Blunt’s Athenian lockout: a Kosovo conspiracy?

His music may be laidback, but James Blunt is on the warpath after the Greeks formed a phalanx to prevent him performing on Lykavittos Hill, the highest point in Athens.

Two sold-out concerts by Blunt were cancelled by the municipality for “safety inspections” only hours before the singer was due to take to the stage. However, concerts by Nick Cave and Mark Knopfler did go ahead. The Athens authorities admitted later that there had been no safety issue, but a letter confirming this had been “misplaced” – while 6,000 fans were locked out.

“In the best case it’s carelessness and in the worst case corruption,” an angry Blunt told Ta Nea, the Athens daily paper, sensing a conspiracy.

Captain Blunt was a British officer in Kosovo in 1999, when the Greeks conspicuously sided with Slobodan Milosevic’s Serbia. Could the singer’s ballads have become a rallying point for the large Albanian population in Athens? Or was the city’s decision to lock the gates made on musical grounds? Maybe it was one way to avert a Greek tragedy.

Hollywood is “hot” for the Ingrid Betancourt story. Agents are bidding for the former hostage’s account of “jungle misery”. The US contractors freed with her are mulling over offers, while the Colombian Government’s story of how it pulled off the bloodless rescue is also for sale, Variety reports. Yet one agent moans: “It lacks what Americans love in movies: there is no violence in the rescue.”

The end of PMQs today will prompt a dash to The Cinnamon Club, where the “world’s hottest curry” is to be revealed. The Naga pepper, which measures more than 800,000 on the Scoville scale, the official measure of piquancy of peppers, is said to be the miracle ingredient. All diners must sign a disclaimer before tucking into the “Bollywood burner”.

Carla Lane, creator of sitcoms such as The Liver Birds, Butterflies and Bread, is making a return to the BBC. But it could prove to be a rocky one. “After seven years of not wanting me, I was asked to write the series I’m doing now,” Lane, 70, tells Hello!.

“I’m amazed they’ve asked me. They must have seen something in the archives that they liked. I’m sick of My Family. It’s fine for viewers who want to see something that’s not real but I can’t write stuff like that.”

Lane’s new series is about a dysfunctional family and has the working title Some Day I’ll Find Me. The writer adds: “I’d do an update of Bread, but I don’t think they’d want it. I don’t know the people at the BBC any more – it’s full of young girls with short skirts and large breasts.”

After urging us not to be wasteful, the PM found a cost-effective means of travelling to the G8 summit. His jet belongs to Pace Airlines, whose owner, Bob Brooks, founded Hooters Air, a popular spin-off from the “adult” restaurant chain. This news excited the travelling press more than it did Gordon Brown

The Face Sir David Frost

Film stars, minor royals and politicians will make their pilgrimage to Sir David Frost’s Chelsea pile this evening for the summer party, which has become as much part of the “season” as Henley.

Guests snooping “through the keyhole” chez Frost will find generous photographic evidence of the interviewer’s famous summits with world leaders.

Frost is employing his “softly softly” questioning style on the al-Jazeera English satellite channel now, and his “bash” shows that there is still life in his famous contacts book.

Although Frost is an Establishment figure today, the forthcoming Frost/Nixon feature film – based on his epic confrontation with the disgraced President – will recall an era when this son of a Methodist minister was an entrepreneurial, broadcasting pioneer.

Postscript

Paul Potts , who won the first Britain’s Got Talent, has signed an advertising deal with Deutsche Telekom. YouTube clips of Potts are apparently popular in Germany. How amusing that just a year ago Potts was an employee of Carphone Warehouse.

Furious fans have been expressing their disgust at the quality of Meat Loaf’s gigs in Bath on Saturday and Romsey, Hampshire, on Sunday. A publicist in Romsey blamed “high winds”, as you do. Digital Spy website reports on the Loaf’s vow to avoid “stupid English festivals” for ever. “I do call them stupid because people behave like apes who haven’t eaten a banana in a week,” he said, graciously.

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