Nothing personal, Harry - you’re just a dim-witted oaf dressed as a Nazi

A Labour aide has dismissed Prince Harry as a “dim-witted oafish playboy” and poured scorn on his service in Afghanistan.

Just days ago it seemed as if culture minister Margaret Hodge’s churlish attack on the Proms had carved her an unassailable lead in the Silliest Remark Of The Year contest. Yet she’s obviously a complete amateur compared with Terry Kelly, election agent to Wendy Alexander, Labour leader in Scotland. In his blog, Kelly says the Taliban would have easily spotted Harry – who returned to Britain last week – as a “ginger-haired man staggering about drunk, dressed as a Nazi”.

Kelly insists that it’s nothing personal (which will certainly come as a relief to the “dim-witted oafish playboy”) and blames both the “establishment” and Harry’s “awful” family for exploiting the prince. And what of Harry’s future?

“He will become as infamous as his great-aunt Margaret and a burden on the taxpayer and an embarrassment to us all, just like his grandfather Phil,” says Kelly.

If he could just find room to squeeze in an MI6 conspiracy, a lucrative career could well beckon as official spokesman to Mohamed al-Fayed.

What a picture - Charles and Tracey take on city carbuncles Jacqui’s got them singing the blues on top of the cops

Whoever thought Tracey Emin, the artist best known for turning an unmade bed into a work of art, would find common cause with Prince Charles, the artist best known for his watercolours of the Scottish highlands?

Emin has joined a protest by a dozen artists against high-rise development in London. They have sent a strongly worded – but presumably beautifully designed – letter to mayor Ken Livingstone about plans for towers that could dominate arty areas just outside the City.

The Prince of Wales has already described the plan as “a whole rash of carbuncles”. Or was that the title of Tracey’s next work?

* * * * *

The National Liberal club will host a dinner on Thursday to mark the anniversary of the Liberal party’s by-election win at Orpington in March 1962. “It was a major event in the party’s history,” says former leader Lord Steel. Best not to overdo it with the Fairtrade champagne, though. The Liberals lost the seat in 1970 and it’s been solid Tory ever since.

Jacqui's got them singing the blues on top of the cops

There’s good news and bad news for Jacqui Smith, the home secretary. The good news is that somebody has written a song about her. The bad news is, it’s someone from the Police Federation. Blue Serge Blues, by Bobby Cash and the Bridewells, a little-known beat group, is a protest song about pay, written by an inspector in the Met, and will be released next month. It has a jaunty chorus that begins “Oh Jacqui” in the style of Oh Mandy by Barry Manilow. The federation is urging officers to download the song, which will be available on iTunes. Doubtless they will then be able to listen to it on their iPlods.

* * * *

Didn’t get your child into a decent school? Ed Balls feels your pain.

“As a parent myself,” he says, “the last thing you want is to not be able to get your first choice for your child.” On a scale of one to 10, how likely is it, do you think, that the schools secretary’s three children will suffer this fate?

* * * * *

The BBC is running a season in honour of the supposedly neglected white working class (who presumably can’t stomach the Eton accents and Boden frocks on display in EastEnders). But what are the masses supposed to do when the season ends?

Advice is at hand from Le Nouvel Observateur, a French magazine which says films about horny-handed, binge-drinking Brits – or “prolo-anglais qui boit de la bière” – are a big hit with French gay porn fans. What a lively export campaign that would make.

* * * * *

Proof that health and safety has gone going barking mad. Labour-controlled Shrewsbury and Atcham borough council has sent a letter to the North Shropshire hunt reminding it that hounds must be put on leads to cross the road after it adopted a new bylaw. Huntsmen will have to dismount, giving foxy extra time to get away.

* * * * *

Alan Sillitoe, who wrote the ground-breaking 1958 novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning about the white working class, has stopped supporting Labour because of the smoking ban. “If the lads can’t come back from Iraq, go to the pub and have a fag and a pint with their mates, what the f****** hell is that?” he tells the East Anglian Daily Times. “[Labour are] just a lot of f****** puritanical bastards.”

And if they try to ban bad f****** language, they’ll obviously be in even bigger f****** trouble.

Times Recommends

• In the real world, the public sector must pay
• Playing politics in a land of double Dutch
• Be like the plinth people: not set in stone