Labour tried to paint David Cameron as “Mr 10 Per Cent” in the great public spending row, but it seems that they got the wrong man. Step forward James Duddridge, the Conservative MP for Rochford and Southend East, who is staging his own version of Dickinson’s Real Deal.

On Friday Duddridge will meet constituents in Havens, Southend’s specialist china and crystal department store. Need an incentive? Well, here’s the deal.

“Havens have generously offered 10 per cent off purchases for everyone who comes along to meet me,” he says. The MP reminds voters: “The discount is only available between 11.15am and 1pm on Friday. It is not redeemable in conjunction with any other offer.” Mr Duddridge wants to give something back to hard-pressed voters. Including perhaps, the £7,000 he claimed under the second-home allowance for house repairs before “flipping” properties. “If I knew what I now know ... it would have been sensible not to have the work done,” he admitted.

Full marks to yesterday’s best contestant in the continuing human Fourth Plinth Trafalgar Square challenge — a woman in full (and sweltering) Marie Antoinette costume, waving a billboard displaying revolutionary slogans, while a chum handed out cake to tourists. Well, it was Bastille Day.

The BBC’s reluctance to share the licence fee has created a “feeling of despair among a lot of highly respected BBC professionals,” complains Ben Bradshaw, the new Culture Secretary. Is the sentiment shared by Neal Dalgleish, a former Newsnight veteran promoted to executive producer on BBC World’s prestigious series The World Debates? Dalgleish and Bradshaw celebrated their civil partnership in 2006.

One advantage of being Amy Winehouse’s long-suffering father is that you learn a lot about the global cocaine industry. Cab driver Mitch has agreed to appear before the Home Affairs Select Committee, alongside the head of Europol, to discuss the drug trade. “Mitch wants to talk about the impact of cocaine on his family,” a committee spokesman said.

Director with a name for science fiction

The Face Duncan Jones

More concerned with ideas than explosions, unassuming film director Duncan Jones has finally put a lifetime obsession with 1970s and 1980s science fiction films “that revolved around blue-collar people working in space” to good use.

The philosophy graduate-turned-director of commercials showed his directorial feature debut Moon at the Sundance Film Festival recently to enormous critical acclaim.

Starring Sam Rockwell and the voice of Kevin Spacey as a talking computer, fans of more moody, ruminative sci-fi will be queueing to see it when it has its UK release next week.

Born Zowie Bowie 38 years ago in Kent, he adopted the more prosaic name on his passport when he realised that he didn’t want to be in the shadow of his rather famous father David, who wrote the song Kooks for him.

Work has already begun on Jones’s next movie Mute.

Postscript

Armani was set to empty its coffers for the “sexiest advert ever”, starring the dream team of David Beckham and Angelina Jolie. But something was nagging at the England man’s conscience. “At the end of the day, I wouldn’t do it because I’m married,” said Beckham.

Gilbert and George wish they had never called Tracey Emin “superslag” (in the nicest possible way). George: “It was an endearment.” Gilbert: “She makes too much of it.”

Boris Johnson is ready for the Lord’s Ashes Test. “I would much rather be out for a duck than a duck house,” the Mayor says in a webcast for the online fan site, TwelfthMan.

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