Yahoo News Londoner's Diary: Theresa May is in the pop charts - Liar Liar
As partisans squabbled over whether Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn came out on top in their interview special on Sky News and Channel 4, The Londoner — weary of such toing and froing — chose to have a long hot soak to catch up with the popular music charts. In at number two on the iTunes singles chart, just behind Justin Bieber, was a surprising entrant — a fearsome political anthem taking down Theresa May.
Liar Liar GE2017, by the band Captain Ska, was only released on Friday but had quickly soared to second place by Monday. With lines such as “Saying they’re strong, and stable, won’t disguise / We’re still being taken for a ride” — the relaxed ska groove conceals the song’s topical bite.
Liar Liar has also had more than half a million hits on YouTube, and it isn’t your usual music video — it includes statistics about the number of children living in poverty. The song also features audio clips of Theresa May’s speeches on how she wouldn’t be calling an election, accompanied by horns and snare drums.
Jake Painter, the band’s producer and songwriter, told The Londoner: “I thought it might get into the top 40 but I am happily overwhelmed by its popularity — clearly it resonates with a lot of the British public!” But could the hit tip the election for Corbyn? Jake plays coy. “Music can be very powerful. I would like to think it made a positive progressive impact in some way.”
But its power may be limited by the fact that radio stations — including Capital FM and Heart — have refused to play the song on their chart shows, as the Ofcom regulator says stations must show impartiality.
Available for download at just 79p on the iTunes music store, Liar Liar GE2017 is truly for the many, not the few.
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The Londoner bumped into journalist James Fox last week, and he told us his Damien Hirst autobiography is almost ready. Fox co-wrote Keith Richards’s 2010 book Life and said Mick Jagger had objected to a description of his “tiny todger”. The Hirst will finish with a chapter on the artist’s Treasures from the Wreck of the Unbelievable show at this year’s Venice Biennale. Would there be tiny todgers in the new book, we asked? “Not this time,” Fox said.
Right man to predict the wrong result
VETERAN psephologist Sir David Butler has become a celebrity of the election at the age of 92, joining Twitter and appearing on Newsnight last Friday. Butler has commentated on every national vote since the war, and co-invented the swingometer. This time he predicts the Conservatives will win, but not by the margin they were hoping for. But a friend of Butler’s jokes that he doesn’t have the best record.
“He prides himself on having been wrong in his predictions since people first started to ask him,” they tell us. Butler insists he’s only got it wrong once or twice, but did predict a Labour government in 2015. So who’s wrong about getting it wrong?
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Quote of the day: “You seem to be a bit of a glum bucket”
Journalist Quentin Letts, pictured, coins The Londoner’s favourite new insult, speaking to Theresa May yesterday
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The Hay set aren’t too wild about Jezza
The Londoner headed to Wales for the Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts. After a day of talks and Q&As we unwound at the GQ/Land Rover dinner, hosted by Dylan Jones and attended by Tracey Emin. The pair came fresh from an onstage interview, during which they discussed the artist’s new political beliefs. “I might vote for the Women’s Equality Party,” she said. “To get one woman in the Houses of Parliament that’s just for women. Never Jeremy Corbyn: It’s not even his policies. It’s his attitude I don’t like. I can’t believe how he was about Brexit. I don’t like his attitude to people and his arrogance.”
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Theresa May believes in the power of fashion. For big political moments — think the Tory party leadership bid launch and her 12-point Brexit speech — she dons her Vivienne Westwood tartan suit. Curious, then, that she chose her red Amanda Wakeley suit for last night’s televised Battle for Number 10 showdown. Its most prominent outing? That hand-holding shot with Donald Trump at the White House. Who knows where Jeremy’s LBS (Little Black Suit) has been.
Find Freud’s best friend
Keep your eyes open for London’s most well-connected pooch. Vincent, pictured, the four-legged friend of PR guru Matthew Freud, has gone missing.
Last week Freud took to Instagram to seek help. Vincent, he posted, had wandered off while being walked in Hyde Park on Thursday morning — he was last seen in the Italian Fountain area — and had not returned. Freud has offered a £5,000 reward and has his sister Emma Freud, co-founder of Comic Relief, on the look-out.
Matthew fears that Vincent, a fox-red labrador, may have been a victim of dog-napping, with such incidents on the rise in the city in recent years as demand for pedigree dogs has led to an alarming increase in targeted thefts.
Emma led the online search back in 2015 when Vincent legged it in Belsize Park with Radio 1 DJ Nick Grimshaw, a guest at one of Freud’s famously raucous house parties, in hot pursuit. Kirstie Allsopp took the blame for losing Vincent then but he was home soon, though, tail between his legs.
Hopefully he’s already homeward bound.
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Tweet of the day: “British politics 2017. Two pensioners named Jeremy getting moderately cross with one another on a bank holiday.”
The Sun’s Harry Cole despairs at the same old, same old political landscape.
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Boys with toys? Definitely, maybe
You gotta roll with it ... Noel Gallagher turned 50 yesterday and the Oasis man celebrated in style with a weekend party at Aynhoe Park in Oxfordshire. Guests included Madonna, Damon Albarn and Bono, who snuck a lift on Noel’s Vespa. There was no looking back in anger — the pair seemed to be loving it.
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Cake of the day: a week after Melania Trump told the Pope she fed her husband Putizza, from Slovenia, manufacturers want official EU recognition. Will those caught selling it without the right ingredients get their just desserts?
