Londoner's Diary: Corbyn snubs a prize for being an Oldie hero

No response: Jeremy Corbyn
Ian Forsyth / Getty
4 February 2016

Does Jeremy Corbyn have a scheduling problem? First he declined to attend a meeting of the Privy Council — he was holidaying in Scotland but managed it on a second attempt — and now he’s rejected an even more hallowed invitation: a chance to be honoured at the annual Oldie of the Year Awards.

The ceremony took place at Simpson’s-in-the-Strand on Tuesday, with Timothy West, Prunella Scales and Germaine Greer among those honoured for their contributions to, well, being old. But according to the Oldie magazine’s editor, Alexander Chancellor, the Labour leader didn’t fancy accepting such an esteemed plaudit. “It has become rare for anyone to turn down an Oldie award,” Chancellor writes in this week’s Spectator, “but we got no response from Jeremy Corbyn when we sought to honour him for his astonishing victory in the Labour leadership election. Perhaps he felt that, at 66, he wasn’t old enough to qualify; or perhaps he feared that acceptance of the award would expose him to mockery. On the other hand, he may just have felt he was too busy.”

The Londoner understands that reshuffles, allotments and feeding El Gato take up a lot of time, but Chancellor points out that other highly respected figures still see it as an honour.

“Busy he certainly is,” Chancellor concedes. “But hardly busier than Aung San Suu Kyi, who on Monday inaugurated Burma’s first move towards democracy when she led members of her National League for Democracy into the Burmese parliament to take their seats. Yet none of this prevented the 70-year-old Nobel Prize-winner from accepting an Oldie award as Democrat of the Year.”

She must be better at multi-tasking.

***

To the Fleming Collection in Mayfair, for an exhibition of works by Joseph Crawhall from Glasgow’s Burrell Museum. Permanent Secretary to the Treasury Sir Nicholas Macpherson was among the guests — what are his plans when he retires in April after 10 years in the hot seat? “I’m going on a very long holiday but it won’t be to Barbados because I can’t afford it.” The gold-plated pension can’t have been as much as we have all been led to believe, then.

To Leave or Leave.EU is the question ...

How bizarre that a Spectator article today called “Fighting over the crumbs”, by James Forsyth, fails to mention prolific Eurosceptic Dominic Cummings, who is among the founding members of Vote Leave, as opposed to the Leave.EU campaign.

Forsyth says: “There are plenty of political figures involved in the Out campaign but too many seem more interested in squabbling among themselves than in taking the fight to the In campaign.”

He namechecks all sorts but not Cummings, who resigned from the Vote Leave board after in-fighting within the organisation. Cynics may wonder if Cummings isn’t named in the article because he’s married to Spectator deputy editor Mary Wakefield.

Toasting Finch's pre-BAFTA bash

The Londoner loves a good party and a good book, so a good book about a good party was right up our Soho street. Last night businessman Charles Finch launched The Night Before Bafta, a collection of photographs and anecdotes about his annual pre-ceremony dinner, with a party at Maison Assouline. Guests included journalists Mariella Frostrup and Rachel Johnson, above, models Yasmin Le Bon and Laura Bailey, and actress Daisy Lewis, right. Finch was clearly training his party-throwing successor: his nine-year-old daughter Oona was on guest list duty. Start them young!

Tears as French oignons lose the ‘i’

Ground-breaking news from across the Channel, as the French reveal plans to drop circumflexes and hyphens in several words — and to remove “i” from oignon.

Those who know their orthographic alliums will now have the option to write about “ognons”, in a bid to simplify the language. From September it will be compulsory in France to teach the new spellings in schools, as part an overhaul of 2,400 words. But will French restaurants be in the soup over their classic starter of soupe a ... l’ognon? A sous chef from restaurant chain Aubaine told us: “If the French decide they don’t want to keep the ‘i’ in onion then as we’re a French brasserie we would change it in accordance.” Meanwhile, the Lycée Français in South Kensington wouldn’t comment before speaking to the French Embassy. There’s no “i” in team either, you know ...

Asterix translator Anthea Bell, meanwhile, emails in shock: “Are the French seriously proposing to take the “i” out of the first syllable of oignon? Usually they are ultra-conservative, unlike us, the English, who are always trying to reform English spelling — one Sir Thomas Smith, writing in Latin in the reign of Elizabeth I, already proposed to do so but it never works. Makes you wonder whether the French know their onions; they have a similar phrase of their own, occupe-toi de tes oignons = mind your own business.”

***

Where is the true seat of power? The Londoner usually visits The Wolseley to look for political bigwigs but we were split last night when two factions went elsewhere. Boris Johnson dined at The Ivy, while US Secretary of State John Kerry went to fish favourite Scott’s in Mayfair with Philip Hammond. An excellent choice if the Foreign Secretary wanted to impress but who paid the bill?

Second coming of cheesus

Cheese-fanciers rejoice: 2016 could be the year Parmesan custard is returned to the masses. Rowley Leigh left thousands cheesed off when he closed beloved Bayswater restaurant Le Café Anglais, home to the best-selling dish.

But Leigh is making a comeback. In October we spotted him in chefs’ whites at Soho House in Dean Street. That’s fine for the flat white-swilling, MacBook-hammering members

but hard cheese for the average savoury custard-loving Joe.

Fear not: now Leigh is taking charge of Soho House’s new Italian-French restaurant, Café Monico on Shaftesbury Avenue, accessible to anyone who can brave the group-discount musical crowd. Prepare your Instagram feed for the cheesy custard deluge.

Delay of the day to Lord Lucan, whose obituary emblazons the front page of today’s Times with two, simple words: “At last.”

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