Londoner's Diary: Will the Queen take a dim view of new Vogue?

In today's Diary: Zadie Smith lambasts "lower middle class" Queen  / Adwoah Aboah's surprise front cover / Mr Johnson goes to Washington / Is the Beeb's Offshore investment too much?  
Author Zadie Smith (Getty Images)
8 November 2017

EDWARD Enninful, proud of being awarded an OBE by the Queen, has devoted three pages of his first Vogue to Her Maj, with an essay on her by Zadie Smith, pictured. But how will the Queen like being called “suburban” and “distinctly lower middle-class”?

Smith, author of NW and White Teeth and a republican writes: “The thing that has always struck me as deeply odd about the idea of Elizabeth II is the fact that she appears, in our mental picture of her, to be distinctly lower middle-class. It’s strange: all her children are recognisable aristocratic types. Yet around the Queen there hangs this persistent aura of Mrs Windsor.”

Of her voice, Smith observes, “the only thing I can compare it to is the kind of voice your mum puts on when someone important is on the phone”.

And the evidence: the Queen’s love of soap operas. “Those things upon which we are informed she looks kindly are... telling,” she says. “EastEnders, cornflakes, most cakes, gin and Dubonnet (But no fancy wines and nothing gourmet).”

She peppers this article with a reference to the “suburban spirit of the Queen”. Is Zadie being affectionate or a snob herself? It’s hard to tell. She concludes with her personal experience of meeting the Queen in 2004. She was in a line-up with a “certain model from Croydon”.

“My head was swimming, but through the mental haze I am quite certain I heard the following unbeatable snatch of comic business: ‘And what do you do?’ ‘I’m a model’. ‘Ah. Is that hard?’”

Does the Queen have a subscription to Vogue, The Londoner asked Buckingham Palace? They declined to comment. Perhaps it’s not her style.

Cover was a surprise to Adwoah

In Vogue: Adwoa Aboah parties with Kate Moss and Stella McCartney (Dave Benett/Getty Images)

Congratulations to Adwoa Aboah, the cover girl on new Vogue editor Edward Enninful’s first edition. A great choice but even Aboah didn’t know about it in advance. When we bumped into her at Claridge’s last week the 25-year-old model said: “We don’t know, but by Tuesday we’ll know.” She has already appeared on Vogue Italia but Adwoa didn’t think Enninful, who’d kept the cover star a secret from all the models he’d shot, would choose her: “I don’t think I got it, I really don’t,” she smiled nervously.

Enninful seems to be a master of keeping a secret. When we spoke to him at the Evening Standard’s Progress 1000 party, he teased us: “It could be Ru” — Ru is Enninful’s Boston terrier. “But I don’t think he can sit still.

Quote of the day

"Jeremy doesn't believe in leaders. I don't know how you get over that." Actress and former MP Glenda Jackson, interviewed in Vogue, ponders a Corbyn contradiction

The show goes on - but over the pond

WILL the last actress to leave the UK turn the lights off? New bar and lounge The Perception at The W Hotel opened last night, but many guests may not stick around. They included actress Samantha Barks, who’s off to Broadway to play the Julia Roberts role in a Pretty Woman musical: “I don’t think I’ll be dying my hair the famous red. I’m just going to wear wigs.” Humans actress Gemma Chan was also in attendance, but won’t be in London for long if her new film Crazy Rich Asians cements her place in Hollywood. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said with a smile. “We’ll see!”

Serious Fun at the Roundhouse

Clea Newman with Stereophonics Kelly Jones and Adam Zindani (Getty Images)

Actors Michael Sheen and Dame Diana Rigg were at the Serious Fun Gala at the Roundhouse last night, raising funds for the charity set up by the late Paul Newman. His daughter, Clea Newman, flew in to keep the legacy alive but it’s not her first time in London. “When I was about five or six my family and I used to ride in Hyde Park,” she recalled. “I got put on one of the lead ponies, and it took off and I was taken all over Hyde Park. I thought it was fantastic but everyone else freaked out.” The second Newman to do their own stunts.

Tweet of the day

The Thick of It writer Simon Blackwell is worried what Potus will do with more tweet capacity

Will Boris go down a bomb?

Mr Johnson goes to Washington? Boris Johnson (Photo by Steve Back/Getty Images)

NO ONE could accuse Boris Johnson of having two conflicting opinions on the same subject — could they? Today the Foreign Secretary jets off to Washington to try and save the Iran nuclear deal which Trump is backtracking on. “The Iran deal makes the world safer,” an on-script Johnson said this morning. “It’s working and has so far resulted in Iran giving up 95 per cent of its uranium stockpile.”

One hopes the American politicians he’s meeting don’t Google his previous interventions in the debate. In a 2006 Daily Telegraph opinion piece entitled “Give Iran the bomb: it might make the regime more pliable”, Boris said: “we could turn this whole thing on its head.” How? The West, says Boris, could warm up relations with Tehran by offering to help them build a bomb. “Perhaps the Americans could actually assist with the technology,” he mused. “This may seem faintly barmy... but simply an idea I am running up the flagpole.”

At least this argument might make him popular in Iran, which he is due to visit later in the year.

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HAS the BBC over-invested in its Paradise Papers investigation? Asking the question yesterday was journalist James Ball, a veteran of both WikiLeaks and the Snowden files, who noted that the BBC News homepage was focusing on the celebrity tax story while downpaging stories on Boris Johnson and Priti Patel. “Paradise Papers a good story, and BBC has put 6+ months work in it,” he said. “But surely should also reflect it is a *very* busy news cycle today.” Over to you BBC.

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Missive of the day: Dr John Doherty from Austria writes to the Financial Times, “Sir, You report a shortage of butter in France, but not whether it will spread.

Our kind of Guy

FIREWORKS in the Commons as Labour activist Tom Wilson snapped a poster hanging in Westminster yesterday. “Parliament warning its staff about the ever-present threat that is Guido Fawkes,” he wrote. Yes, the political gossip site is causing a lot of trouble online, isn’t it?

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