B*lls by name, B*lls by nature

At last, an explanation for falling classroom standards. Predictably, it’s Balls. Apparently, every time the Schools Secretary sends out a vital Whitehall edict in his name the message is automatically blocked by the nation’s censorious school software programmes.

“I appreciate that schools don’t want to encourage the use of what they see as ‘bad words’,” says Tony Attwood, editor of the Schools Directory newsletter. “But I am not sure that exposure to the minister’s name is going to harm anyone in the information and communications technology services department.”

We invited the minister to lance this boil and choose a nom de plume more suited to a future leadership candidate. Obama, perhaps? Or even his wife’s sensible name, Cooper?

“We don’t know anything about IT,” says his press officer. “We don’t know anything.” Somehow, this seems entirely believable.

New chapter in Ffion’s book

The Face: Ffion Hague

Charismatic politicians rarely choose boring wives,” Ffion Hague told Andrew Marr while plugging her new biography of David Lloyd George.

Her tale of the “Welsh Wizard” marks the emergence of William Hague’s wife into the spotlight. It may even dispel the image of the former Tory leader and his new wife sipping coconut cocktails at the Notting Hill Carnival.

A scion of the “Taffia”, La Hague’s father was the chief executive of the Arts Council of Wales while her sister, Manon, worked for the Prince of Wales. She met Hague while she was working in the Welsh Secretary’s office.

While William suffered in opposition, Ffion built a career in arts sponsorship and then as a headhunter.

Whatever role her husband holds in a future Conservative government, the Ffion story has many more chapters to run.

— Principles come at a price for David Bailey, the photographer. He tells GQ magazine of the time when Arpad “Arki” Busson, the hedge fund guru, offered him a “ridiculous amount of money” to take a portrait of the Busson family. Bailey said no. The offer rose; Bailey still said no.

A few months later Bailey was asked to donate his services to an auction for David Beckham’s 2002 World Cup party. At the auction Busson’s bid of £20,000 was not only significantly less than he had offered Bailey, but also the winning bid.

“Now I’ve got to do the thing free,” says Bailey. “Funnily enough, he hasn’t asked me yet. He probably will when he reads this.”

— It looks like we’re stuck with Rupert Everett. “I’m totally off the States now,” the actor tells Radio Times.

Our cousins across the Pond are “whiny victims whose language is entirely taken from two TV shows, Friends and Sex and the City. That kind of semi-blindness about the rest of the world, which was attractive when America was exciting, is really unattractive now.”

Should any Hollywood studio wish to test this hostility with the offer of a multimillion-dollar leading role we trust that Everett, now presenting a Channel 4 documentary entitled Victorian Sex Explorers, will stick firmly to his guns.

Postscript

Health and safety revelations from Ian Paisley. “I didn’t kiss the Blarney Stone when I came to Cork at the age of 22,” he tells the latest issue of Business Munster, the Irish magazine. But, he says, his reasons were based on hygiene rather than politics. “There were so many people kissing it I didn’t like the look of it, so I just touched it instead.” It doesn’t seem to have affected the 82-year-old’s gift of the gab in the 60 years since.

— The Coldplay singer Chris Martin tells Q Radio that his band’s success might have more to do with the pop princess Kylie Minogue than anyone could have imagined. “She writes most of our stuff,” he says. “And we design most of her outfits.”

— Wesley Snipes, who is presently on police bail for tax evasion, was spotted with Ethan Hawke chatting to police officers in the city, reports the New York Post. “[They] began asking them about the crime in the area and the type of guns they use,” the report states, adding that the fanastic duo are soon to appear in Brooklyn’s Finest — a film about cops. Or perhaps they are planning a breakout.

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