Remember Calder Womble, Remember Calder Womble

I have learnt from my addiction to the livestream of the proceedings of the Post Office Horizon IT Inquiry that there is a transatlantic law firm called Womble Bond Dickinson.

Indeed, two of its partners are due to give evidence to the inquiry in June - I believe the firm was retained by the Post Office for a time. (No doubt someone will be on hand to whisper "Remember you're a Womble" in their ear before they take the stand.)

Naturally, I was curious about a lawyer called Womble, and the Womble Bond Dickinson site does give some of the family history in a 2016 obituary for William F. Womble, Sr. - or Bill Womble, Sr. if you knew him well.

Bill's father, and the first of the lawyer Wombles, was B.S. Womble. That's Bunyan Snipes Womble.

And Bunyan Womble had a brother, also a lawyer, called Calder.

I shall not forget Calder Womble.

Incidentally, if you follow the Womble family back through American genealogy sites, and it's surprisingly easy to do so, it seems their name was originally Wombwell.

Six of the Best 902

"Modern medicine is increasingly called upon to address a spiritual, perhaps even economic and political, malaise." Sophie McBain looks at how loneliness became an epidemic.

Too many of our town centres have become hollowed-out, windswept deserts, argues Nicholas Boys Smith, but if we make them fit for people they will return

Lenore Skenazy on the worst and best Let Grow parenting moments of 2019: "Hard-boiled lawyers made sure no kids could participate in the University of California-Berkeley's campus Easter egg hunt without parents first signing a waiver acknowledging the potential risk of 'catastrophic injuries including paralysis and death'."

Johannes E. Riutta reviews books about the British government's extraordinary war on badgers.

"This is the best Christmas single of the 1970s, and that’s an objective fact," says Alwyn Turner of Wombling Merry Christmas as he concludes his month-by-month survey of the charts in 1974. Read how the Wombles brand was damaged that winter by a plethora of inferior stage shows.

Richard Williams pays tribute to Martin Peters.

Six of the Best 689

"In my first general election the Liberal Party’s policy was that employees and shareholders should have equal rights to share the profits of an enterprise and the determination of a company’s direction. This was no wishy-washy Theresa May proposal to allow one token employee to sit on a Board. This was full blown industrial democracy." Iain Brodie Brown says this is one of the distinctive ideas that Liberal Democrats can bring to a progressive alliance.

Dave Gorman argues that "the ownership of public assets should be transferred from the state to the public".

It doesn't take a dictator to smother a free press say Jakub Dymek and Zsolt Kapelner looking at developments in Hungary and Poland.

"In 2006, David Cameron gave a speech in which he said that Google was democratizing the world, because 'making more information available to more people' was providing 'the power for anyone to hold to account those who in the past might have had a monopoly of power.' Seven years later, Britain’s Conservative Party scrubbed from its Web site ten years’ worth of Tory speeches, including that one." Jill Lepore asks if the internet can be archived.

Peter Kinderman says everyone is crazy but nobody is mentally ill.

Robin Le Mesurier (the son of John Le Mesurier and Hattie Jacques) remembers he was a Womble, talking to Adrian Lee.

The Hawkhurst Branch in 1958

Built on the cheap and opened as late as 1892, the Hawkhurst Branch ran through the orchard and hop country of Kent.

Plans for extensions to Tenterden, Appledore or Dungeness came to nothing and the line was thoroughly uneconomic when it closed in 1961.

Wikipedia records the intriguing detail that:

Elisabeth Beresford, who was subsequently well known as the creator of The Wombles, wrote a children's book Danger on the "Old Pull 'n Push" based on the Hawkhurst branch. 

Subsequently this was televised by Rediffusion for ITV in two six-part series The Old Pull 'n Push and Return of the old Pull 'n Push, shown in 1960-61. These were filmed on the Hawkhurst Line shortly before it closed.

