Londoner's Diary: Bumpy ride for the Left-loving easy riders

Verbal bruiser: Diane Abbott
Peter Macdiarmid / Getty
17 September 2015

“Corbyn and Abbott were lovers,” screams today’s Times on page seven. Tell us something we don’t know. In June, The Londoner reported that Diane and Jezza were “close” in the early Eighties — we were too polite to spell it out.

Their fling “included them taking a holiday together”, the Times continued. That holiday happened in mullet-friendly East Germany, The Londoner revealed three months ago. Rather amusingly, the Left-wing lovers took a leaf out of Che Guevara’s book and toured the Communist utopia on a motorbike. Did they take turns in the sidecar?

Today’s news also reminded us of a wonderful admission from Abbott. Talking to SHE Magazine in 1985 she said that her “finest half hour” was spent in a field in the Cotswolds with a naked man, which was mentioned in The Sun two months ago. Isn’t Corbyn’s home town of Chippenham in the Cotswolds?

The (more or less) new revelations are, however, already becoming a bit of a problem for the pair. It was reported in today’s papers that Jeremy failed to intervene at Monday’s PLP meeting when a female MP was “verbally attacked” by Abbott. According to a friend of The Londoner who witnessed the altercation, Diane told Jess Phillips, who was elected in May, that she wasn’t the only feminist in Parliament. Phillips then left looking “on the verge of tears”, swearing at Diane under her breath. Cheerful.

Though the event was, we’re told, “very bad-tempered”, at least Jezza turned up. The Londoner hears that the Labour leader was meant to attend the women’s PLP meeting on Tuesday but failed to show. Oh, if only he had a long- term female friend and Labour MP he could ask for advice on these things...

***

In more retro Corbyn news, New Statesman editor Jason Cowley has lain down the gauntlet for the new Labour leader — over poetry. In 1968 Jezza submitted a poem to the paper but it was rejected. Now Cowley is trying to unearth it via Corbyn’s media rep Carmel Nolan. “On Tuesday she contacted me to say ‘Jeremy is digging out the poem for you’,” he writes. “So far, nothing has turned up.” Come on Corbyn, sort out your priorities.

Christian's railing against St Pancras

Christian Wolmar’s campaign to be Labour mayoral candidate has hit the buffers but he’s got another idea on track: rethinking St Pancras.

“The more you think about it, the more daft the design is,” says the railway historian. The front of the station, he says, “has been sort of abandoned” while the side entrance “is jammed with Uber cabs”. Also the upper floor is largely empty while downstairs is packed. “It might have the longest champagne bar in Europe,” he says, “but it’s also the least used.”

Magnums of fizz shunted into the sidings? A tragedy.

Progressive types enjoy the Standard’s party

Usually The Londoner jaunts around town to invitations from our friends in fine dining, theatre, music and art. But last night the mountain came to Mohammed, as the realms merged in the cathedral-like Crossrail tunnels beneath Canary Wharf for The Evening Standard’s Progress 1000 party.

Actress Sally Phillips was among the guests
Chris Jackson / Getty Images

Among the guests was restaurateur Jeremy King, owner of one of our favourite watering holes The Wolseley, Oliver Chris, who played Prince William in recent West End hit King Charles III; comic actress Sally Phillips, classical prodigy and BBC Young Musician of the Year Martin James Bartlett with Helen Pearce, National Theatre darling Patsy Ferran, above centre, and Serpentine directors Julia Peyton-Jones and Hans-Ulrich Obrist. Also spotted was Alex Jennings, who will soon be on the big screen playing Alan Bennett in The Lady In The Van. During the speeches, Boris Johnson congratulated list-toppers Chancellor George Osborne and England rugby captain Chris Robshaw for knowing the “vital importance of hookers”. Cue a gasp from journalist Martha Kearney, but we are assured it was just an innocent rugby joke.

Animal manifesto is clucking crazy

Politics has gone off piste and now here’s what Joyce Carol Oates would do if she ran the world. In the new issue of Prospect, the writer presents a manifesto in which she suggests allowing man to cede the upper hand to animals.

“Sport and trophy-hunting would be allowed,” she writes, “but hunters would hunt their prey on the ground, in the animals’ natural habitat, without firearms or weapons and using just hands, feet, and wits. Hens, badly mistreated in our world, would be treated with enormous respect and reverence of the kind accorded ‘sacred cows’ in India. The widely varying breeds of hens (and their eggs) would be championed as sports teams are now, with devout fans attired in appropriate clothing.”

Instead of the gap year staple, “there will be a ‘trans-species year’ for individuals of all ages during which time they would take up residence in the habitats of species other than their own... the experience cannot fail to be educational!”

Nicole the happy camper

The life of a Hollywood star can be nomadic, so actress Nicole Kidman, right, could be forgiven for getting a little homesick when she’s away. Luckily she has a solution: build a fort. Kidman is currently back on the West End stage at the Vaudeville Theatre in Photograph 51 after a 17-year break, and explains that homesickness isn’t an option. “Home is wherever I am,” she says in an interview in the play’s accompanying programme. “I just need my children and my husband. We literally bring pillows and sheets and set up wherever we are. It’s like camping.”

Yes, camping. In what we can only assume is a five-star hotel or luxurious apartment. With room service.

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