Gore to paint the City green

An inconvenient truth commands a not inconsiderable paycheck. We understand that Al Gore is charging in the region of £150,000 for European speaking engagements – nearly as much as Tony Blair.

The auteur of An Inconvenient Truth, the eco-horror flick, has been asked to address City luminaries during a forum on environmental responsibility, organised by Global DataCenter Management.

We gather there had been hopes that Iain Duncan Smith, a nonexec director of Global, would also speak. Cruelly, this has been ruled out by Richard Hillgrove, the fixer who approached the former Vice-President. “Gore wouldn’t want to be promoting the Tories,” he explains.

In these dark days, poor Alistair Darling may take comfort from Peter Jay’s recollection of one PR near-debacle. In 1967 Jay was working as a junior Treasury official and prepared a briefing covering the logistics of devaluation, should it occur. Then he locked it in a safe and left to become economics editor of The Times . Some months later he received a call. “Remember that document in the safe?” asked an embarrassed Treasury official. “We urgently need it. But we’ve, um, forgotten the combination.” Within days Wilson devalued the pound.

Bob Marshall-Andrews (Lab, Medway) now denies ever having called David Miliband “a pillock on his gap year”. Still, we learn that Dr Peter Slowe of the gap-year organisation Projects Abroad (and, incestuously, vice-president of the Labour Finance and Industry Group) has written to our thrusting young Foreign Secretary to invite him to take one. David, say yes. Travel. Grow your hair. That would be hilarious. You’d look like Lego man.

The issue of trust continues to cause headaches at the BBC. “For the past 25 years I have sat behind the microphone every Christmas morning taking calls from our youngest listeners who want to say ‘thank you’ to Santa Claus for their wonderful presents,” writes Ed Doolan, of BBC WM in Birmingham, in Ariel, the Beeb’s staff magazine.

“Across the desk sits Santa himself, exhausted after a long night . . .” We think you can see where this is going.

The House of Commons is advertising for applications for the post of Serjeant at Arms – head of security, but in tights (like Superman?).

The ideal candidate should “possess an outstanding ability to influence and negotiate” and also great legs.

Three out of five people, it transpires, paid nothing for the “pay what you like” download of Radiohead’s latest album In Rainbows – among them, the band’s singer Thom Yorke. The pricing idea, Yorke told BBC6 Music, was so secret “I didn’t tell my wife”.

People sees an internal e-mail sent by the Rev Ian Thompson, Dean of King’s College, Cambridge (alumni include Salman Rushdie, Charles Clarke and some with normal faces). Workmen have found “a considerable amount of urine trapped in the waste water pipes” of blocked sinks.

“I don’t know quite what to say,” the Dean fumes to some of this country’s finest young minds, “other than the practice of urinating in the sink MUST stop.” Alas, no further comment when we call. Perhaps he thought we’d take the p***.

Postscript

Who would Russell Brand, comedian, most like to kiss under the misteltoe? “Morrissey, the former Smiths frontman,” he tells December’s Skymag, “If I couldn’t have him, I’d choose my cat Morrissey.”

The Red Hot Chili Peppers are no fans of the TV series that shares the title of their track Californication. The band is suing Showtime, the show’s maker, for unfair competition, dilution of value of the Californication trade mark and unjust enrichment. Rock on.

Joan Collins, Kate Hudson and Cilla Black were the guests; Stevie Wonder was the entertainment. The superstar sang for 500 people last night at the opening of The Wonder Room at Selfridges. All week London’s glitterati were hoping that their gilt-edged invites to the singer’s first British show in two years had been “Signed, Sealed and Delivered”.

@ Got a story to tell? people@thetimes.co.uk

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Margot Fonteyn: In her footsteps
• Forget beautiful people, let's have wonky Brits
• Fundamentalist brew: faith and power