Is this wedding story gospel?

Can this be true? According to a report on the scurrilous gossip website Popbitch, the author Philip Pullman recently delivered a reading from the Bible at the church wedding of one of his sons. Details are few, but there are suggestions of Roman Catholicism and Corinthians. If so, how remarkable. Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy, is one of Britain’s foremost antireligionists. Although he describes himself as “caught between the words ‘atheistic’ and ‘agnostic’ ”, he has also called organised religion “the religion I hate”.

Calls to Pullman’s Oxford home were greeted as wearily if we had been a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal (“Oh dear. Is this another call about the wedding?”) and passed on to the writer’s agent, A. P. Watt. The agency did not return calls.

There was no danger of Gwyneth Paltrow (above) getting her heels caught in the hem of her dress last night at the British premiere of her new film, Iron Man. Towering above her co-star Robert Downey Jr, the actress stunned fans at Leicester Square with her new look.

Does Alistair Darling mind that, thanks to his latest Budget, he has been banned from pubs across the country? Seems not. “I have been barred from more pubs than anyone else in the country, including pubs I have never been in and in many cases have never heard of,” he tells the Commons, sounding almost proud.

You will, of course, have been wondering what happened to The Thompson Twins, the group behind such 1980s hits as Lies. Happily, the next issue of The Art Newspaper holds the answer. It reports that the singer Alannah Currie is now known as Miss Pokeno and designs furniture that incorporates dead animals. And she is a vegetarian. A spokesman insists that it is all roadkill.

The British Medical Association has e-mailed staff reminding them of the strong stance it takes against smoking. If staff must smoke, the e-mail concludes, do so “away from any signs displaying the BMA’s name”.

Alfie Allen (son of Keith, brother of Lily, currently in Equus) tells the Ambassador Theatre magazine of a night out with Matt Lucas and David Walliams from Little Britain, during which they came up with Daffyd, the only gay in the village. “I remember thinking then that I wanted to be an actor,” he says.

William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, will be pleased about that boat, full of guns for Zimbabwe, heading home. He issued a press release expressing concern when it was “heading to Uganda”. Did he mean Angola? A boat set for landlocked Uganda would be one for the Shadow Environment Secretary.

To the Café Royal in London and the Cancer Research UK sporting Turn the Tables fundraiser, at which sports celebrities quiz journalists.

Step forward the former England and Tottenham striker Gary Lineker, who was quizzed by the rugby player Gareth Chilcott about footballers’ wages. “It is unbelievable, the money they earn now,” he said.

Of course, in this era of vast wages, poor Gary no longer plays football. He just gets paid £2 million a year by the BBC to talk about it.

Postscript

Fresh from recovering from his cancer scare Ewan McGregor was spotted out in Miami with Jim Carrey in the top gay bar Halo. According to the LA gossip Perez Hilton the pair were “doing research” for their new film, I Love You Phillip Morris in which they play lovers. Despite her victory in Pennsylvania, Hillary Clinton didn’t convince everyone that her pro-gun stance was genuine. As the comic David Letterman noted: “C’mon, if she were really pro-gun, Bill would be dead.”

— Forget diplomacy, being Britain’s Ambassador to Dhaka is something to make a song and dance about. Anwar Choudhury, our man in Bangladesh, has recorded a Bangladeshi love song. “We were just singing informally and decided to record the song,” he said. Alas, it is not available in the shops.

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