Cohen plays camp caller in Kansas

Beware camp Austrians asking questions. Sacha Baron Cohen (better known as Borat or Ali G) is apparently at large in the US, in the guise of his new character. This is Bruno, purportedly a flamboyant gay reporter for fashion television.

Newspapers in Wichita, Kansas, last week reported a “European man” who had alarmed security by “stripping down to tight shorts and dancing in the lobby” of a nearby airport. No official word from Baron Cohen, but amateur video shot at the scene does look a lot like him. Other reports talk about a similar man later arriving at an Easter play in a church wearing only chains.

Like Borat or Ali G, Bruno’s modus operandi involves interviews with unwitting victims while in character. There is some suggestion that he has already duped Ben Affleck.

— Above, George Clooney and Renee Zellweger at the Los Angeles premiere of Leatherheads, their new film about American football. "She has no talent," said Clooney of his Oscar-winning co-star. "And she's not cute."

— Darcey Bussell, the ballerina, is to write children’s books for HarperCollins. The Magic Ballerina is about a girl ballerina who joins a school for ballerinas and finds that her shoes take her to a magic world, in which (guess what?) she is a ballerina. There will also be a picture book called Ballerina Bear. It’s probably about a bear ballerina.

— Gilbert and George, the renowned artworld freaks, should be a dream client for any suitmaker, in that they are famous, always wear suits and probably get through quite a few of them, what with all the art. Alas, spies report the pair arriving at the tailor Nicolas of London, in Angel, and being told: “Sorry gents, busy right now. Can you come back a week on Monday?”

— Wonderful detail on the finer points of sectarian squabbling in Great Hatred, Little Room, the memoirs of Jonathan Powell (Tony Blair’s former chief of staff) on his role in the Northern Ireland peace process. He recalls one meeting in 1997 when, even with both sides in the same room, it was almost impossible to get Unionists and Republicans to speak face to face.

“All comments in the plenary meeting were addressed to George Mitchell in the chair rather than directly to Adams or McGuinness,” he writes. “Adams tried to engage Trimble in direct conversation in the urinals, but the advances were dismissed curtly by Trimble telling Adams to grow up.” Perhaps Adams should have tried employing the services of a similarly voiced actor.

— Forget the Boat Race. We hear, perhaps a touch late, that the first Oxford and Cambridge goat race took place on Friday, hosted by Keith Chegwin for Heart FM, in Putney, south-west London. The race was won by Maizey, the Cambridge goat, even though she was slightly smaller than the Oxford beast. Bet that made for great radio.

— Fast work from Lord Levy. The publication of his eagerly awaited memoir, A Question of Honour (we still think they’ve dropped an “s”), has been brought forward to May 12, just a week and a half after the local election results.

That may be a good time for Gordon to take a rare holiday.

— Early yesterday morning, the official Cliff Richard fan site informed fans that Sir Cliff was branching out into the textiles industry with something called “tolo de abril” made by spiders.

Wild scenes on the message board as literally several fans erupted in online hilarity. “Yes,” wrote one. “This is very funny.”

— Writing by Anthony Horowitz, Philip Pullman and J. K. Rowling will appear in The Birthday Book, to be published by The Prince’s Foundation for Children & the Arts to mark the Prince of Wales’s 60th birthday. But Charles once wrote his own children's book, The Old Man of Lochnagar. No extract?

— You may have been enjoying Andrew Lloyd Webber’s music without realising it. Does that make you feel dirty? In an interview with Heat, the composer claims to have written anonymously a chart hit that went “pretty much all of the way”. He could be anyone. He could be Arctic Monkeys. It’s terrifying.

Postscript

Peta, our very favourite nutjobs, have offered Britney Spears a job as a receptionist. Ingrid E. Newkirk, the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, saw Britney’s cameo as a receptionist in a US sitcom and was highly impressed. “We might have criticised you in the past for contributing to the dog overpopulation crisis and wearing real fur,” she writes in an open letter, “but a new day calls for a new relationship, a new outlook and a new understanding.” Bonkers.

— “I didn’t get it together until the past couple of years,” says Julia Louis-Dreyfus (of Seinfeld fame), to Harper’s Bazaar. “I only figured out my whole look in my forties. Some people are born with style. I wasn’t one of those people.”

— Another dubious triumph for Piers Morgan, the latest winner of Celebrity Apprentice in the US. “It’s a great day for evil, obnoxious, arrogant Brits everywhere,” he told the American radio station KIIS-FM on Friday. “It’s like a Simon Cowell production factory in Britain, where they create these utterly obnoxious people and we ship them over to America and you seem to lap it up.”

— Finally, we at People are deeply ashamed. We did have a great deal of fun at the expense of the mediocre shagmeister Nick Clegg yesterday, but completely missed the chance to make any of those excellent puns like “Cleggover” or “Cleggs-akimbo” that appeared elsewhere. We can only apologise. It shall not happen again.

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