Timney offered full disclosure

Peter Stringfellow calls for a chat about Jacqui Smith, which cannot bode well for the beleaguered Home Secretary. Does she have the moral authority, he asks, to pilot through legislation proposing stricter rules for lap-dancing establishments?

“She said it was ‘bizarre’ for City firms to take clients to clubs where women take their clothes off yet she is personally pushing this legislation. I don’t mind her putting a couple of porno films through on the taxpayers’ bill but I do think it is breathtaking hypocrisy.”

Generously, he says that Mrs Smith is welcome to “park” her husband, Richard Timney, in his West End “gentleman’s club” while she attends to Commons business. “As long as it’s not claimed on expenses.” The bill might add up to a little more than £10 though.

“The FA nearly sent me to Afghanistan,” says Nancy Dell’Olio, who set up the Truce International charity with her former squeeze Sven-Göran Eriksson. “I think they were trying to get rid of me.” The fiery Italian attended a Kensington Palace dinner for POM354, an ambitious scheme to replace Afghanistan’s poppy fields with pomegranate orchards. Her fellow guest General Sir Richard Dannatt, the head of the British Army, said: “The head of the Afghan Army offered me pomegranate juice instead of coffee.” With a twist?

The Face: Natasha Khan

Pop music today is just “a bit samey”, says Natasha Khan, the former Mercury Prize-nominated singer who releases Two Suns, her second album under the name Bat for Lashes, next week.

Samey is not something that Khan, 29, can be accused of. For her stand against conformity, she takes to the stage wearing shamanic headdresses. Her magical musical world of horses, moonlit rivers and fairytales has prompted comparisons with Kate Bush and won admirers including Thom Yorke. Born in Wembley, the double Brit Award nominee’s father is Rahmat Khan, of the squash-playing dynasty, who coached his nephew, the great Jahangir Khan. Such earthly concerns do not impinge upon Two Suns, which features gospel choirs, a duet with the elusive crooner Scott Walker and “sonic beauty worthy of National Trust protection”, according to one early review.

A forthcoming tour will test whether Khan is ready to lure the mainstream into her Neverworld.

“I was 17 and this beautiful girl, who was gay . . . we just ended up in bed together,” recalls Marianne Faithfull (no, it’s not running on Television X, Mr Timney). “My poor mum [Baroness Eva Erisso von Sacher-Masoch] walked into the bedroom. I think she was pretty cool about stuff like that. She had relationships with women when she was a young dancer.” She ends her interview in The Advocate with an observation some may echo: “I must say, I find Madonna a bit irritating.”

“I had the great privilege of going to dinner at the US Ambassador’s house in Regent’s Park,” Sandi Toksvig told BBC London radio. “It was a curious event. I was sat next to Shirley Bassey. Do you know he’s got a 12½acre garden? In the current circumstances, it’s excessive. There you are. That’s my honest view.” Hardly the way to get a return invitation from the new chap.

Postscript

— Richard Madeley is playing “cool dad” after his daughter Chloe, 21, was pictured partaking of something fragrant. “Somebody was passing a bong around and she inhaled some of it, big f***ing deal,” he told Closer.

— “I’m listed on a website for ‘People Who Like to be Spanked!’,” Rachel Johnson reveals (again, Mr Timney, no!) Her dad, Stanley Johnson, clarifies: “She was at school and she got in trouble for breaking into the tuck cupboard at night. The headmaster gave her the choice of being beaten or calling her parents.” Ouch.

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