Lost: Mugabe’s gift to Queen

As MPs step up the campaign to strip Robert Mugabe of the honorary knighthood he received in 1994, another tricky question looms for the Queen — what to do with the gift that he presented to her during that visit.

The sculpture, Man and Nature, is languishing (they know not where) in some palace or other. But might Her Majesty now feel obliged to return it?

There is a precedent. In the days before the execution of Nicolae Ceausescu, he was stripped of his honorary knighthood. The Star of Romania that he presented to Ma’am was returned and is no longer on her list of gifts, and the two carpets he also presented have apparently disappeared.

— Questions, questions and, then again, questions surround Cherie Blair’s revelation in yesterday’s Times that Leo was conceived at Balmoral after a blush-saving decision to leave her medieval-sounding “contraceptive equipment” at home.

They talk of little else at Westminster. Is it something no one has ever used before? Why couldn’t she have put it in another bag that remained unopened by security guards? And what was good Catholic Cherie doing with contraceptives anyway?

— Doctor Who (yes, we know he’s not a real person, but bear with us), has been given his trickiest mission: to save the Anglican Church.

The Church Army claims that “there are countless examples of Christian symbolism in Doctor Who which we can use to get across ideas that can otherwise be difficult to explain”.

And there’s us thinking that was what they used the Bible for.

— A nostalgic return to the University of Oxford for David Cameron who spoke to the Union on Thursday. But those hoping for stories of high jinks and larks from his time as a Smiths-loving student were to be disappointed. Nothing — except for a wistful nod to the venue in which he spoke. “It’s times like these that I regret not spending more time at the Union when I was here,” he said, almost sighing.

Perhaps he forgot that he was a member of the Bullingdon Club and was therefore too posh?

— 1972 was the year that Jon Snow got high from a strawberry flan. The death of Albert Hofmann, the LSD scientist, sparked this trippy memory for the Channel 4 News presenter.

“Somebody gave me a spiked strawberry flan and I’ve never been quite the same since,” he writes. “My lasting memory is of attempting to drive back from the party in Oxford and discovering that the bridges on the M40 were too small to venture through.”

The cure? “Orange juice and Jacques Loussier.” Ah, yes, those old chestnuts.

— Gordon Brown’s face has been depicted on a coin. The Prime Minister, as interpreted by the urban artist of the moment, Banksy no less. The way things are going in Downing Street, an endorsement by anybody, even if it’s a man who daubs things on walls in the middle of the night, can only be a good thing for the PM. However, we’re not sure that the Royal Mint will pick up the idea and run with it

Postscript

Ray Winstone, Harrison Ford’s sidekick in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, almost manages to squeeze out a compliment about his Hollywood co-star. “Harrison is a geezer. Pretty straight. Fit as a butcher’s dog. Bit introverted. Loves to tell a joke. Doesn’t tell ’em well.”

— Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant, going the way of all middle-aged rockers, speaks of the allure of, erm, tennis. “It gives me a whole different circle of people to hang out with, who are charming,” he tells Record Collector.

— Rumours of the imminent closure of The Colony Room Club, the legendary Soho drinking hole once favoured by Francis Bacon, will not be quietened if today’s post on its website is anything to go by: “News from The Colony Room Club. Important news to be announced shortly. Ends.” Yikes.

— “It doesn’t civilise or soften the edges of life at all,” Salman Rushdie, speaking of love, tells The Word magazine. “Remove the violins and candlelight and we see it comes from a very deep and dark place.”

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• What makes the perfect mum?
• To keep me stress-free, no more awareness days, please
• What do lottery winners buy?