Londoner's Diary: Now Russell Brand joins Kissinger among 'great thinkers'

 
“Charismatic figure”: Russell Brand (Picture: Theo Wargo/NBC/Getty)
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21 February 2015

A shame Russell Brand doesn’t believe in voting, because here’s a poll he’d quite like to win: he’s been put on the shortlist for Prospect’s World Thinkers 50-strong list alongside Thomas Piketty and Henry Kissinger.

Surely some mistake? The Londoner dialled Prospect’s managing editor, Jonathan Derbyshire. “His nomination was the cause of one of the more lengthy and intense discussions,” says the learned Derbyshire, who oversaw the list compiled by the magazine’s team and regular contributors. But obviously no one made a strong enough case against.

So there is Brand, nuzzled up on the online vote, next to Piketty, Kissinger, plus philosophers John Gray and Jürgen Habermas and writer Hilary Mantel. The magazine’s rationale is that he is “the spiritual leader of Britain’s disaffected anti-capitalist youth”. Although “dismissed by his opponents as a clownish opportunist and even a hypocrite due to his own wealth, he is nevertheless the most charismatic figure on Britain’s populist Left”.

Prospect is already coming under fire. “The fact that Russell Brand is even an option here discredits it from the beginning,” said one, while another added: “I assume this is a joke?”

This isn’t the first time Prospect’s poll has caused a furore. In 2008 the list was topped by Turkish scholar Fethullah Gülen after a campaign by followers. Then in 2013 Richard Dawkins took the crown before being disregarded a year later.

Brand’s honourable mention may be little more than a token but the “Vote Now” button sits under his photo on the website. Will his acolytes support him by ticking his box, or honour his teachings by not logging on at all?

Gompertz gets a pat on the back ... from himself

Will Gompertz pointed out on his BBC blog this week that while business is booming at Tate and the National Gallery, fewer Brits went — down 20 per cent since 2008/2009. It was tourists who pushed the footfall to record numbers in the last year. And who was at Tate before the native numbers dropped? Gompertz, then head of communications. What a subtle pat of one’s own back.

‘Pinko power’ takes over at the BBC

“Misogynist, courteous and patronising” — Jean Seaton might be making the BBC blush with her new book but that didn’t stop Beeb biggest names toasting its success.

Director-general Tony Hall, along with former DGs John Birt and Michael Checkland, crowded into the University of Westminster’s Portland Hall last night for the launch of Seaton’s Pinkoes and Traitors: The BBC and the Nation, 1974 to 1987, which claims sexual harassment was rife, even by broadcasters such as Malcolm Muggeridge. “I took the title from a Private Eye spoof correspondence, Dear Bill, between Denis Thatcher and his friend Bill Deedes,” said Seaton, a professor at the university and director of the Orwell Prize. “Denis thought the BBC was full of pinkoes and traitors.” He obviously missed the gropers.

Thesps with visions of China

As we enter the Year of the Goat, the W Hotel in Leicester Square took the opportunity to toast the opening of its Beijing outpost last night. Actress Pippa Bennett-Warner, who was Cordelia to Derek Jacobi’s King Lear and Queen Isabel to Eddie Redmayne’s Richard II, attended with Broadchurch star Jonathan Bailey.

Screen stars: Pippa Bennett-Warner and Jonathan Bailey (Picture: Dave Benett)

The pair collaborated on an episode of Doctor Who last year and have been seemingly inseparable ever since, so we do hope there’s a new thesp couple on the scene. Also there was model Atlanta de Cadenet Taylor, cook Gizzi Erskine and TV presenter Alexa Chung, whose father Philip is Chinese. Perhaps she could help us pronounce Gong Xi Fa Cai.

Swinging from the chandeliers

“I only drink champagne on two occasions: when I am in love and when I am not,” claimed Coco Chanel — but we’re sure she would have raised a celebratory glass last night on hearing her legacy lives on at Kensington’s French Residence.

The French Ambassador Sylvie Bermann was hosting the Pol Roger Duff Cooper Prize for non-fiction in the Residence’s opulent drawing rooms. Patrick Guinness was awarded the £5,000 prize for Other People’s Countries:

A Journey into Memory — having seen off competition from Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk and Jenny Uglow’s In These Times: Living in Britain through Napoleon’s Wars — but attention was more fixated on the light fittings than the non-fiction on offer.

After a guest commended the Residence’s decadent chandeliers as a welcome replacement for the “hideous modern steel fixtures” planted by previous French Ambassador Bernard Émié, we asked Ambassador Bermann whether she had made any other changes to the embassy since moving in. The elegant French diplomat raised an eyebrow:

“Oh, yes, because my predecessor … well, it was awful. It was totally contemporary, which can be very nice, but ... the taste was not”... she diplomatically decided not to finish the sentence.

Under such dire aesthetic circumstances there was, revealed Bermann, naturellement, only one option: “Chanel came in and transformed it.”

No more kebabs for the footy stars

Gone are the days when you might have caught Gazza scoffing a kebab. Today’s footballers have a far more cultured palate — Arsenal’s Aaron Ramsey tweeted about dining at TV chef Tom Kerridge’s Hand and Flowers, then yesterday he posted a picture of himself with Michel Roux on Instagram. “I am privileged to have met someone who lives up to the title of a legend,” he said. Quite the gastronome.

Take your partners, please

Glancing through the letters page of The Times, one missive on the contemporary art world caught The Londoner’s eye. “Sir,” wrote Richard Rose, who is ballroom director at the Associated Board of Dance.

“I was rather surprised to read that The Singing Butler by Jack Vettriano, [pictured] has sold 10 million copies in print and poster form when the artist clearly didn’t get the couple’s hold the right way round.” When dancing in this manner, we understand, the man’s left hand should take his partner’s right. Vettriano painted the opposite. But surely the Scottish painter isn’t to blame. It seems he lifted the dancers’ poses in his 1992 piece from an old learn-to-draw manual.

At auction, the painting has fetched £744,800. Accuracy, however, is priceless.

Flunky opportunity of the day: Her Majesty the Queen is looking for a new chauffeur. Must be “calm under pressure” and presumably fond of corgis.

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