A single unnamed source telephones to offer a further smear against
the Today programme's Andrew Gilligan. A fortnight ago, readers will remember, this column reprinted without so much as the courtesy of a check-call the allegation that Mr Gilligan, in his days as a reporter for the Sunday Telegraph, had in a fit of pique assaulted a colleague's treasured haircut with a pair of office scissors. This week it is the turn of 'Crispgate' to emerge blinking into the light. 'Gillie' is remembered by colleagues on the paper as an essentially nocturnal creature, whose only visible means of subsistence was 'a staggering intake of crisps and fizzy pop'. In one of the dark watches of the night, he stumbled to the canteen in search of more crisps and pop, and, finding the canteen unattended, liberated one or more packets of crisps with the intention of paying for them when next there was a staff member to operate the till. His good intentions were misconstrued. CCTV footage formed the centre of an inquisition into the loss of the crisps such as would make Lord Hutton blench. His punishment was a year's 'banishment' to the magazine section. Should the Hutton inquiry recommend a transfer to Woman's Hour, Mr Gilligan will likely receive it with a stoical sense of (AA vu.
Strolling, as I am apt to, feather-footed through west London's fashionable Leamington Road Villas, I spot a conundrum. Apparently abandoned, by the side of the road, alone and unloved, is a Toyota Supra — its parking permit lately expired after weeks of motionlessness. Its personalised number plate reads J11HED. On the back plate, in small letters below the registration number, is inscribed 'intifada', and, on the front, 'Allahu akbar'. Whether this is the Lost Toyota of Osama bin Laden, or the Latest Stunt of Aaron Barschak, only time — and the vigilant anti-terrorists of the Kensington and Chelsea park-mg authorities — will show.
The infallible sign that the Silly Season is upon us — apart from the annual Evening Standard front page discovering, as if for the first time, that temperatures in the London Underground are so high you wouldn't be allowed to transport cattle in its carriages — is the annual article in every other newspaper, tut-tutting about the silliness of what passes for news in the Silly Season. This is, as they say, post-modernism gone mad. Why complain about it? Plagues of big animals (baby-eating frogs, gigantic French wasps,
etc.); public transport catastrophes; gay vicars; talented gerbils; speeches by John Prescott; and the annual discovery that young women look good in swimsuits. . . all of these are, aren't they, infinitely preferable to the blast of boredom and hatred that is the daily news all the rest of the year round?
D roof positive that the feel-good factor has
not left the economy. According to the Times, 'Britain imports more than 50 million tonnes of foie gras each year, mostly from France.' That's a shade under a tonne for every man, woman and child in the country.
Richard Desmond didn't get where he is today by passing up business opportunities. When a camera crew from the independent production company 3BM turned up at the Blackfriars headquarters of his Express Newspapers, hoping to film some general views of his offices for their documentary The Real Richard Desmond, they were bewildered to find themselves mobbed by men carrying placards advertising Mr Desmond's useless newspapers, who sought — on management's instructions, they explained — to insinuate themselves into every camera shot.
With transatlantic tourism still blighted by the likelihood of being blown to smithereens by the devout, we must all do our bit for the special relationship. What better way than by celebrating the wisdom of American statesmen past? And what better way to celebrate it than with a visit to the Dan Quayle Center in Huntington, Indiana — home to The United States Vice Presidential Museum (Motto: 'Where history educates!')? This magnificently quixotic project is the only museum in the States, its publicity material boasts, that houses a permanent exhibit to `all those who have served in the second highest office in our nation'. Its average 17 visitors a day enjoy, too, the thrill of knowing -that as the subject of this museum is still alive. . the way it presents history is sometime tempered by the realization that its subject matter could walk through the door any time.'
To Simpson's-in-the-Strand, and one of the Oldie's excellent literary lunches. Heading the bill was Jeremy Lewis, the biographer of the 18th-century novelist Tobias Smollett. Lewis ascribes Smollett's relative neglect by the academy to the tendency of professional scholars to prefer `the unintelligible, like Laurence Sterne, or the sententious, like Fielding'. The pleasure in writing Smollett's biography, he
admitted, was that 'matters lavatorial loom large in his work'. He drew particular attention to Smollett's observation, while travelling in France, that `the raw sewage from Protestant households in Nice made better manure than that collected from Catholics'. Perhaps he was on to something, mind. An attempt to duplicate Smollett's conclusions in laboratory conditions will probably be at least as useful, sub specie aeternitatis, as the 'debate' over gay bishops.
O(In the subject of which, a colleague the headline which never was. Over the story of Canon Gene Robinson, who is now on his third stab at becoming the first gay bishop in the Anglican communion: 'Long Time No See.' Another terrible joke, applying to the hopeless dumbing down of GCSEs: 'The Fear of All Sums.' Come back, Bob Hope. All is forgiven.
So how, then, is the Met Office coping with the current hot spell? They have deployed their most feared and respected secret weapon, first developed in the aftermath of the Michael Fish 'Hurricane, what hurricane?' fiasco. Five words; an acronym. PRIMP. The Public Relations Incident Management Plan. A circular email to the relevant authorities has been dispatched. 'Urgent — PRIMP invoked,' reads the blood-quickening subject line. In order to coordinate a rapid, concerted, nationwide response to the sun being out, the circular warns, all national media enquiries must be passed to a single number, 01344 856655, under the direction of one Steve Noyes, who is the hot spell's 'PR controller'. I telephone, hoping to learn more about the nature and properties of PRIMP. A recorded voice answers: Due to the volume of calls we're receiving, we recommend that you don't leave a message. . . please keep trying. .
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