Davis’s by-election is reminiscent of Blackadder and B’Stard

No wonder David Davis has been grinning foolishly ever since he announced his surprise resignation. He has sparked what is becoming the most entertaining by-election since that episode of BBC’s Blackadder in which Baldrick won Dunny-on-the-Wold under the slogan “A rotten candidate for a rotten borough”.

Ronnie Carroll, a 1960s crooner, says he’ll stand as an independent in Haltemprice & Howden at the suggestion of his friend George Weiss, who leads the Rainbow Revolution party.

Other candidates include Kelvin MacKenzie - not just a former editor of The Sun but the man who gave us News Bunny, a giant rabbit that livened up bulletins on the L!ve TV cable station (astonishingly no longer with us).

“Rainbow George” says he even wants actor Rik Mayall to do a turn as Alan B’Stard, who was MP for Haltemprice in The New Statesman television series.

Fans of the ITV comedy series may remember an episode in which the Tories asked their hon member for Haltemprice to scupper their election chances, leaving Labour to cope with a worsening economic crisis.

They wouldn’t . . . would they?

Stelios hopes his Elgin idea will take off at the British Museum

Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou, founder of easyJet, is calling for talks that could take the British Museum’s Elgin marbles back to Athens.

The artefacts have been a sore point between Greece and Britain ever since Lord Elgin, ambassador to the Ottoman empire, removed them from the Parthenon frieze for restoration in the early 19th century. But now other Parthenon decorations are on display at a new museum in Athens, Sir Stelios says: “I feel now there is a win-win solution for both museums in the form of a cultural exchange.”

So why not a cut-price, no-frills exhibition that everybody could enjoy? We could call it EasyMarble.

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Cabinet office minister Ed Miliband tells Labour’s Compass group conference that Tony Benn has left three recent phone messages offering help. “What an awful state we’re now in that Tony is ringing to offer his services,” says Miliband, brother of the foreign secretary, David Miliband, speaking about the father of his cabinet colleague Hilary.

Small world isn’t it?

French politicians prove again they are more racy

Despite the heroic efforts of David Davis, why are French politicians so much more exciting and adventurous than our lot?

Prime minister François Fillon spent yesterday commentating for a television station on the 24-hour race at Le Mans (where he was born).

Can you imagine Gordon Brown alongside John Motson at the Euro 2008 football tournament?

“The French are 4-1 down against the Dutch, Mottie. But I think most members of the crowd will agree that it’s the French who are best placed to continue into the next round.”

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After years of handing out bishops’ palaces and peerages while appointments secretary to Tony Blair, William Chapman was yesterday named as a Commander of the Royal Victorian Order. He now works for Blair’s Faith Foundation, putting into practice the biblical imperative that Bishop Tony followed so literally while in office - “Honour all men”.

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Lovers of British tradition will be shocked to learn that a joke has appeared in the New Statesman magazine. Apparently Paul Kenny, leader of the GMB union, tells one in which comrades from Unite, a rival outfit, pass a shop window advertising shirts at £1 and suits for a fiver.

“What bargains!” they cry and hurry inside to buy in bulk. “You do know,” says the shop manager wearily, “that we’re a dry cleaner.”

This frivolity is something the Statesman’s new editor, Jason Cowley, will want to stamp out.

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Collecting tins are being rattled fiercely in the leafy southwest London constituency of Richmond Park, where wealthy Tory Zac Goldsmith is competing for funds with Lib Dem MP Susan Kramer, a former banker. Yet the area’s best-known resident has escaped the melee, perhaps because he is famously careful with his cash.

A Tory sighs: “Everybody knows there’s no chance of getting money out of Mick Jagger.”

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Some newspapers reported last week that Dr John Sentamu, the charismatic and media-friendly Archbishop of York, has criticised the cult of celebrity. It’s just a thought, but would anybody be remotely interested in these views had they been made by, say, the rather somewhat less celebrated Suffragan Bishop of Swindon?