The Londoner: BBC scramble for the new QT host

It’s the last call for entries to fill the Question Time chair. David Dimbleby is stepping down at the end of this year and there is a hot contest within the BBC to replace the veteran anchorman. Yesterday Fran Unsworth, BBC Head of News, had a final trawl for candidates before entries close on Wednesday.

“We are looking for someone who is a highly respected journalist and presenter, a recognisable figure of authority who has a deep and broad knowledge of UK and international news and current affairs,” she writes in an internal email addressed to colleagues and seen by The Londoner.

The job description runs to a daunting five pages, specifying that candidates must, “(Be) able to work with high profile guests while maintaining a very professional, calm and credible approach... Strong interpersonal skills and natural warmth will enable you to guide the programme through often heated debates.”

Candidates are also expected to possess a grasp of BBC health and safety. Suddenly Dimbleby is looking worth the reported £15,000 he is currently paid per episode. The rewards on offer for his replacement are rather lost in the BBC’s complicated pay structure. The description states that it is within BBC pay band “FP” but the BBC could not confirm what that meant this morning, telling us that the presenter’s payment would most likely be handled by the production company behind Question Time, Mentorn Scotland.

Despite this new attempt to wrangle interest, the odds-on favourite to replace Dimbleby is still Newsnight’s Kirsty Wark, who lives near the show’s Glasgow base and has confirmed that she has applied. “My chapeau is in the ring along with a lot of other people,” she said. This latest email, though, suggests it is far from a done deal. Time for an outsider to make a final push?

The golden age of f*** off etiquette

Artist and sculptor Maggi Hambling misses the good old days, when she and famous friends such as Francis Bacon would make mischief at the famous Colony Room in Soho.

“I rather loved the idea that everyone would tell each other to f*** off and everything else one night then turn up the next day and still be friends,” she recalls in this month’s Spectator Life. “I think that’s good. And all that’s gone now. The way everyone pussyfoots around everything now, and this cursed political correctness.”

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Stephen Fry has come forward as a secret fan of rap music. “I think it’s fantastic. I know it sounds awful coming from some ancient, ripe figure — but there is no doubt there is extraordinary skill and something deeply satisfying,” he says. “Kendrick Lamar is a genius; Eminem is a genius.”

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Those who despair at the Christmas displays already in supermarkets and department stores have a champion in Parliament. Louise Haigh, Labour MP for Sheffield Heeley, wants them gone. “I actually think we should legislate that this nonsense is not allowed in shops till after Bonfire Night”, she vents.

The Kane gang assemble for his latest collection

London tailor Joshua Kane welcomed friends and well-wishers to The Mandrake Hotel in Fitzrovia last night for a preview of his latest collection, Ceremony.

Singer Sonique, presenter Alex Zane and his fiancée, artist Nettie Wakefield, were among those sipping tequila Enemigo cocktails as they perused Kane’s new designs in the hotel’s courtyard.

Elliot Gleave — AKA Example — also made an appearance with his wife, Australian model Erin McNaught. The rapper, whose hits include Changed the Way You Kissed Me and Kickstarts, was recently dropped from his label Columbia Records.

But despite not enjoying a hit in four years, Example hasn’t lost hope: “Now I’ve got the freedom. I’m my own boss,” he says.

“If I put a song out and it doesn’t do well we can move on to the next one, whereas at a major label if a song doesn’t perform, the bosses sit there and re-think everything.”

SW1A

Great news. Hampstead and Kilburn MP Tulip Siddiq is expecting her second child. Due in the new year, if it’s a girl, Tulip will continue the floral trend — her firstborn is called Azalea — and if it’s a boy? “The name Jeremy has been vetoed already by my in-laws who are Tory supporters,” she told us this morning. “They were more receptive to Keir but still reluctant.”

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Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab’s letter to his Labour counterpart, Keir Starmer — which sought “urgent clarificiation on Labour’s Brexit policy” — has been ridiculed as a waste of time and “silly” by Exeter MP Ben Bradshaw. But there’s another problem: he addresses it to “Mr Starmer” rather than the correct “Sir Keir”.

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What could have been in Theresa May’s patriotic Union Jack satchel at the EU leaders’ dinner in Salzburg last night? MP Stewart McDonald has a theory: “Steakbakes from Greggs.” Britain’s finest.

Quote of the day

"They're usually people trying to fight battles from 30 years ago and prove that they were right"

Former Home Secretary Alan Johnson says he avoids political memoirs. Even though he wrote his own in 2016.

Bake Off's Nadiya cuts to the chaff

TV cook Nadiya Hussain, who made a birthday cake for The Queen in 2016, felt that the opportunity was an act against Islamophobia. “Everybody thinks it: ‘Oh God, who let the Muslim woman near the Queen with a knife?’” she recalls on food podcast Simple. “Let’s address that elephant in the room, because they did. And I’m not going to hide about behind it anymore: I have to be the one that has to answer for a Muslim when they do something.”