The Londoner: 'Media needs to warm to XR'

Extinction Rebellion’s protests may have drawn criticism last week but Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy told The Londoner the protest group is challenging the media — owing to its leaderless structure.

“They are not playing by any of the normal rules, so it’s kind of up to us to try and understand what they’re doing. They’re putting up fairly ordinary activists and the interviewers are treating them as if they were the leader of XR and they’re not — they’re just supporters of Extinction Rebellion. You’re not going to change anything about them, they’re not going to crumble and even if they do crumble it doesn’t matter because they’re just one person. That woman who was asked ‘does she have a TV’ and it went viral — it doesn’t matter.” Guru-Murthy, who hosts the Ways to Change the World podcast, said it was “a bit lazy to just duff people up without really trying to explore what they’re doing”. Could he be referring to broadcasters such as Andrew Neil or Piers Morgan?

Clive Lewis, a shadow Treasury minister, agrees, telling The Londoner that politicians who don’t support XR are “missing a trick”.

“There is a political culture where people are risk-averse. Extinction Rebellion is thinking very much outside the box and many MPs are just trying to see which way public opinion will swing.” Lewis did however say XR “called it wrong” on last week’s Canning Town Tube protest, adding: “They kind of need to be advised that we need to keep the public on-side.” Guru-Murthy feels that XR will take a different view.

“When they do things like [that] they’ll turn a lot of people against them but they seem to think it’s a win… and that’s interesting,” he said. “They think the fact that we will end up talking about XR is the win because we will then talk about climate change.”

Well, we’re all still talking about them. There’s no such thing as bad publicity.

Asparagus starter for young Nicholas

V&A chairman Nicholas Coleridge always wanted to be part of the in-crowd. As a schoolboy, “[satirist Craig Brown and I] started a club that really should have been called the Celebrity Club”, he told an audience at Daunt Books in Marylebone. “But we needed… a much more elevated name for it to be accepted by the powers [at Eton]. So we called it the Contemporary Arts Society...” The society hosted Bryan Ferry, Brian Eno and David Bowie’s wife Angie “who shocked everybody in the restaurant by eating asparagus in a terribly sexy way...” Hot tips.

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Diane Abbott says an election is coming — but fears it could turn nasty. Addressing a Stand Up to Racism event in Euston on Saturday, the shadow home secretary said she was worried immigrants will be made the scapegoat for economic problems and things could become “extremely unpleasant”. Prophetically, earlier in the day, Abbott faced abuse outside Parliament from far-Right protesters.

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Enough doom and gloom, says Billy Connolly, who says news needs “cheering up” and has a novel suggestion. “Move obituaries from the back to the front page,” he says. “They are the best thing in the paper... [they’re about] great things people have done.” A sign of how bad things have become?

Farewell to 'a lioness in a world of mogs'

Much-loved journalist Deborah Orr has died from cancer aged a mere 57 to an outpouring of tributes from writers she had mentored and befriended over the years.

“She was a lioness in a world full of mogs,” wrote Mariella Frostrup. The columnist kept her spikiness up until the end, eschewing soppy get-well cards in hospital for a comedy one with the message “hypochondriac”. Orr’s memoir, Motherwell, about her relationship with her mother and Scottish home town, is due out in January, and has already been getting rave reviews. One-time colleague Simon Hattenstone told the story of a young Orr meeting “shy, pipe-puffing” Guardian editor Peter Preston in a lift soon after she started at the paper. Asked Orr boldly: “Who the f*** are you?” “He loved her for it.”

Daniel sparkles at Mask premiere

On Friday the fashion crowd, artists and eccentrics attended the opening night of The Mask of Orpheus at The London Coliseum. “Living sculpture” Daniel Lismore designed the costumes for the production, which features more than 400,000 Swarovski crystals. Designer Julien Macdonald was there alongside author Tyne O’Connell, who arrived in an antique Regency sedan. Meanwhile, Louis Theroux, Andrew Scott and Rob Brydon attended the opening night of Lungs at The Old Vic, which saw The Crown co-stars Matt Smith and Claire Foy reunite on stage amid conflicting rumours of Smith’s casting in a “key role” in the upcoming Star Wars Episode IX.

Across town, Angellica Bell, Clara Amfo and Nicki Chapman attended The Lion King’s 20th anniversary gala performance at The Lyceum in support of the Elton John Aids Foundation and the Royal Academy of Music. The Londoner makes that three queens of style.

SW1A

Bookshop mystery mischief at Foyles as the book jacket on David Cameron’s memoir has been replaced with a realistic fake one. The prankster replicated the title font and main picture almost exactly and it even has a barcode. But there’s a giveaway — an endorsement from Donald Trump. “A great book. All the words. All the pages.” The president reading? Gotta be a hoax.

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Sally Bercow (below), whose husband, the Speaker John Bercow, is under fire from Brexiteers, was spotted in the public gallery in the Commons during Saturday’s Brexit showdown wearing a necklace bearing the words “I love EU”. Top trolling.

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A beanie-clad Dominic Cummings was apparently spotted lurking at Saturday’s People’s Vote rally in Parliament Square. An attendee tells The Londoner, Cummings was “like an evil portent of doom”. “We had a weird glance and then he disappeared into the crowd.”

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Quote of the day: 'I think that what that does internally is probably really damaging' Meghan Markle tried adopting British stuff upper lip, but thinks it a bad idea.