Straw that broke the Speaker’s role

Look out for a triumphant twinkle in the eye of Jack Straw during the Queen’s Speech.

The Secretary of State for Justice, wearing his Lord Chancellor’s hat (although not, confusingly, his Lord Chancellor’s wig), will make history today as the first commoner to present the Queen with her official speech.

This, we gather, is much to the annoyance of Baroness Hayman, the Speaker of the Lords. In the past, her job and Straw’s have been combined. As Speaker, she felt that the task should have fallen to her. Straw pulled rank and won the right to wear tights. And a frock coat.

Although he is expected to forgo the traditional wig, Straw is widely believed to be delighted, both with his part in this ancient pageantry and with his costume. Within his department, his new nickname is His Jackness.

Madame Tussaud’s has issued an impressive press release to point out, apparently proudly, that, after repeated mauling and pinching by female fans, the gallery’s new waxworks of Brad Pitt and George Clooney have had to be “sent for retouching”.

As though they hadn’t been touched quite enough already.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, is misty-eyed in Marie Claire. “Malvern is not a hotbed of socialist politics,” she recalls, of her youth. “The line that my husband, Richard, used the first time we met was, ‘I think my mum and dad are probably the only other Labour Party members in Malvern apart from your mum and dad’ . . . it did the job.” Blimey.

“We’d have been happy to be less successful,” David Walliams, of Little Britain, tells Radio Times. “We were hyped, and you have an in-built shelf life. It’s pleasing to be part of the Zeitgeist, but worrying because we were overexposed.”

“I’d like to have been a straight actor,” he adds, “but I’m faintly ludicrous.”

Dame Shirley Bassey, on being mugged in Knightsbridge last week: “It’s awful to think I can walk safely in my home town of Monte Carlo but not in London.”

She had thought it before. Dame Shirley, on living in Monaco, in June: “I like the idea of walking home with all my jewels on and not being afraid of being mugged.”

A moderately successful experiment on Newsnight on BBC Two where, instead of merely discussing potential evening stories with their producers, the show’s editors have been floating them in the direction of anybody who reads the programme’s website. Not everybody approves.

“Hey,” writes “Mark” in the comments section. “I’m out all day slaving to make a living while you have nothing to do except watch the wire services to see what’s happening. You think it’s easy getting those sausages in those casings? Try it some time, you’ll see just how hard it is.”

Postscript

“You have to be on guard 24 hours a day,” says John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten) of life in Britain to LA City Beat, the American newspaper. “That seems to be British culture. It’s Heaven on Earth to come here and go, ‘My God, I don’t have to think for weeks at a time’.” There’s tact for you.

Daniel Radcliffe gushes to Heat magazine about girls: “What does it for me is ferocious intelligence and talent,” he tells readers, who will not necessarily appreciate such preferences. “Indie girls are quite fabulous,” he continues. “I think it’s the clever use of eyeliner that makes them attractive.” What about the ferocious intelligence and talent?

Does Wes Anderson miss India, where The Darjeeling Limited, his new film, was made? “I love it,” he tells us at the closing night gala of The Times BFI London Film Festival. “Usually when you’ve finished filming you’re done with a place. But I really miss it.” So is he going to join an ashram? “Who knows. Let’s wait and see.”

“I played villains, rapists,” recalls Robert Redford of his theatre days. “When I went into film . . . the romantic thing struck. If you’re considered a good-looking person, you get hammered on your substance. I could see that coming,” he tells LA Weekly, “and it depressed me, and then it did come, and then it became like a hook in me that I couldn’t get rid of.”

“It’s just how you’re brought up,” says Sir Paul McCartney of his two-thumbs-up habit to Q magazine. “I have been chastened by the world opinion on that. Have you seen me do it in the past ten years?”

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