Sandwich pest outed
Who was the Cabinet minister who I reported last week was blocked by transport secretary Louise Haigh from messaging her about the poor quality sandwiches on the UK’s transport network? “Reader, it was Ed Miliband I blocked,” Haigh confessed on social media this week. My advice to Ed is to carry on texting Haigh, if only to improve the bacon sandwiches.
De-cyphering royal curtains
Visitors to the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden have noticed that the royal cypher on the curtains is the late Queen’s. One insider tells me it would cost tens of thousands of pounds to change it. The King, who last visited in May, is relaxed about it all. A spokesman says: “In agreement with His Majesty, we believe that replacing the cypher on our Main Stage curtains should be done organically, not immediately. When the time comes to replace the curtains, we will proudly display CIIIR.”
A Museum for Brexit
A card with a photo of Big Ben on the front lands on the doormat. Opening it, a plummy recorded voice says: “Hello! I’m Jacob Rees-Mogg. The Museum of Brexit is a fantastic project. It will document Britain’s national identity over centuries and focus on our relationship with the European Continent that led us to Brexit.”
Former Tory MP Rees-Mogg is backing the charity to raise £1 million for the new museum. Organiser Lee Rotherham told GB News he wants to reflect “both sides” of the Brexit debate.
Will Labour stump up any public money to support the museum, likely to be sited in a town which voted for Brexit? Don’t hold your breath.
GCB’s hairshirt
Tory grandee Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown – treasurer of the 1922 Committee of Conservative MPs and known by his initials “GCB” – lets his wife Kym cut his hair. Kym started shearing GCB’s locks during the Covid pandemic and has not stopped. The MP reckons he is saving £450 a year in barbers’ bills. He tells me: “She might now put in a bill.” GCB is considering running to be chairman of the influential Public Accounts Committee, which keeps tabs on Whitehall spending.
More sherry trifle?
When Lord Timpson, the new prisons minister, told peers he is going to test-wear one of the tags which prisons are going to attach to some of the thousands of lags released next month to ease overcrowding, his Conservative shadow, Earl Attlee, piped up: “Make sure it isn’t a sobriety tag!”
Timpson replied: “If it is, I will not be able to have a sherry trifle, which is one of my favourite desserts.”
Buckland’s Brat Summer
Thanks to readers who sent in ideas for unemployed Tory MPs (Steven Skelley suggested becoming scarecrows). Former Justice secretary Sir Robert Buckland – who has been climbing mountains alone – asks: “What is a ‘Brat Summer’? I think I may be having one, even though I don’t really know what on earth it is.” The term, coined by Essex popstar Charli XCX, means enjoying life in spite of its struggles. But Robert surely knew that.
Railway gossip
Who can forget the final scene in the 1970 film The Railway Children when the three innocents Phyllis, Bobbie and Peter, below, celebrate the return of their wrongly imprisoned father by running in a field, with Bobbie’s voiceover saying: “We were not wanted right now because mother and father needed to be alone”?
Gary Warren, who played Peter, has now revealed they were discussing “what mum and dad might be getting up to in the house”. He says in his new autobiography If My Memoir Serves Me Well that Sally Thomsett, who played Phyllis, started the “graphic” speculation, before Warren and Jenny Agutter, who played Bobbie, joined in. He says: “We got bawdier and bawdier ... as you could see our smiling faces in the long shot it appeared we were simply happy because of our father’s return.”
Fax a lot
Breaking news: Cabinet Office minister Nick Thomas-Symonds has disclosed that since Labour won the election on July 4, members of the public have sent three faxes to the “public faxline” in Downing Street. If that were not enough of a surprise, Thomas-Symonds disclosed that “as was the practice under the previous administration, any faxes are converted into emails on receipt” and were then “transferred to the relevant authorities”. Do any Peterborough readers still communicate by fax? Why?
Peterborough, published every Friday at 7pm, is edited by Christopher Hope. You can reach him at peterborough@telegraph.co.uk