Young’s big head gets in the way

A perhaps predictable case of life imitating art at the Akvinta Vodka party in Cannes for How to Lose Friends and Alienate People.

Simon Pegg, the star of the film, was in the VIP room with Natalie Imbruglia, Mischa Barton, Lily Allen and, most importantly, waitresses. Meanwhile, downstairs, a weary Toby Young (whom Pegg portrays in the film) was to be found waiting his turn at the crowded, ordinary bar.

All this could, of course, have been staged. But, when poor Young finally did make it upstairs, one high-profile director was immediately heard to shout: “I’m trying to take a picture of the band, but that man’s head keeps getting in the way.” So our hunch is that it probably wasn’t.

Ringo Starr (how badly we wanted to write the word Sir in there) and his wife, Barbara Bach, visit the From Life to Life: A Garden for George garden at the Chelsea Flower Show (pictured right), which was created in memory of his fellow Beatle, George Harrison, who died (also unknighted) in 2001

Is this the start of some kind of rugged, mud-eating feud? Plugging his new show (Ray Mears Goes Walkabout) in the Radio Times , the BBC survival expert is asked whether he watches the very similar rival Channel 4 survival man Bear Grylls for tips. “Yes,” he says. “On how not to make television programmes.”

Also at Cannes, the pre-screening media blackout for Indiana Jones and the Very Long Title About Skulls was causing some problems. Witness the BBC’s Razia Iqbal, who was interviewing Cate Blanchett, the film’s villain. “You haven’t seen it. I haven’t seen it,” said Blanchett. “Between us, we could make the whole thing up.”

Fairly apt for Gordon Brown to liken himself to Demosthenes (rather than Cicero) at the Google Zeitgeist bash in Hertfordshire yesterday. Here is the American classicist Harry Thurston Peck on the Greek: “He aims at no elegance; he seeks no glaring ornaments . . . he had no wit, no humour, no vivacity, in our acceptance of these terms.”

Tony Blair’s early political hustings, according to Cherie (her book): “I was his passport to working-class acceptability,” she writes. “At the end of these things, there would usually be some kind of singsong and that would be my cue . . . I would put my hands together, open my mouth and sing.” An asset, from the start.

Uncharacteristic modesty from the Lib Dems over hazy reports that Nick Clegg may have faced multiple rocket attacks in Kandahar airbase. “It just reminded us what people in Afghanistan have to deal with,” sighs a spokeswoman. “But I don’t want to talk about this any more, least of all to a diary.” Hence our top story being about Toby Young.

A startling choice from Diane Abbott on Desert Island Discs this weekend. One of her records was by Buju Banton, who had to cancel a concert in Brighton in 2006 after objections to one of his songs, which called for gay men to be shot in the head. Perhaps something for her to explain next time she’s squashed up on that tiny little sofa on This Week.

Postscript

— At a recent memorial drinks party for a venerable ex-employee of the Tate Gallery, the director, Sir Nicholas Serota, told of being at a recent dinner party and being asked by a fellow diner if he had been with the company since its inception. Quite rude. The gallery opened in 1897, and the company (Tate, which later became Tate & Lyle) was founded in 1869. Sir Nicholas is a mere 62.

— The Jewish Chronicle seeks to make amends, after leaving Sir Alan Sugar off its list of Britain’s 100 most influential Jews. Now, the paper’s diary column dubs him “number one in our own Power 100 as the most entertaining Jew on television (on Wednesday nights).”

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