They say that if you can remember the 1960s you weren't there. But Barry Fantoni, whose satirical cartoons have graced Private Eye for 46 years, recalls enough to know that he had a damn good time.

“I can't remember everyone I had sex with. It was all a bit of a blur,” the EJ Thribb poet tells us at the launch of his new exhibition at the Thomas Williams Fine Art Gallery in Mayfair. Fantoni,used to compare the groupie scene with his friend, Sir Michael Caine. “As you would imagine, TV opened lots of doors, namely bedroom ones. I used to have this thing about how many strange women I could sleep with in one night. I got to six. It was hard work.”

A leading light in the British Pop Art scene, Fantoni says that at his last show 20 years ago he went dressed up as a clown. “I was drunk all the time and I thought it would be quite good to be a drunk white-faced clown and it [the work] sold very well despite me trying to ruin it. I'm in my 70th year, I want people to enjoy it [my art] that's the f****** point.”

“I've been booked to go on the Loose Women show on Thursday,” John Prescott says. “Pauline's a very big fan (Jane McDonald, the presenter, is her favourite) but I've never seen it. I'll try and watch it this afternoon.” Sacrificial males on the ITV1 programme are subjected to a barrage of single entendres. Is it really worth skipping Harriet Harman's Commons Question Time, John?

This smoking ban's such a drag

The Face: June Brown

Surrounded by a nicotine haze and pouring tea with a blow-dried hairdo that would survive a nuclear blast, June Brown has proved a soap heavyweight playing EastEnders' scripture-quoting Cockney washerwoman Dot Cotton.

The “mesmerising” performance that has brought the actress, 82, a Bafta nomination — the first soap star to receive one in 20 years — is for a moving monologue recounting her past to a husband who has suffered a stroke. Born in Suffolk in 1927 Brown joined the soap in 1985 after a stint with the RSC. After a brief break she returned in 1997 and now earns a reported £400,000 a year for the role. The actress, a mother of five, is a self-confessed Conservative, who says that her favourite programme is Newsnight.

Like her character, Brown is a committed smoker, making her reluctant to attend ceremonies like Sunday night's glitzy Bafta bash. “They're a drag because I can't have a fag. This bloody smoking ban is ruining my life,” she complained.

Good news for Steven Berkoff. His West End production of On the Waterfront is set to become a Broadway contender. “We are in discussions about bringing the show to New York with the British cast, which would be a tremendous achievement,” the actor tells us. Simon Merrells, who plays washed-up boxer Terry Malloy, has been described as a worthy successor to Marlon Brando. Berkoff bought the rights to the play from the National Theatre. Budd Schulberg, 95, who wrote the original stage script, has given the production his enthusiastic support.

“Russell has a complex relationship with the media,” admitted Kevin Macdonald, the director of State of Play. “He made clear from the beginning that he had some trepidation about playing a journalist as a hero.” Russell will “fight for what he believes in”, he added, perhaps unnecessarily.

“We mayors have to be careful we don't sound too bookish,” warned Boris Johnson at the er, London Book Fair. “My all-time favourite mayor was the Jaws man who said the water was absolutely fine.” With messy results.

Postscript

India Jane Birley, whose £100 million inheritance from her late father Mark Birley, the Annabel's club founder, was the subject of a family court battle, is not resting on her laurels.

The artist is creating a series of paintings based on her family members, depicted as “monsters in the Greek tradition”. Attending the launch of A Partial Indulgence, Stephanie Theobald's art exposé novel, at the Langham Hotel's Artesian bar, in London Ms Birley said: “My mother (Lady Annabel Goldsmith) is Clytaemnestra (who plotted her husband Agamemnon's death). I see myself as Cassandra — the one who was condemned to tell the truth but nobody would believe.”

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