The Londoner: Ticked-off Jo: "I've lost part of my self"

It has been years since Jo Malone, the beauty and lifestyle icon, sold her company in a multi-million pound deal.

But she is still suffering from the consequences of the decision: she can’t even get her identity verified on Twitter.

Malone sold Jo Malone, known for its candles, perfumes and creams, to Estée Lauder in 1999.

She remained with the company as creative director until 2006, when she departed — with a list of rigid conditions. These prevented her working in the industry for five years. She also lost her rights to the name Jo Malone despite, of course, it being her own.

“I went to Twitter and said, ‘Can I have a blue tick?’” she says, referring to the symbol that assures followers that you are who you say you are.

“And they came back and said, ‘No you can’t have it.’ And they still, to this day, say ‘No, no, no, you can’t have it.’

“And yet the brand is allowed that tick — I find that really difficult if I’m honest, because the authenticity of the creator has to be the priority in my opinion.

“There were all those little moments that were quite shocking for me,” adds Malone. “And realising that the brand was bigger than the person.

“Now I’m used to it and it doesn’t bother me, but in the beginning it was a really hard thing.

“I think that anyone who has their name associated with a business and sales — we’re a very minority group of people — you do sell part of yourself.”

Designer Tamara Mellon ran into trouble with her eponymous brand. She claimed that her former company, Jimmy Choo, had made it difficult for her to source “luxury leather products”, alleging that restrictions were imposed on leather suppliers in Florence.

But the case was thrown out in 2016. Ironically, her purchase of the Jimmy Choo company meant that shoe designer Jimmy Choo himself was given his own restrictions.

Malone, a former Evening Standard columnist and now founder of Jo Loves, was speaking to Matt Alagiah on Monocle Radio.

Bad blood and good love in life of Claire

The dispute is not over between biographer Claire Tomalin and broadcaster Andrew Neil, her former editor at The Sunday Times. The pair did not get along and Tomalin left the newspaper. “I haven’t spoken to him since,” she reveals. “His role was not pretty.” Tomalin, however, says she keeps it civil when it comes to former lovers. “I get along with everyone I’ve had an affair with,” she tells The Penguin podcast. That includes Martin Amis. “I saw him very recently at Ian McEwan’s birthday party, which was lovely. It was nice to see him.” How healthy.

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Jess Phillips MP often receives gifts at her office. “I had to take home a whole thing of Krispy Kreme the other day,” she told political site Playbook, which has been shadowing her. They spotted ‘thank you’ cards from constituents on her office wall, among them a child’s drawing of a house, entitled “my dream home”. “They were homeless,” Phillips explained.

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TORY MP Ross Thomson and his best buddy in the Commons, Danielle Rowley, Labour MP for Midlothian, were recently on a plane back to London following a sitting of the Scottish affairs committee. “We talked about how we like Brexit like we like our men,” Thomson reveals. “We prefer it to be hard rather than soft.”

Purple Peter pays a Princely tribute

Another evening of party-hopping last night. Model Adwoa Aboah was at Selfridges, toasting the launch of designer Mimi Wade’s new collection inspired by Polly Pocket, the toy brand from the Nineties.

In Covent Garden, the Hospital Club launched a new exhibition of Attitude magazine’s best covers, which marks the release of the 300th issue. Strictly Come Dancing professional AJ Pritchard was there with newly announced contestant Dr Ranj Singh. Campaigner Peter Tatchell, who has appeared on the cover, was eye-catching in a purple suit. “It cost 65 quid,” he told us. “It’s my tribute to Prince.”

Publisher Darren Styles, who owns Attitude, said the late George Michael “told more to Attitude than he had his therapist in 10 years”, adding: “He said he was a gay man and a slut, and that we should be OK with that.” Over at The London Edition in Fitzrovia, meanwhile, model Neelam Gill, beauty guru Patricia Bright and Tongue singer MNEK were at a MAC Lipstick party.

SW1A

A Labour source claims that the real reason that Jeremy Corbyn was nettled by the Wireless festival — he complained about the noise — was that he was “jealous because nobody turned up to JezzFest”, the nickname for the unsuccessful Labour Live event in June. We’ve asked the organisers of Wireless if they’ve heard such grumbling but we’re yet to hear back.

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Halfway through recess, MPs cannot resist drifting back to Westminster. Spotted in summery attire was Tory former minister Andrew Percy, Labour’s Chris Bryant in a pair of retro Adidas trainers and Stephen Pound stomping purposefully through Portcullis House. Staffers are dressing down while the house isn’t sitting. Nautical stripes and chinos are the order of the day.

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Bournemouth’s Highcliff Hotel is famed for hosting Liberal Democrat conferences. Now it’s preparing for the seventh annual Good Funeral Awards in September. How apt.

Cut down to size

Gordon Brown delivered a storming speech this week, in which he told Jeremy Corbyn to fix the “running sores” in the party. Titled “First among equals”, the talk in Edinburgh on Wednesday night was advertised on the International Book Festivals website with an unattributed quote describing him as “one of the most formidable Chancellors that Britain has ever seen”. Steerpike has discovered that the quote came from a review by the Guardian’s Andrew Rawnsley but the same review also included the line “for such a clever man, Brown can be surprisingly dim about how politics works”.

Sister Sledge — made up of guest vocalist Tanya Tiet and sisters Kim and Debbie Sledge — paid tribute to Aretha Franklin last night during a performance in Mayfair’s Grosvenor Square. The trio sang the late soul superstar’s hits Think and Rock Steady at the concert, part of Grosvenor’s inaugural summer event.