Artist promises a surprise package

Hell hath no fury like an artist scorned. Jonathan Yeo (portrait painter and son of the Conservative MP, Tim) is unveiling his new, unauthorised portrait of President Bush in London on Tuesday afternoon.

It wasn’t meant to be unauthorised. Yeo was commissioned to paint a major, posed portrait by the George Bush (Snr) Library in Texas in 2004. At the last moment, however, the Americans stopped returning his calls.

So, he went ahead and did a portrait anyway. It will be at the Lazarides Gallery (Banksy’s home gallery), in Soho, from Tuesday. And presumably, it isn’t exactly flattering.

“We can’t tell you,” smirks a spokesman. “It would spoil the surprise. But it’s big enough to fill the entire gallery window. Are you going to come? It will be hilarious.”

— The profile of Britain’s most glamorous couple continues to advance apace in the United States. At the Galaxy vs Red Bulls fixture in New York last weekend, fans were delighted to hear the announcer welcome “Mr David Beckenham” on to the pitch. His lovely wife Pimlico must have been cheering like anything.

— The nation waited on tenterhooks. Had Brian May got his PhD, or had he not? May, the guitarist with Queen, began work on “Radial Velocities in the Zodiacal Dust Cloud” in 1971, before meeting Freddie Mercury and devoting his energies to classic rock and hair growth. He handed it in earlier this month and, yesterday, sat his viva. The result, he had promised, would be on his blog (brianmay.com). Finally, at 5.25pm, “I am celebrating! X From Brian Mob”. Congratulations.

— George Michael has been fulfilling the terms of his community service order (for driving while unfit) at St Mungo’s homeless hostel in Euston, London. The Camden New Journal reports that he spent eight hours helping residents to write songs about poverty, crime and homelessness.

“He was right down to earth, a good man,” said Andrew Gilmour, a homeless man. “When he arrived nobody knew who he was. He was dressed down more than me.”

— Jim Carrey once killed his daughter’s rabbit. True story. Maybe. According to the actor’s friend and occasional colleague, Judd Apatow (director of Knocked Up, who was speaking to Virgin Radio), the man who played the animal-loving Ace Ventura threw a book at his three-year-old daughter’s pet when he noticed it eating wallpaper. “The corner hit the rabbit in the temple,” says Apatow, “and it started quivering and dying.” So he bought a new one. The end.

Postscript

“I have ordered 53 of these books as I understand that they are written in his blood. According to my calculations that should use up about eight pints of it and hopefully bring an end to the adolescent dribblings of this smacked-up, sub-Dickensian tossclump.” So says a reviewer on the internet bookseller Amazon.com, none too keen on Pete Doherty’s collected witterings in The Books of Albion.

— Can I do you now, sir? runs the title of the Anglian Pensioner Association’s latest tome. It’s the first in a proposed series of “books and bulletins of interest to older people”. Has anyone got one? And please can they send it in?

— Staying in the world of books, the dust jacket of Everyone Eats There - Inside the World’s Legendary Restaurants mentions Cipriani Downtown in New York. That’s where “bellinis are served to the elite . . . and the world’s most famous dirty old men - Mick Jagger, Jack Nicholson”. Can they sue?

— Strong words from James O’Brien, host on LBC radio in London, as the station’s newish publicist prepared to release his latest set of listener figures. “I enjoy a curry as much as the next man,” O’Brien tells us, “but I felt that ‘James O’Brien is now twice the size of his BBC London rival Vanessa Feltz’ was a tad unfair.”

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