The Londoner: Anti-lockdown Cupid Toby Young undeterred

COMMENTATOR and contrarian Toby Young says he hopes his dating forum for people opposed to social distancing will be a “great success” despite being mocked for the venture.

Over the weekend, Young set up a page called “Love in a Covid Climate” on his Lockdown Sceptics website, but was inundated with trolls playing on a stereotype of the naysayers.

One such post claims to seek an “Albion-loving lady 35-50 who would be open to dressing up as Winston Churchill and spanking me with a cricket bat”. Another says their “interests include Brexit and admonishing people for using the wrong skip at the council dump”. One more warned: “Might be a while before we can date, I’ve got this terrible cough.”

Young told The Londoner: “Several users have suggested I set up a dating forum because it’s important to them that whoever they go out with shares their scepticism about the Government’s management of the crisis, particularly the lockdown policy.”

Young insisted he found the Mickey-taking “very funny” and planned to put it in his daily blog update. Passion unmasked.

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JAMIE OLIVER’S restaurant empire, including almost all his Jamie’s Italians, went bust last year, losing 1,000 jobs, but the celebrity chef is keen to try again. “I’ve never felt more fit to run a restaurant business, ironically,” he tells the Ways to Change the World podcast. Oliver admitted: “I haven’t got the funds to do it, yet”. Will anyone pony up?

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CAROL KIRKWOOD was live from Greenwich Park just before 8 o’clock this morning when the weather presenter told BBC Breakfast viewers: “The sun is beating down. We’ve seen lots of doggers.” She hastily explained: “Not doggers of course, lots of dog walkers and joggers.” She later apologised. A bona fide marmalade dropper.

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SW1A

THE Prime Minister said civil servants should be back in the office by the start of August to set an example. “Have they heard there’s a pandemic on?” one told us, saying no one was being asked to come in. Another at a different department said: “It’s a phased thing just like most other organisations with big offices”. More hot air from Johnson? Surely not.

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David Lammy shares a picture his wife took of him and his dog “having a mid-morning snooze … in my Guyanese Amerindian hammock”. When a lounger just won’t do.

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At the other end of the garden furniture scale SNP MP John Nicolson showed off a picture of a wooden chair with a shattered seat, declaring: “The diet starts on Monday.”

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Cara is out-goofed as big days arrive

“I’m not cute, you are,” model Cara Delevingne told her actor pal Margaret Qualley. How to look good goofy. Elsewhere, dancer Oti Mabuse celebrated her 30th in a sea of balloons, Gillian Anderson thanked fans for their birthday wishes to her, while singer Beverley Knight was reunited with her dog, telling fans “and it feels so GOOD”. Puppy love.