Jeremy King's favourite maître d' quits Arlington after a week

Londoner’s Diary

London’s best new restaurant Arlington, in St James’s, has been drawing glamorous diners in the weeks since it officially opened. But just a week in, the place’s famed maître d’ Jesus Adorno has handed in his notice. Adorno is an old accomplice of Arlington’s founder Jeremy King and the pair worked together for 38 years on its previous iteration, Le Caprice, the restaurant beloved by Princess Diana which occupied the same site. But now Adorno says he is resigning because “it wasn’t a good fit for me and I decided it wasn’t right”. We tried to quiz Adorno further on the reasons for his departure but he was unforthcoming.

Royal job alert

Are the Buckingham Palace press team feeling the pressure? After weeks of wild speculation about Kate Middleton, the Royal Household has put out a job advert for a communications assistant. Key responsibilities include “proactive and reactive communication”, and candidates should have “an eye for detail”. For such a busy job, you’d think they might pay more than the London Living Wage, but the lucky candidate will receive just over £25k a year. Who fancies it?

Two’s a company, Lee’s a crowd

The Reform Party have shared a campaign video of their new recruit Lee Anderson riding an open-top bus around his Ashfield constituency with party leader Richard Tice. We’re not sure why, since Anderson refuses to face the seat’s voters in a by-election. In any case, Tice described an “amazing response” from Ashfield locals over the weekend, with “lots of hooting and tooting and waving” from passers-by as the bus trailed around. The pictures tell a different story — it wasn’t exactly a Champions League victory parade. And of the perhaps dozens of Ashfield locals who greeted Anderson and Tice, not all were full of praise. We saw a video of one woman approaching Anderson to ask: “How come you’re such a f***ing w****r, Lee?” A fan of straight-talking politics, Anderson can hardly complain.