Jacob Rees-Mogg accused of being a big softy

Tory backbencher accused of copyright infringement / Benedict Cumberbatch plays posh / Michael Fish watches the tempest on stage / Society of Authors heads to sunny Bloomsbury
Uncanny resemblance: Jacob Rees-Mogg (right) and Walter the Softy
4 April 2018

Jacob Rees-Mogg is being Menaced. The Beano has sent the dapper Tory backbencher a cease and desist letter for infringing their copyright. Not for Lord Snooty, but Walter the Softy, Dennis’s nemesis.

“It has been brought to our attention that you have been infringing the intellectual property rights of one of our cartoon characters and masquerading as Walter Brown,” writes Mark Stirling, head of Beano Studios Scotland. “We draw your attention to numerous instances of you distinctly copying the following attributes of the character including: The character’s hair parting and style; The character’s distinctive round reading glasses; The character’s choice of spotty ties and vintage apparel.”

The list goes on to include Rees-Mogg and Walter’s enjoyment of classical music - “because he thinks it makes him seem clever” - and the character’s “bullish behaviour with peers and stopping others from having fun”. Is this an allusion to upcoming battles between the Lords and Commons over Brexit?

Beano editor Mike Stirling once said that Walter was particularly annoying because “he strangles the fun out of everything. He doesn’t want to be a kid, he wants to be a grownup and is always snitching on kids who are having fun”

Luckily for Rees-Mogg, his behaviour is unlikely to land him with a custard pie in the face or a hiding form Dad. Stirling concludes: “A swift response on this matter would be greatly appreciated to avoid getting Teacher involved.” I tried to contact Rees-Mogg this morning to see if there was a remedy which would resolve the matter for both parties but he is yet to reply.

Rees-Mogg has taken a bit of a bashing in the press this week. This month’s GQ leads with the cover headline, “Could Jacob Rees-Mogg get any worse?” We’ll have to see.

Authors of their own misfortune

THE Society of Authors, the trade union for writers which counts Lady Antonia Fraser and Philip Pullman among its patrons, is moving to Bloomsbury.

I gather they made a tidy profit on the sale of their Kensington headquarters but chief executive Nicola Solomon pooh-poohs the idea that they will be rolling in loot.

“The likelihood is we won’t run a profit after capital gains tax, stamp duty and refurbishments,” she tells me from her office. “At the moment we need a decent space for staff — I am sitting here with gloves on.”

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BENEDICT Cumberbatch is playing Patrick Melrose, the upper-class Edward St Aubyn character, but has struggled with his plummy tones. “I went to a very posh public school yet I had only one friend from the landed gentry”, he says. “I’ve been trying to knock the corners off my accent ever since I left Harrow.”

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MARY Beard may present cultural juggernaut Civilisations, recently returned to the BBC, but she isn’t always so high-brow: she’s a sucker for an episode of Casualty. “It was my real pleasure when the kids were very small,” she tells the RTS’s Television magazine. “Get the buggers off to bed, bottle of wine, Casualty.”

Anya Hindmarch’s parental pride at meteorological play Pressure

James Seymour, Bert Seymour and Anya Hindmarch (Photo Dave Benett/Getty Images) 
Dave Benett/Getty Images

FASHION designer Anya Hindmarch and her husband James Seymour were proud as punch last night: Bert Seymour, James’s son, was treading the boards at The Park Theatre’s production of Pressure.

Hindmarch and Seymour married in 1996, with Anya becoming mum to three stepchildren in the process. She has called the experience a “baptism of fire” but didn’t shy away from keeping things in the family: she hired James as her company’s financial director soon after.

The play is about predicting the weather for D-Day, so it was something of a busman’s holiday for former weatherman Michael Fish. He looked a bit awkward when David Haig, playing the meteorologist adviser to General Eisenhower, uttered the line, “This is not a hurricane,” as the winds blew hard across the stage.

At least Fish, who denied that a hurricane was on its way in October 1987, clapped politely at the end.

SW1A

WHISPERS of David Miliband returning from New York to save the Labour Party aren’t going down well with Tim Shipman of The Sunday Times. “I once headed to the bar to buy him a drink,” he recalls. “I’d gone 10 feet when he started slagging me off behind my back.” Ed would never.

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WHO would have thought Matt Hancock and The Rolling Stones would have something in common? The Culture Secretary sat next to rocker Ronnie Wood at the Brits earlier this year and they discovered that they share the same app designer. Disciple Media produced both Hancock’s constituency app and that of the Stones.

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THE Spectator’s Isabel Hardman doesn’t discuss politics with her Labour MP boyfriend John Woodcock. “When I do get time with my partner, I have a number of pressing things I need to discuss with him. Like the fact I still haven’t fixed the damage to the car that I caused by driving into a pillar.”

Quote of the day

'I’ve been invited to appear on Have I Got News For You but I’ve been too busy washing my hair.’ Liz Truss, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, responds to Ian Hislop’s suggestion that women are too modest to appear on the panel show

No firm sign yet of the end of Wintour

Wintour is staying: Edward Enninful and Anna Wintour (Photo Dave Benett/Getty Images) 
Dave Benett/Getty Images for Vog

NEWS of a very stylish switch has been greatly exaggerated. Rumours have been circulating in New York that Dame Anna Wintour is preparing to step down as the editor of US Vogue. There were even suggestions that Edward Enninful might take over, despite being less than a year into his tenure at the magazine’s British outpost. The pair partied together at Annabel’s back in February. Subscribers can breathe a sigh of relief: a spokesman for Condé Nast UK tells me they “categorically deny rumours” of a move. Phew.

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