Brown’s support melts away

Britain’s weirdest feud continues. Madame Tussauds, the London waxworks museum, is starting a poll (www.madame-tussauds.co.uk) today to decide whether it should make an image of Gordon Brown.

Previously the museum’s line has been that the PM does not deserve a doppelgänger until after he has won an election. So now it is holding its own.

Some sour grapes here. As previously reported the Downing Street press office insists that Brown was invited for a sitting months ago, but declined.

“Not true,” sniffs a Tussauds spokesman. “He just never replied.”

Hell hath no fury like sculptor scorned. Waxy handbags at dawn.

— Martin McGuinness, the Deputy First Minister (ie, Second Minister) of Northern Ireland, is obviously going to miss his outgoing colleague, the First Minister Ian Paisley.

For, despite their wildly contrasting reasons for hating people, the two appear to have grown close. “I think he and I have a good relationship,” McGuinness told BBC Radio Ulster, “and I would be very surprised if we didn’t keep in contact.”

Strolls in the sunset? Brokeback Mountain fishing trips? Ain’t nobody’s business but their own.

— Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, continues in his tireless attempts to make poetry hip.

“I’ve noticed that youngsters at primary school level rarely have a problem with poetry,” he tells the Bucks Free Press. “In my mind there’s no real difference with a teenager going home and learning all the lyrics to the latest Arctic Monkeys song. If they enjoy that, then they would enjoy poetry. There’s a lot of work yet to be done to change people’s attitudes.”

He’s not going to start singing, is he?

— We hear rumours that Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP, has returned recently from a week-long trip to Austria, for which his wardrobe consisted of one suit and two shirts, the latter of which he bought at the airport.

Possibly that David Kelly book isn’t doing as well as he had hoped.

Postscript

“I went to meet him at the Dorchester,” recalls Ray Winstone of meeting Martin Scorsese to discuss his role in the 2006 film, The Departed. “We talked for ages. I just love him. Every time I looked at him, I wanted to cuddle him.”

— A welfare fund set up by an online retailer to assist Pete Doherty in staying clean after getting out of jail has raised the grand total of £17.10. “Sales have been somewhat disappointing,” says a spokesman from Lastseason.com . “We only sold six stripey tops.”

— Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, paid a visit to Dagenham Fire Station yesterday. At no point during his visit did he pose for a photograph wearing an amusing hat. Serious stuff.

— Many people around Westminster have noted the purple tie that Gordon Brown wore on his weekend PR offensive. “Julius Caesar wore purple on the Ides of March,” we are told, meaningfully.

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