Meditate for harmony, says Macca

Hey teacher, we don't need no transcendental meditation. Actually, we do, says Sir Paul McCartney, who is proposing a spiritual shake-up in schooling for the national curriculum.

“I believe that in the future meditation could be as commonplace in schools and society as eco-awareness is now,” the former Beatle said. He is still channelling the influence of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, the guru who broadened the Fab Four's horizons during a visit to his camp in Rishikesh, India, in 1968. Sir Paul will effect a rare reunion with Ringo Starr at a transcendental meditation awareness concert organised by David Lynch, the director of baffling films, in New York tomorrow.

Problem pupils can be calmed and made more responsive to learning after ten minutes of meditation, according to research cited by Lynch.

“It interests me that an ancient cure may be the solution to a modern problem,” says Macca, who is inviting every UK secondary school to sign up.

Alastair Campbell dismissed Armando Iannucci's spin-doctoring film, In The Loop, as overly cynical and not funny. Peter Capaldi, who plays the angry Campbell role, hit back at the premiere: “Well, I don't find his work very funny either. I think we should have his review on the poster — 'A disappointment' — Alastair Campbell. One star.”

First to crack at the G20 was Martin Brunt, crime correspondent at Sky News. “I'd like to raise a finger to the US President's posse of Secret Service guards who insisted we ground our helicopter,” he blogs. The Yanks persuaded air traffic controllers to ground the chopper, despite the prior approval of Scotland Yard, he fumes.

The West End opening of Calendar Girls tomorrow is generating an unusual amount of interest. “We are getting a lot of single ticket requests for the front row,” says David Pugh, the producer. Stage hands have staked out the balcony seats to ensure that Patricia Hodge and her fellow WI “strippers” retain their modesty, from a range of angles.

London stage courts Manhattanite's wit

The Face: Wallace Shawn

Bald, gnome-like and hilarious, Wallace Shawn is known by most people for his comic turns in Woody Allen's Manhattan or the Chekhov-inspired Vanya on 42nd Street. However, the self-penned “buttoned-up little creep” who claims to have no sense of humour is celebrating his talent as a playwright in a three-month season of his works at the Royal Court Theatre.

The son of an editor at The New Yorker magazine, Wallace grew up in a prominent Jewish family on the comfortable Upper East Side of Manhattan, where he is revered as an acerbic antidote to orthodox liberal opinion.

Educated at Harvard and Oxford, Shawn, 65, is a provocateur. The character Lemon in Aunt Dan and Lemon lays out her neo-Nazi beliefs with conviction but then, no one ever seems to know whether Shawn is being serious, and therein, perhaps, lies the longevity of his appeal.

Postscript

Jaime Winstone cheered on England against Ukraine in her Union Jack top at a Marylebone sports bar testing out Sony Bravia screens so Hi-Def that they haven't been invented yet. We congratulated the actress on her role in the US series Dexter, fatally confusing her with Jaime Murray. Graciously, our miscast Jaime did not demur. Fortunately for us, Jamie Murray, Andy's doubles partner, couldn't make it.

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