ANDREW PIERCE: Hose sorry now? Day Mandelson was drenched
If Peter Mandelson felt inundated this week, it was not for the first time.
Rear Admiral Chris Parry, a TV military historian and Reform candidate for the mayoralty of Hampshire and Solent, was at Oxford with the Dark Lord in the 1970s.
One day Mandelson ‘and his crowd of self-declared Marxist-Leninist friends’ were holding a tea party in a college quad.
They were spotted by the captain of the college rugby team who asked if they needed more water for their tea pot. Parry says: ‘Whereupon the rugby player unreeled a fire hose and gave them a drenching.’
Proof that even then Mandelson and his cronies were a right shower.
Peter Mandelson got a drenching when he was at Oxford in the 1970s
Mandelson has often been described as his own worst enemy. But could this condition be hereditary?
Ernie Bevin, who was foreign secretary in Clement Attlee’s post-war Labour government, once heard Mandelson’s grandfather, home secretary Herbert Morrison, described as ‘his own worst enemy’.
Bevin growled: ‘Not while I’m alive, he’s not.’
Appointed as an ambassador for The King’s Foundation last year, Kate Winslet’s royal approval rating continues to rocket after narrating His Majesty’s documentary, Finding Harmony: A King’s Vision.
Andrew Pierce has been reliably informed that actress Kate Winslet will be made a dame before the end of the year
The recipient of a CBE in 2012, I’m reliably told the Oscar-winning actress is expected to become ‘Dame Kate’ before the year’s out.
Charisma-free Keir Starmer has been called ‘wooden’ – but that view is mild compared to the description by Independent MP Rupert Lowe who says he is: ‘That poisonous mix of being utterly incompetent, with the personality of a doorknob.’
Yvette Cooper’s odds of becoming the next PM have been cut to 14-1.
‘She’s an experienced old-hand who isn’t Health Secretary Wes Streeting or Angela Rayner,’ a colleague of the Foreign Secretary says. ‘Yvette is Labour’s Theresa May.’
That’s hardly a ringing endorsement.
Actress and comedian Josie Lawrence recalls meeting Glenda Jackson, the Oscar-winning actress who was an MP for 23 years.
Lawrence went backstage at the Old Vic to meet Jackson after her return to the stage aged 80 in King Lear.
‘She’d just been outside to have a fag. She sat down and had a glass of wine with me. I was in awe of her.’
Lawrence told Jackson she had named her cat Glenda Jackson. ‘She went: “Hahaha, f*** off!” It was brilliant.’
Culture Secretary and former ice skater Lisa Nandy
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy, an ice skater in her youth, flew to Milan to give the GB Winter Olympics team a pep talk.
‘I asked to have a go at the bobsleigh,’ she said. ‘They told me the Government insurance wouldn’t cover it.’ She wouldn’t be the only minister skating on thin ice.
Good save! BBC’s world cup cuts
The BBC is struggling to attract a new Director-General. But there are perks, former executive Peter Fincham tells Insiders: The TV Podcast.
‘When I was running BBC One and you had the rights to the World Cup you just said: “Yeah, I think I’ll go to this game, that game, this game, this game.” And somebody from the Sport department just gave you tickets.’
With the BBC now too cash-strapped to send its pundits to the opening stages of this Summer’s World Cup in North America, woe betide any boss spotted lounging beside FIFA’s fat cats.
Family strife among the Starmerites. Former BBC politics presenter Steve Richards criticised the PM on X.
Left-winger Richards is the father not only of justice minister Jake Richards but also Amy Richards, who as political director at No 10, works closely with Starmer.
