Kurt Cobain tribute is a shoo-in

There is taste, and there is marketing. According to reports, Converse, the shoemaker, is launching a Kurt Cobain-themed trainer. Ghoulish. As that notorious photograph shows, the Nirvana singer was wearing Converse shoes when he shot himself in 1994. And yet, Courtney Love, his widow, is said to have given the company her blessing.

This is a surprise. A year ago, when Dr Martens considered using Cobain’s image (dressed as an angel, to be fair, and sitting on a cloud), Love declared this outrageous and despicable. Mind you, a few months later, she authorised a lunchbox.

— Kate Middleton (above) skiing in Klosters, Switzerland, with Prince William. Although Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cornwall are not taking to the slopes, the couple will be joined over the next few days by friends, the Prince of Wales and a fair few ghastly little men

— The New Statesman reports an awkward incident in Tynecastle, as David Miliband visited a working men’s club in his constituency along with (gasp) his wife, the violinist Louise Shackelton. “Hold fast bonnie lassie,” an aghast steward apparently said. “Ya canna gan in there.” It was, the magazine says, a clash between old Labour and new.

— Lily Allen was pictured at the weekend in various newspapers taking a stroll with a mystery “tousle-haired man”. Frankly, we are as surprised as you must be to find this sort of thing in the People column, but word reaches us that this was actually one Robbie Furze, singer in a band called Panic Drives Human Herds. You’ll find plenty of their music online. Probably best to turn the sound down first.

— Tough break for Abe Karpen, 25, the unknown cast with Natalie Portman in New York I Love You. Religious pressure has forced the Hasidic Jew to quit the part. “It’s not acceptable in my community,” he told the New York Daily News. “The rabbis didn't like the idea of a Hasidic guy playing in Hollywood.” Unfortunate, that.

— Attempts to secure financial backing for the London Library’s £3 million building appeal continue. Spies report a sighting of Sir Tom Stoppard, the library president, leaving a glitzy fundraising dinner at its St James’s HQ with the TV Queen of Botoxed Mean, Anne Robinson. “Gee, Tom,” Robinson was heard to exclaim, “you know when you are getting old. Men just want to get into your chequebook, not your knickers.”

— News reaches us that Gemma Arterton, who appears with Daniel Craig in Quantum of Solace, has landed the lead in a BBC One production of Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Thus, we suspect, her first outing as a Bond girl may be her last. No great surprise. We are reliably informed that fully 3 per cent of James Bond’s sexual partners die within days or even hours. Symptoms may include gold skin or intimate contact with a Korean man’s hat.

— Our thanks to the readers who have sent in examples of sentences overheard in hospitals that may be more terrifying than “the drill is Igor’s solution” (People, yesterday). We enjoyed hearing of the dentist who said, “Has anybody got a screwdriver?” (to fix a plug, as it turned out) and the bedridden doctor who, waiting for a lumbar puncture, overheard a young houseman being told: “The good news is that you are about to do your first lumbar puncture. The bad news is that it is on a doctor.” Our favourite, however, has to be the medic who looked at reader Ian Middleton’s X-rays, and just said, very quietly: “Oh sh*t.”

— An irate reader from Tooting, southwest London, tells us of being summoned to his local sorting office to collect insufficiently stamped mail. On paying the required £1.24 he was presented with a leaflet from Mark Clarke, his local Conservative candidate, imploring him to save the NHS. Disgruntled as he may be, our source does grudgingly accept that Mr Clarke may just have been surreptitiously campaigning to save the Royal Mail, too.

— President Sarkozy’s lectern fears (People, also yesterday) remind one correspondent of the infamous “talking hat incident” during the Queen’s state visit to the United States in 1991. Sharing a podium with the first President Bush (6ft plus), Ma’am (5ft 4in) appeared to the world as only a famous voice and a bright blue hat. Speaking at a joint session of Congress the following day, she began: “I do hope you can see me today.”

Postscript

“Ugh! If you’re an investment banker, don’t hit on me,” Meghan McCain, the (liberal) daughter of the Republican front-runner, tells GQ. “I have a pretty dirty mouth, normally,” she continues, leftily. “I love swearing. Whatever.”

— “I don’t know why everyone thinks I lost 30lb,” Mariah Carey tells Allure. “This trainer has actually helped me reshape my arms.”

— Could Will Smith be a closet Scientologist? “You don’t have to be a Scientologist,” he assures the New York Daily News, “to be a friend of Tom Cruise.” Strange.

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