Gordon veers from puff to filo

If Gordon Brown is truly reborn it must be down to his Sarah-sanctioned diet. Asked to pick a favourite dish last year, the PM plumped for Chequers steak pie, a puff pastry and meat concoction that would have challenged Desperate Dan.

But Mr Brown has since had a Damascene conversion, according to a celebrity charity cookbook compiled by the congregation at All Saints Parish Church in Ilkley, West Yorkshire.

The new Downing Street recipe for success is vegetable and mozzarella parcels – a far lighter dish than that steak pie – that require one courgette, eight cherry tomatoes, a crushed clove of garlic and 200ml of tomato passata sauce, according to Mr Brown’s entry. “Brush with a little oil or melted butter and bake in a hot oven at 180C until golden,” is the final instruction.

David Cameron hits back with Italian sausage meat pasta: “Six spicy Italian sausages, lots of red wine, Parmesan cheese; penne pasta and a half-pint of double cream.” No wonder fingers have been pointed at the Tory leader’s “well-fed” Shadow Cabinet.

A therapist with a strong Scottish brogue managed to defeat Dame Helen Mirren. “After having to say to him, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t get that’, about five times after each of his utterances, I came out and decided that I wouldn’t go back for another session,” the actress told Source magazine.

Has Boris Johnson practised what he preaches by recycling his Christmas tree? Nick Ferrari asked the Mayor of London on LBC Radio. “I have not only recycled it, I’ve chopped it up into tiny pieces and I’m getting ready to incinerate it in an eco-friendly way,” boasted Bojo. “It shall be burnt in a fire.” But not in his backyard. “It shall be burnt elsewhere, erm, not in the Greater London area. It will have an eco-friendly cremation away from London.” Boris might not need those votes but Conservatives with marginal seats won’t welcome the impending inferno.

The Face: Ellie Kendrick

She doesn’t just play Anne Frank, she becomes Anne Frank, raved one television critic, as the BBC One adaptation of the wartime diarist heralds a new star.

Ellie Kendrick said she was “absolutely terrified” at the prospect of playing the 13-year-old Jewish girl forced to hide from the Nazis in the attic of a house in Amsterdam.

Her performance as a rebellious teen, obsessed with boys but sensitive to her family’s traumas, was praised for bringing fresh realism to an iconic role. The former Benenden School pupil was 17 when she filmed the role and has had roles in Prime Suspect and Waking the Dead.

She is planning a gap year before university but has already won a role in An Education, the next Nick Hornby-scripted feature film.

Her approach to The Diary of Anne Frank, which continues tonight, was to “peel back the layers of idolisation and to think of the characters just as normal people”.

She said: “I’m thrilled with the response. I want to write for the stage, too, but for now it’s back to the auditions round.”

Postscript

“The whole thing was my fault,” David Baddiel confessed over the Jonathan Ross affair. In his Esquire column, the comedian and novelist says he met Georgina Baillie at Russell Brand’s house and first blabbed about the incident on Radio 2. “Hopefully everyone will now be crying out for the return of Jonathan,” he says.

Paris Hilton will “raise my kids in the UK so that they have British accents and manners”. Her first daughter will be called London. A capital idea.

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

Times recommends

• Who killed Jade Goody?
• Daisy Goodwin: This is better than real sex
• Foods that can help to prevent swine flu