Teddy bear sets up his camp in charity wood

Politicians revelled in the chance to torment their inquisitors at Cancer Research UK’s Turn the Tables lunch, but did Alan Duncan, the Shadow Business Secretary, have to be so bitchy to Evan Davis?

“It’s my intention to poke and prod you,” Duncan promised the Today presenter. “You have been described as the nation’s biggest teddy bear,” the MP continued. “Is that because you like being cuddled – or is it just that you like being thrown around by big young boys?”

There was no let-up for the pierced BBC man. “Do you like being in the Dragons’ Den? It’s not your usual sort of gay club,” teased Duncan, who has previously declared a personal interest in such matters.

Ken Livingstone tried to engage Adam Boulton, Sky News’s political editor, in a spiritual discussion. “Do you believe in an afterlife?” he asked, before putting the question to an audience vote. “I don’t think many of us want to stick around after we’re dead,” asserted Boulton.

Perhaps Ken’s spooky line of questioning was prompted by repeated sightings of a wraith-like figure loitering around City Hall since the London mayoral election.

— Meanie Ringo Starr is refusing to grant fans any autographs from next week. “Nothing will be signed after the 20th of October,” he says on his website. “If that is the date on the envelope, it’s gonna be tossed.” It’s not that a signed Starr is worth so much less than a Lennon.

“I’m warning you, with peace and love I have too much to do,” he says. Send him everything you’ve got posthaste.


— Michael Portillo is disturbed by Tracey Emin’s plan to fill the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square with meerkats. “I made a programme about meerkats and they are conspiratorial, dictatorial little bastards,” he says. “The dominant female handbags her way to the top and lowers the testosterone of all the males. It led me to a more thorough understanding of the Thatcher Government.” Mobo would have a sweet taste

— The Face: Estelle

Black British female singers don’t usually get a second chance for success, so victory at tomorrow’s Mobo (Music of Black Origin) Awards would be especially sweet for Estelle. The second of nine children raised by a Senegalese single mother, Estelle Swaray brought her childhood memories to 1980, a breakthrough single five years ago. But her record company wanted “indie rock” and the singer was cast adrift.

A chance meeting with John Legend, the nu-soul star, and his chum Kanye West prompted a new US record deal and an internation hit, American Boy. This time Estelle gets to do it her way. And if she doesn’t beat Duffy there will be an almighty Mobo.

Postscript

— Sir Roger Moore, at The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, recalled how his son, then aged 9, wasn’t impressed that his father was the new 007. “He said, ‘Dad, could you beat up anybody in this restaurant?’ I looked around. They were all fairly old. I said, ‘Yes, I think I could’. Geoffrey said, ‘What if James Bond came in?’ I said, ‘Well, I am James Bond now’. But he said, ‘No, I mean the real one . . . Sean Connery’.”

— General Colin Powell will be Naomi Campbell’s special guest at her Africa Rising Royal Albert Hall fashion gig tonight. Powell will talk on “sustainable growth” while Christina Aguilera sings. We hope it’s that way round.

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