Rowan on the rails

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, is practising what he has preached. For almost all of 2008, he intends to shun air travel. Next week he is taking part in an interfaith meeting with the Pope in Rome.

Despite this being a fairly whopping journey of more than 1,000 miles he intends to travel by train. A spokesman from Lambeth Palace confirms that the Archbishop may fly to Auschwitz for a visit this autumn, but says that the rest of his year will be flight-free. In his Christmas sermon, Dr Williams called upon Christians to be environmentally aware. The world, he said, was not “a warehouse of resources to serve humanity's selfishness”.

In this, he may be following in the footsteps of Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, who also pledged last year to avoid flying. Dr Williams can expect some scrutiny, not least over whether his refusal to fly means that other clergy have to fly to see him.

This practice, some have suggested, could be dubbed “ecclesiastical offsetting”.

— Gwyneth Paltrow, above, in yet another skimpy black dress, doing yet another promotional appearance for Iron Man. Here she is chatting to Jonathan Ross. The film, she said, produced her first pay cheque since 2002.

— Keynote speaker at the lavish black tie reception at the Mansion House in Dublin to launch Irish Book Week was Bertie Ahern, the (outgoing) Taoiseach, and all agreed this was quite a coup. So, no wonder they splashed his name on a big screen. “BERTIE AHEARN” it read. “Where is a proofreader when you need one?” quips our source, adding that he could personally see about 50.

— Colin Firth was at an after-party for the White House correspondents’ dinner. Would he shake George Bush’s hand? “If you’re faced with someone who has inflicted damage on your own society, your country, and the entire globe, it’s very difficult to deal with that.” Probably a “no”.

— Sir Ian McKellen has confirmed that he is to reprise his role as the hippy wizard Gandalf in the prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit. “Obviously, it’s not a part that you turn down,” he says. The film is to be directed by Guillermo del Toro, as will its sequel. There’s a sequel?

— In the May edition of France magazine, the BBC’s World Affairs Editor John Simpson enthuses about his flat in Paris. But it has one big drawback.

“If the Eiffel Tower fell over,” he says, “ it would slice our flat in half.”

Don’t you suspect this is just how the Beeb would report it, too?

— Bickering in Parliament, as the Government moved the writ for a by-election in Gwyneth Dunwoody’s seat of Crewe and Nantwich, to hold an early poll. Angry Tories protested about “unseemly haste” - as Dunwoody has not yet been buried.

Many felt that the late MP would have enjoyed the fuss greatly.

A rugged crowd at the first gathering of the Cordon Rouge, GH Mumm’s club for explorers. Ben Fogle talked of training with the Royal Marines. Bear Grylls said that he recently skinned a pit viper in Mexico, before eating it, peeing in its skin and wrapping it around his neck to combat the fearsome heat. It was like that Monty Python sketch about Yorkshiremen.

— On her blog, Nadine Dorries, MP, (Mid-Bedfordshire, Con) reports of being in the House of Commons’ tea room, as workers received their payslips and noted that they seemed unusually small. “Could it be because you were on the 10p tax band?” asked Dorries, presumably very loudly. “It’s just been abolished.” Quick, like a bullet. Gwyneth Paltrow, in yet another skimpy black dress, doing yet another promotional appearance for Iron Man. Here she is chatting to Jonathan Ross. The film, she said, produced her first pay cheque since 2002

Postscript

— Is there no end to Sting’s talents (apart from acting, obviously)? Spotted at a New York screening of Man on Wire, the documentary about Philippe Petit, who walked on a tightrope between the twin towers, the former Police frontman admitted to dabbling in “the wire”. The New York Post reports that he even has a wire across his London garden. “Everything I know about tightrope walking, Philippe taught me,” he said.

— Furious back-pedalling from publicists for the movie of Sex and the City after the much trumpeted (on this side of the Atlantic) news that the film’s world premiere will be in London on May 12. “London will be much smaller. The whole cast isn’t even going. We’re still planning the big premiere to be in New York.” In which case, they probably won’t mind if nobody turns up.

— Richard E. Grant, talking about his career-making role in Withnail and I (still), tells The Reunion on Radio 4 on Sunday: “I thought having never been on television or in a film - and having never been up for a film audition - the chances of getting it were nonexistent. And as I went in, Kenneth Branagh shot out of the door, followed by Bill Nighy, so I knew I was buggered.”

— “I’m sorry,” says Cameron Diaz apologising to a W magazine reporter for being late. “Mercury is in retrograde and that messes with technology . . . and my computer kept crashing.” And, no doubt, her dog ate her homework.

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