Farewell, then, Minister for the People page

The cruellest defenestration of the reshuffle was Tom Harris, the sunny-side-up Transport Minister who added to the gaiety of these pages. It was the Glasgow South MP who chided voters for being “bloody miserable”, defended McDonald’s cuisine and alerted us to a hilarious YouTube video of “a dog coming down a waterslide”. Admittedly, this may have contributed to the PM’s decision to axe Harris, which the former minister bravely blogged as “a shock to the system” five minutes after the Downing Street call.

Now that Harris is off the leash he is telling voters that he used the train only because he could watch DVDs and “there’s no point in appealing to people’s concern for the environment” when choosing between rail and air travel.

Harris’s departure was perhaps not such a shock to his wife. “Carolyn reckons she’s worked out the reasoning behind my sacking,” he blogs. “She’s just drawn my attention to a strapline on BBC News that says, ‘Brown: We need serious people for serious times.’ Doh!”

Boris Johnson’s successor as MP for Henley has inherited the Mayor of London’s disposition for “wardrobe malfunctions”. Visiting the Henley Show, John Howell was upbraided by David Orpwood, a farmer. “Why do you always wear that blue blazer? You are in the country now, so look like it,” demanded the constituent. After an urgent search Mr Howell discovered a fine-checked jacket from a clothing stall, which he purchased for a wallet-busting £250. Naturally, when the MP tried to enter the Members’ Enclosure, he found that it was blazers only.

The Duke of Edinburgh was equally concerned to maintain appropriate dress codes when he enjoyed an irreverent exchange with a churchman whom he suspected of gatecrashing a Buckingham Palace garden party for the clergy.

Church News overheard Prince Philip asking a senior (but not episcopal) London cleric: “Why are you improperly dressed?” The mitre-less man of the cloth replied: “Ah, well, sir, you see, I’m just a priest, not a bishop.” The Duke: “Then what the bloody hell are you doing here?”

Joss Stone, the Devon damsel, is currently being put through her luvvie paces in The Tudors, and in the most taxing way. The singer, who stars opposite the swarthy Jonathan Rhys Meyers, muses: “I have to just lie there in the sex scene. He’s trying to consummate the marriage. I had wanted to play Jane Seymour, but it clashed with my tour, so instead I am Anne of Cleves.” It’s not a good trade-off. “She wears frumpy clothes and is a German weirdo. I had to speak in a German accent and play the harp.”

Glen Hansard felt like “a plumber at a flower show” after winning the Best Song gong at the Oscars. Now the former busker from Dublin has won the ultimate accolade – a slot on The Simpsons. He appears in a scene set in a Grafton Street pub, owned by Kenneth Branagh, that Homer has set his heart on buying. Ken impressed Al Jean, The Simpsons’ producer. “He did it very well and he’s actually Irish,” said Al.

The Face: Tim Westwood

Big up yourself for real, hard brother. Radio 1’s hip-hop “big dawg” has received the ultimate shout-out – a Top 20 slot in a sizzling new tome, The Fifty People Who Buggered up Britain.

Tim Westwood, the public-school-educated son of a former Bishop of Peterborough, has long suffered for the crime of being rap’s most powerful white British advocate.

Mocked by Ali G, Westwood’s “ghetto lingo” appears even more inappropriate coming from a puffa-jacketed 51-year-old. He survived a drive-by shooting in 1999, has Jay-Z on speed dial and is given due respect by hip-hop’s US royalty. He makes the Fifty People list as an “emblem of cultural defeatism”, seeking to destroy our linguistic heritage. Yet his radio chat may be no more “fake” than John Peel’s famous self-deprecation.

Postscript

“Where is the strangest place you’ve ever slept?”, Tatler inquires of Tracey Emin. “The kerb in Hanbury Street was a good one – I insisted I was perfectly comfortable on the pavement as I snuggled down . . . but the Berkeley Square Ball may be everyone else’s favourite.” And what does she take to bed with her? “TV remote control, BlackBerry, laptop . . .” Does the artist ever actually sleep?

Depeche Mode have announced an ambitious “tour of the Universe”. While the electro pioneers visit the musical hotspots of Bratislava and Porto, the schedule remains disappointingly Earthbound. This is only the “European leg”, we are promised.

— Got a story to tell? people@thetimes.co.uk

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