Londoner's Diary: Now Alan’s out, who’ll head up the Scott Trust?

What next for The Guardian (image: Ben Stansall)
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19 May 2016

The king is dead; long live the king. Or could that be queen? Last week former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger confirmed that he would not return to chair the Scott Trust, its governing body, a position he was destined for. So who now could take the throne?

Several names have reached the ear of The Londoner, all already on the board of the trust. One is Alex Graham, former CEO of Wall to Wall, the production company behind programmes such as Who Do You Think You Are?

The safe pair of hands though is deemed to be Sir Anthony Salz. A member of the trust since 2009, the former Freshfields lawyer has one helluva CV: he was vice-chairman of the BBC for two years and oversaw its remuneration committee. He’s also on the trusts of the Eden Project, the Royal Opera House and human-rights organisation Reprieve. But does that leave time for the top job?

Another, more curious suggestion is whether Emily Bell might be persuaded back from across the pond full-time. Bell, former Guardian digital editor, is now a director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University in New York. She is well-liked and cut from a similar cloth to Rusbridger, and may be the unity candidate.

The third name doing the rounds is that of Will Hutton, a big beast already on the board. The economist and former editor of The Guardian’s sister paper The Observer is now principal of Hertford College, Oxford, a mile away from Alan Rusbridger’s new berth at Lady Margaret Hall.

Liz Forgan remains as chair while “the Scott Trust embarks on an open and transparent process to appoint her successor”. We look forward to the leaks.

***

Rusbridger, meanwhile, admits a sense of nostalgia for the old days. “Do I miss editing?” he asks in this week’s New Statesman. “Not much... but listening to my former colleague Luke Harding describe to a spellbound Reuters Institute seminar at Nuffield College in Oxford last week how the Guardian and Süddeutsche Zeitung (and others) pulled off the Panama Papers story did provoke a twinge of journalistic adrenalin. Or, to put it another way, jealousy.”

Spread the news of Jezza's latest jam

To last night’s fundraising dinner for Labour Students at Brasserie Blanc on the South Bank, where attendees included MPs Gloria de Piero and Jon Ashworth, who co-hosted. The auction was compered by Stella Creasy MP and the prizes generously donated by Labour leaders past and present.

Among them were a signed bottle of champagne from Gordon Brown, a vinyl single of Things Can Only Get Better signed by Tony Blair, and homemade jam from Jeremy Corbyn.

Excited bidders called out: “What flavour is the jam?” Answer: “No flavour declared.” That was because, it turns out, Jeremy has not yet made the jam. The Labour leader plans to make it later in the year when the fruits are ripe. Jam tomorrow...?

Don't mention Brexit to Bob

Over to the Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge last night for a start of the season supper at its Rivea restaurant. Guests laughed along at the speech given by Rory Bremner but, as is now customary, the topic on everyone’s lips was the referendum.

Over to nightclub owner Guy Pelly. Which way is he going? “I’m swinging but let’s talk about Brexit,” he quipped. “People are warning us about recession if we leave, but there will always be recessions. Personally I don’t spend extravagantly. In the event of a recession my lifestyle won’t change too drastically”.

For a rather different take, over to Sir Bob Geldof. “You’d want to be a f***ing lunatic to vote out! Of f***ing course I’m not f***ing voting out.”

***

Last night The Londoner whizzed through Fortnum & Mason’s sweetie aisle for the launch of Natasha Corrett’s new cookbook, Honestly Healthy in a Hurry. The Instagram-trained quasi-professional chef was joined by her mother, interior designer Kelly Hoppen, cook Jasmine Hemsley and healthy-eating Jo Wood. “I don’t eat dairy and I don’t eat meat,” Wood said. “I pick a salad in the garden in Camden and I swear that when I eat it I can feel my blood tingle through my body.” The Londoner couldn’t help but notice, though, that rather than the beetroot cocktails, Jo’s hand reached for a glass of champagne.

Grayson captures the City Spirit

Tonight, Grayson Perry: All Man concludes the artist’s exploration of modern-day masculinity for Channel 4 with a look at the City, where 84 per cent of senior bankers are male. As with the two previous episodes, on cage fighters and prisoners, Perry approached his targets with the ambition of dissecting them in anthropological terms, to fuel ideas for an artwork that he then presents to the men he has met.

After interviewing an investment-fund manager who described the 2008 financial crash as “the most marvellous time”, Perry was led to create an enormous glazed ceramic vase titled Object in Foreground, pictured, embossed with images of banknotes, designer trinkets and the faces of City workers and George Osborne, which may resemble an urn to some viewers and something slightly more phallic to others.

“There’s no disputing what it is,” says Perry, who chose to display it at The Shard. “It’s a big cock… I was thinking of an object that could hold its own among all the marble of the City lobbies but drew attention to the unquestioned maleness of its world.”

Munira plays the bus driver card

Out with one culture in with another. Last night Sadiq Khan was at City Hall for a reception of arts grandees and explained that, while he was missing his team Liverpool in the Europa Cup final, “culture is the DNA of London — the glue which holds it together”. He also namechecked “my brother, the dancer Akram Khan ... just joking”.

The previous night, across town at the ICA, Boris Johnson’s departing deputy mayor for arts and education, Munira Mirza, said her farewells, with her old boss in attendance. “A little known fact,” she said, looking over her shoulder at Boris. “I was also the child of a Pakistani bus driver.”

In fact, he worked in a factory, but that’s not quite as catchy.

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