Londoner's Diary: I back #MeToo up to a point, says Lisa Stansfield

Lisa Stansfield is the latest woman to share her story of harassment, though she’s troubled by more serious incidents being mixed with lesser ones.

In a new interview, the singer, pictured, claims a director at her modelling school put his hand on her leg when she was 15, and promised her a cover of teen mag Blue Jeans. She slapped him. But she’s only sympathetic to #MeToo to a point.

“If I was an 18-year-old girl in Hollywood, and nothing was really working out for me, and Harvey Weinstein asked me to come and watch him have a shower, I’d f***king watch him have a shower,” she told the New Statesman. “There are a lot of women who would do that. When they complain about things like that, they’re trivialising everything that those women who have been seriously abused have been through.” Jilly Cooper, Catherine Deneuve and Joanna Lumley have all sounded notes of caution about #MeToo. Fingers crossed the sisterhood wins in the end.

Studios unite for Bafta afterparty

The rise of the #Me Too movement was bolstered, in part, by allegations of assault against Weinstein, and the accusations caused shockwaves through the film world. Women will wear black to the Baftas this week in solidarity with #MeToo but there’s another knock-on effect, as the film mogul’s annual afterparty has been cancelled.

A united front has risen in its place: for the first time, studios including Sony Pictures, Lionsgate, Entertainment One and Twentieth Century Fox have joined forces to throw a party expected to take over as the place to be seen this year. Bafta nominees including Sally Hawkins and Kristin Scott Thomas will surely pop in for a Grey Goose cocktail. A toast to a new united party.

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Get your tent, wellies and copy of the Treaty of Rome (1957) ready. This summer, as Glastonbury lies fallow, pro-EU Best for Britain steps into the breach. Politico says the campaign group has teamed up with a “Remain-leaning music promoter” to hold a mind-altering, sorry, mind-changing gig over August bank holiday. But after Leave donor Arron Banks tried and failed to organise BPop Live, a pro-Brexit concert before the referendum, success isn’t certain. We’re sure they have a sound plan.

A pheasant jolly for shooting Tories

SLIGHTLY OFF timing by Jonathan Djanogly and Mark Spencer. As Labour announces its manifesto for the improvement of animal welfare, the Commons register of MPs’ financial interests reveals that the two Tories made it to Derbyshire’s Catton Hall in December for a day of pheasant and partridge shooting.

They attended with Conservative veterans Sir Graham Brady, Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown and Bill Wiggin. The £825-a-head bill was footed by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation.

In today’s Morning Star, Brighton Kemptown MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle criticises the five for “running around fields in multi-coloured jerkins... letting their guns do the talking”. We hear it was more of a gilet, really.

Quote of the day

‘We are trying to find an Infernos equivalent in LA, and I don’t think it exists’

Actress and former south London resident Margot Robbie speaks of her quest to find a replacement for Infernos, her favourite Clapham nightclub

On eve of Baftas, California salutes Brits

AHEAD of Sunday’s Baftas, The Londoner kick-started the film celebrations at the Rosewood Hotel in Holborn, which hosted the Newport Beach Film Festival’s UK honours.

Sir Patrick Stewart, Gurinder Chadha, Celia Imrie and Andy Serkis all won Icon awards, while Poldark star Eleanor Tomlinson won the coveted Breakout award. The 25-year-old actress used her acceptance speech to reveal that Cupid didn’t shoot his arrow of love her way on Valentine’s Day. She said: “I didn’t get a Valentine, so this more than makes up for it.” Prizes beat presents any day.

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Author Christina Oxenberg launched her new book, Dynasty, at Daunt Books in Fulham. The tome follows her as she gets to the bottom of her Serbian heritage and links to royalty but evidently hers is not the only regal must-read: historian and biographer Hugo Vickers arrived with a copy of one of his royal books, which he gave as a gift to Koo Stark, the photographer and ex of Prince Andrew.

Perhaps she was checking if she had warranted a mention.

Snap, crackle and goth

WHEN you are a talented and accomplished photographer, not much makes you jump. But Iona Wolff whose exhibition Polaroids launched in Soho last night, said there was one celebrity who gave her a fright.

“He was waiting behind me,” Wolff said. “I swung round and there was Marilyn Manson. I looked up and saw that terrifying eye — I jumped.”

Par for the course for the goth rocker with the zombie-look contact lens? “No, he was being very polite, queuing to have his photo taken, even though he didn’t have to.”

Wolff, whose work has been showcased in the pages of The Londoner’s Diary, said Lady Gaga was her favourite celebrity to snap: “She was fizzing with ideas and ultra responsive.”

Her exhibition of humanising portraits of celebrities including Alexa Chung, Amber Valletta and Jared Leto is being held at the WeAreCuts salon — appropriate, as Wolff’s early dream was to be a hairdresser. Its loss is photography’s gain, but a close shave nonetheless.

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Stain of the day: ahead of the launch of her new beauty line, Trinny Woodall says she used to wear so much fake tan as a teen that she was asked to bring her own sheets on sleepovers.

Short-film fans flock to St James

WINTER scenes at St Ermin’s Hotel in St James’s, where Snowflake by Roland Kennedy won the inaugural Autograph Collection Hotels Short Film Award. Downton Abbey actress Laura Carmichael, centre, one of the judges, joined the party with fellow thesps Gemma Chan and Vicky McClure.