Why Blair ignored Grandmother’s last words

While Gordon Brown has spoken exhaustively about his father magnetising his “moral compass”, his predecessor had less time for familial advice, Cherie Blair has disclosed.

Mrs Blair, a Roman Catholic, said yesterday that she and the people of Northern Ireland would be the poorer if Mr Blair had heeded the dubious wisdom bestowed on him by his grandmother.

“Tony’s grandmother’s dying words to him were ‘Never marry a Catholic’,” she told Good Morning Ulster. “Within our own family we were well aware of the need for reconciliation between the [Catholic and Protestant] communities.”

She also suggested that negotiations over power sharing in the province occasionally had the air of a French farce. “There were times at No 10 when I thought we’d always be stumbling over Gerry Adams in one room and then Ian Paisley in another and David Trimble in another. It was quite extraordinary.”

Her own grandmother was also a victim of religious prejudice, she said. “She couldn’t marry the love of her life because he was a Protestant and she was a Catholic and in Liverpool in the 1920s that just couldn’t be.”

Would someone at the Kremlin draw Vladimir Putin’s attention to a clip of himself speaking in 1996 that has just been posted on YouTube? “However sad it may be and however frightening it may sound, I think there could be a return to totalitarianism,” he cautioned. “The danger is in our own mentality. It might seem that if we enforce discipline with an iron hand we will live better, more comfortably and safely. But in fact that feeling of comfort will soon pass and the iron hand will soon begin to stifle us.”

Richard Dreyfuss’s reputation as a reliable West End actor has taken a while to recover since he admitted, shortly before being dropped from the leading role in the stage production of The Producers, that he sings “like a seal” and dances like an embarrassing uncle at a wedding. Officially he relinquished the role in 2004 because of “back problems” related to a herniated disc, but the story appears to have matured with time. In a press release announcing his role in Complicit – a new play directed by Kevin Spacey at the Old Vic – he announces: “I’m very excited to have a chance of not being fired before the opening.” Stay tuned.

David Cameron, having recently criticised the BBC for paying ridiculously large salaries to people such as Jonathan Ross, is in no way just jumping on the bandwagon du jour, surely?

A colleague at this newspaper recalls interviewing Cameron during the run-up to the Tory leadership bid. He was keen to find out what constituted a perfect Saturday morning for the would-be PM. Dave, perhaps wearing a lumberjack shirt and dungarees (we didn’t check) replied: “Chopping logs in the yard listening to Jonathan Ross on Radio 2, although I can’t stand the chap who comes on before him.”

Mick Hucknall, red in hair and football shirt, appears to have developed an inverse Midas touch. The Simply Red singer and avowed fan of Manchester United bought a pair of signed David Beckham boots at a charity auction at Beckingham Palace, the footballer’s mock-Tudor mansion in Hertfordshire, in 2002 for a generous £29,000.

The investment has not paid off. Hucknall, who is attempting to scale back his vast collection of footballing memorabilia, is selling the white adidas boots at a knockdown price. Convery Auctions in Edinburgh expects the item to fetch no more than £5,000. The failure of the boots to appreciate may owe as much to their inscription as to the credit crunch. Beckham has written: “To Mick, Best Wishes, David Beckham, 7.” Perhaps the dedication is putting people off.

Postscript

Sticking with inferiority complexes, Stephen Fry tells Good Housekeeping that Britain has one, demonstrated by a “sneering anti-Americanism” that reveals our “pathetic inadequacy”. Did he enjoy himself so very much while making Stephen Fry in America that he might not want to come back?

Helen Mirren’s husband came over all method while directing her in the brothel-set drama Love Ranch. Taylor Hackford insisted his wife thoroughly research her role by staying the night. “Taylor grabbed me kicking and screaming to the brothel,” she says. “He said, ‘You've got to do this! You’re going whether you like it or not.’” Stanislavski would approve.

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