Channel 4 plans a blast

Big Brother or not, Channel 4’s most controversial moment probably came in 2001, with the Brass Eye special on paedophiles. Chris Morris, the cult satirist behind it, has never again caused such a stir.

Until now. Last week, a production company began seeking actors for “a TV film about a bunch of Pakistani lads living in Britain” that Morris is writing and directing for Channel 4.

Morris fansites have been speculating for months about a rumoured “suicide bomber” project. On the Cookd and Bombd site, a well-informed fan envisaged the film as being much like an “Islamic Young Ones”.

In the casting call itself, one character, Azzam, is described as “the sort of guy who’d protest against cartoons in a bomb belt”. This sounds even more fun than paedophiles.

— Terry Rooney, Labour MP for Bradford North, has upset Mancunians by telling a local paper that an IRA bomb was “the best thing that happened to Manchester”. The bomb, which exploded in 1996, injured more than 200 people. Rooney brought it up while expressing his dismay that Britain’s first supercasino had not gone to Blackpool. He seems to think that with an IRA bomb and a supercasino, Manchester is hogging all the fun.

— Ah, the magic touch of George Galloway. On his website, the tiny Trot of Tower Hamlets wails that, although his protest single, War, technically made the Top 20, an accounting error prevented it from appearing there in last weekend’s charts. Worse still, the publisher of his biography of Fidel Castro has just ceased trading, pending liquidation. You would never guess he used to be chums with that lucky old devil Saddam, would you?

— Jeremy Paxman writes about his pride at being a member of the Piscatorial Society (it’s something to do with fish) in the current issue of The Field . Approvingly, he reveals that “Queen Victoria was once investigated by the committee under suspicion of deliberately foul-hooking a trout”. Later, he says: “Any rainbow trout that makes its way into club waters is whacked on the head. It’s just a pity we can’t do the same with swans.” Bit of a fishy whiff of latent republicanism from old Paxo, we fancy.

— Spotted: Ozzy Osbourne, in the plush Daniel Galvin salon in Marylebone, London, demanding that somebody fetch him a gown. Sort of like the opposite of seeing Baroness Thatcher with a crack pipe.

— All leave has been cancelled at the Treasury as bean counters to prepare for Gordon Brown’s last Budget before he (probably) becomes Prime Minister. Hatches battened down, noses to the grindstone. Etc. Strange then that, from a glance through a Treasury window at 5pm yesterday, all staff seemed to be glued to a huge television showing the cricket.

Postscript

— On the off-chance you haven’t read this month’s emotion, South West Trains’ passenger magazine, Stephen Tompkinson has revealed how as a young actor he used to let Rufus Sewell sleep on his floor. “He wore eyeliner at the time and got it all over my pillow case, which left a bit of explaining when my girlfriend came back,” he says.

— “Simon will do things that people have no idea about,” says Paula Abdul, of Simon Cowell, her judging colleague on American Idol. “When the camera isn’t on me, he’s poking and prodding me.”

— Look out for an appearance by Tony Blair in a sketch with Catherine Tate on Comic Relief tonight. Tate is interviewed for work experience at Downing Street, but is not, of course, bovvered.

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