, the latest pop star L./enrolled to 'Rock the Vote' in the hope of getting young people involved in participatory democracy (and what could have been more rocking than last week's local elections?), doesn't have an unblemished record of participation himself. Investigators for the American website The Smoking Gun discovered that he hasn't cast a vote in an election since 1992. 'I haven't voted in many years and it was a mistake,' came Mr Kravitz's explanation, delivered through a spokesman. `Up until recently, many people like myself have taken this right for granted, and now more than ever it is time to voice our opinions.' Right on!
Aphotograph at the weekend of George Galloway shaking his moneymaker with a belly-dancer at his grandson's christening captured an unexpected figure in the background. Why, there — fiddling with his box brownie — was none other than the jazz-singer, belle -lettrist and manabout-town Christopher Silvester. 'I was a guest at his grandson's christening,' says Mr Silvester. 'George is a very close friend, I have known him for years. I know that he is innocent, and I know that he will be vindicated in his libel actions.' Mr Silvester points me towards an article he has written in Mr Galloway's defence, where he describes the origins of their bond — 'we are both natural iconoclasts' — and salutes Mr Galloway's appreciation for 'a stylish and confident toff. Will Gorgeous George survive his support?
Digital conspiracy theorists are still picking over the bones of the war on Iraq — and they have produced some gripping morsels for the tinfoil-hat brigade. Best so far are http://www.thememoryhole.org/ media/evening-standard-crowd.htm, which suggests that a photograph of jubilant Iraqi crowds toasting Saddam's downfall, reproduced by British newspapers, was digitally doctored; http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/ article2842.htm, which claims that the tearing down of Saddam's statue was staged, with a small crowd of American plants masquerading as the shoe-wielding Iraqi celebrants; and a third, headlined 'Christopher Hitchens Forcibly Removed From Trailer Park After Drunken Confrontation With Common-Law Wife' (http://www.theonion.comionion3915/ christopher_hitchens.html), which is indubitably true.
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