True blue Boris courts pink vote

Cripes! With his customary tact and sensitivity, Boris Johnson is now courting the gay vote in his attempt to be London’s first Tory mayor. Tricky, for somebody who once equated civil partnerships with union between “three men and a dog”.

“I don’t understand homophobia myself,” he tells attitude, the gay magazine. “Mathematically, in the great race of life, homosexual people have ruled themselves out of women, so what’s not to like?”

Nice going, Bozza. That’ll clinch it.

The Stuckists, the anticonceptual art movement, have been told by Downing Street that a petition calling on the Prime Minister to veto the reappointment of the Tate director Sir Nicholas Serota (their Antichrist) is “potentially libellous, false, or defamatory” and has been rejected. Its author, co-founder Charles Thomson, says he will keep resubmitting it, with a different word removed every time until it gets accepted. Sounds the perfect concept to win the Turner Prize.

Appearing on The Paul O’Grady Show on Channel 4, Jo Brand recounted bumping into an MP while picking up her children from school, and being asked if she was “on granny duty today” by the MP, who was canvassing at the gates. “Cheek,” said Brand. “I shouldn’t name her. But it was Tessa Jowell.”

“I do have some ugly days,” the actor George Clooney told us, at the premiere of Leatherheads at the Odeon Leicester Square, “like this morning”. Then he told us that Gordon Brown had “amazing ideas about Darfur”. Then he told us that the best way to deal with a hangover was to keep drinking. A great man.

“I used to work at the railway works,” Peter Cook, 84, tells the Swindon Advertiser. “And one of my colleagues came in one day and said, ‘Guess who came round to my house for tea last night?’ ” Oh yes – it’s today’s instalment of Things We Can’t Believe We Didn’t Know About Charlton Heston, apparent Swindon visitor, circa 1968. “I think his sister was a nanny for Charlton Heston’s children,” adds Mr Cook. “I know he did visit because I’ve seen the pictures.”

Overheard at the Veuve Clicquot Business Woman Award: Zafar Rushdie being asked whether his father’s new book was “a heavy read”. “Yeah,” he said. “It weighs in at about a kilo and a half.” Nice.

Spare a thought for Bono, who has been hit hard by crashing house prices. His spare Manhattan home has just sold for $4.9 million, two years after it was on the market for $5.95 million. It isn’t just hurting the little people.

A reader writes about the PM’s plan to buy 20 million mosquito nets for Africa at £5 each: “If he goes to Lidl he can buy them for £3.99 each and maybe use some of the profit to lower the rate charged on student debt, which rose by 100 per cent last September (doubled from 2.4 per cent to 4.8 per cent).” Possibly some agenda there.

Alarming news. The Stage reports that Andrew Lloyd Webber and Ben Elton are to write a sequel to The Phantom of the Opera, the smash hit 1980s musical, and perfect example of the sort of art form that makes the whole world a worse place just by existing. Apparently Frederick Forsyth is involved, too. Bodes ill.

Postscript

“It’s so weird, like [Gordon] Brown has imploded,” says the impressionist Rory Bremner. “It’s a bit like having an uncle who’s been building something in the shed at the bottom of the garden for the past ten years, and you go down to see what he’s up to, and you look through the window . . . and there’s nothing there.”

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

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Prince Philip attacks big families
• Take a dip in Dubai-on-Thames
• Nobel prize a ‘disaster’ for Lessing