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From The Times
May 12, 2006

Sir Cliff takes pity on the poor Blairs

People with Hugo Rifkind
SIR CLIFF RICHARD, when asked why he lent his villa in Barbados to Tony Blair, said: “I just felt sorry for him.”

“Certainly money didn’t come into it,” Sir Cliff told The Spectator. “The Blairs said they would give a donation to charity. I said ‘fine’, but that was up to them.”

According to a thoroughly unconfirmed rumour, this donation was less than you might pay for a week in Barbados and more like what you would pay for a weekend in Bognor. However much it was, it didn’t go to Sir Cliff’s tennis foundation, which may explain why the Blairs haven’t been back.

  • A very quick rebound for Jack Straw, who appears to have a new special friend already. “I hope we have a fruitful relationship,” his new counterpart, Theresa May, told him yesterday in his first appearance as Leader of the House. “But I do not get up at 4.30 in the morning and go to the gym. I do not play the piano.” The smooth-tongued charmer replied: “I am hoping for not just a fruitful relationship but also a close and meaningful one. I can invite her to Blackburn, show her its delights, and maybe also arrange for piano lessons.” And poor, abandoned Condi Rice, meanwhile, weeps alone beside a silent phone . . .

    Ps

    Elmore Leonard, accepting the Cartier Diamond Dagger award: “I got $90 for the film rights of 3:10 to Yuma . . . now they want to remake it with Tom Cruise, who wants to rewrite most of it. He’ll play the short bank robber.”

    “I’d love my children to do something artistic,” says Cate Blanchett. “At the moment they seem more interested in destruction than creativity.”

    Contrary to our rather glib assertion in yesterday’s paper, the new head of the Rural Payments Agency is an entirely different Tony Cooper from the one related to Yvette Cooper, the Housing Minister. Even for a column that prides itself on mischief-making this is a serious whopper. Sorry.

    people@thetimes.co.uk

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