Yahoo News Londoner's Diary: ‘Freddie’ Pesto sends shivers down the spine
Any way the wind blows doesn’t really matter to him. Storm Doris may have been blowing hard last night but it was ITV News political editor Robert Peston who provided the thunder and lightning. In a corner of Oxford, Peston belted out Bohemian Rhapsody with the Jericho Singers choir.
An eyewitness watched Peston pacing in the wings of St Barnabas Church. Was this just fantasy? No. “Before you knew it the Great Pesto was there — Freddie Mercury re-incarnated or was it Freddy Krueger?” they report. Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see.
Pesto is well known for his remarkable voice: its famous variegated pronunciation has drawn both admiration and fury. Last night his halting delivery met unanimous acclaim, although “the top notes were just a bit too much for the chorister from Crouch End”, we hear.
Poor boy Peston was there because of a bet. He promised Radio 4 PM presenter Eddie Mair that he would sing the Queen classic with a choir back in 2015. Now that challenge is complete. Some of his Wayne’s World moment will be on Radio 4 tonight.
How did he find it? Peston himself emailed the Londoner this afternoon. "As it happens I had the time of my life" he said. "Though I cannot guarantee the same is true of the audience." Perhaps he could do Dirty Dancing next.
Despite his doubts, reviews were good. “That was fun!” social anthropogist Dr Cressida Jervis Read wrote on Twitter. “Not every day Jericho Singers get to sing Bohemian Rhapsody with Robert Peston — who aced it!”
The star turn is one in the eye for the BBC: Newsnight’s Evan Davis had to cancel a trip to Cambridge University History Society to talk about Brexit due to Storm Doris yesterday. ITV man Peston fought on.
By morning, Peston was back to his day job, sharing a Facebook post on Labour’s “existential crisis” after losing the Copeland by-election. We’re so pleased that Peston is enjoying his midlife one. Galileo.
A video of the performance can be seen here.
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Writers have to battle for elbow room in the London Library in St James’s Square. Daisy Goodwin, scriptwriter of ITV’s Victoria, shares a desk with novelist Victoria Hislop and Lenin biographer Victor Sebestyen at the members’ library, she told us this week. “It’s a bit like school,” Goodwin said. “It’s a good way of getting things done.” But there’s trouble if your place is taken. “There’s a lot of fuss if you get there too late and you can’t find a seat.”
Sturgeon often wonders why she bothers
Politicians are human after all. SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon tells of her literary youth in the latest Gentlewoman magazine. “I lived in a house where I was surrounded by books,” she says. “I much preferred to sit with my head in a book than talk to people.”
Unlike the PM, who leafs through Ottolenghi cookbooks on the weekends, Sturgeon says husband Peter Murrell is the one slaving over a hot stove. “I am useless on the domestic front. That probably became apparent the first time he tasted something I tried to cook.”
She wonders about the point of it all in the Brexit era. “In politics, you get these moments where you think: ‘Why am I doing all this? There must be an easier way to live my life.’” Imagine how Jeremy Corbyn feels.
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Quote of the day: ‘I am a sinner and I know it profoundly’
Michael Gove gets penitent in an interview with Christian Today
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An evening of Antipodean talent in Kensington
Designer Alice McCall created something of a Wonderland last night, hosting a dinner of flowers and fashion at Albert’s in South Kensington to launch her new collection. Australian McCall called on her fellow countrywoman Natalie Imbruglia to help her night go with a bang but the singer won’t be around for long: she soon starts a European tour and has just announced she has added a stop-off in Malmö in May. Locals will be glad she didn’t heed warnings from Trump, Farage and the fake news gang about safety in the Swedish city. We already have our ticket to the London show — but we’re Torn on who to take.
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SIR V. S. Naipaul and his wife Lady Nadira attended Francesca Bortolotto Possati’s Venetian Chic book launch at Picadilly's Maison Assouline last night. Also there signing books was Jeremy Irons, with the author.
Lady Nadira was surprised by David Beckham’s alleged knighthood demands, saying her husband has more humility. “He got a knighthood but went by Tube to get it."
Stopped by palace guards, Naipaul said he was just there to get his knighthood. The man [at the gate] was so impressed. He said: ‘People come wearing top hats. You’ve come in a dark suit and walked.’”
Passing the Buck on Vogue
No more passing the Buck. Joan Juliet Buck the American journalist and editor, had her reputation damaged irreparably in 2011 after she wrote a glowing profile of Asma al-Assad, first lady of Syria, published in American Vogue under the questionable title “A Rose in the Desert”. And now her tell-all memoir will soon hit the shelves.
Titled The Price of Illusion, the book will shed light on the aftermath of the article, which was struck from the magazine’s website. Later, Buck’s contract with Vogue was not renewed. “I was so flayed,” she tells The New York Times. “My life as I knew it had vanished.”
Buck may have been ostracised for the incident but has found an ambassador in Tina Brown, the British former editor of Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. “I think she was very shabbily treated by Vogue,” she says. “Frankly, it was an editing responsibility. You don’t just blame the writer.”
Buck will also shed light on her time as the only American ever to edit French Vogue. What happens in Paris, no longer stays in Paris.
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Tweet of the day: “Overheard Ukip’s Nuttall ‘If I haven’t won it’s because I haven’t got enough votes’”
Sky News’s political editor Faisal Islam reports on one of Paul Nuttall’s more accurate statements.
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Husband of the Day: Nigel Farage admits that he used to sing the football chant Two World Wars and One World Cup to his German wife. They are now separated, curiously.
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