Six of the Best 640

"Running around during an election calling large chunks of voters thick, moronic, stupid and a plethora of other names is hardly likely to get them to support you - It may make you feel good, and it will silence millions from debating in public and sharing their honest opinions but it won't change anything when people get into the privacy of the voting booth." Carl Minns draws an important lesson from the US Presidential election.

Edward Ball welcomes the opening of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington DC.

Everything you think you know about the behaviour of crowds is wrong says David Edmonds, drawing on the latest psychological research.

Mark Richards pays tribute to the photographer and cinematographer Wolf Suschitzky.

"They were nearly always at Christmas day with us. Kenneth Williams had the most remarkable knowledge of English history and an incredible sense of humour. Joanie [Sims] was adorable, funny and very loving." Robin Le Mesurier, son John Le Mesurier and Hattie Jacques and a member of the Wombles, is interviewed by Carry On Blogging!

Let's end with Paul Simon's American Tune, which once appeared as a Sunday video choice on Liberal England...

Wellington Womble: Rainmaker

On I promised a Sunday music choice inspired by the great drought of 1976. And here it is.

The other day I was followed on Twitter by Mike Batt, the man behind The Wombles. They were the biggest selling British band of 1974 - and if you look at what else was in the charts that year, you can see why.

By 1976 drugs, Bungo's relationship with a Japanese conceptual artist and the inevitable differences over musical direction had caused the furry creatures to fall out with one another.

The result was that Wellington Womble tried a solo career with a song called Rainmaker. It turns out not be a cover of the Traffic song but a topical song inspired by the drought.

Sadly, it was not a hit.

But the exciting news is that The Wombles are coming back.

Remember when Tony Blair was a Womble

From a Calder's Comfort Farm, the column I used to write for the New Statesman website, published on 24 June 2008.

A couple of summers ago the excitement over Cash for Honours was at its height. There was even speculation that Lord Levy’s troubles might see the end of Tony Blair.

What would we have made in 1973, I wonder, of the thought that the arrest of Alvin Stardust’s manager might one day bring down the government?

But in those days the link between politics and pop music was closer than most voters realised. One of the most popular bands of the era was The Wombles, who always appeared on stage in large furry costumes.

The advantage of this was that anyone could be a Womble, and a shifting cast of session musicians used to share the gigs between them. But, thanks to the good offices of Michael Levy, on occasion a Womble costume would be worn by a hungry young Labour politico.

Levy’s recent memoirs are disappointingly sketchy on the subject, but it is known that Jack Straw, Patricia Hewitt and Dr John Reid all appeared as Wombles at one time or another.

Fascinatingly, a young lawyer named Anthony Blair would also pull on a costume when the briefs were slow coming in.

Alastair Campbell has ruthlessly expunged this episode from the Blair CV -- I feel a little nervous telling you about it even now -- but was he right to do so?

The Roman Emperors used to keep a slave to whisper “remember thou art mortal” when they got above themselves. Tony Blair would have done well to have an aide close at hand to say “remember you’re a Womble” now and then.

And if he was being particularly messianic, that aide could have added: “Re-member-member-member what a Womble Womble Womble you are.”

Remember who was in the Wombles

Remembering the 1970s on the New Statesman website, I once wrote:

One of the most popular bands of the era was The Wombles, who always appeared on stage in large furry costumes.

The advantage of this was that anyone could be a Womble, and a shifting cast of session musicians used to share the gigs between them. But, thanks to the good offices of Michael Levy, on occasion a Womble costume would be worn by a hungry young Labour politico.

Levy’s recent memoirs are disappointingly sketchy on the subject, but it is known that Jack Straw, Patricia Hewitt and Dr John Reid all appeared as Wombles at one time or another.

Fascinatingly, a young lawyer named Anthony Blair would also pull on a costume when the briefs were slow coming in.

Alastair Campbell has ruthlessly expunged this episode from the Blair CV - I feel a little nervous telling you about it even now - but was he right to do so?

The Roman Emperors used to keep a slave to whisper “remember thou art mortal” when they got above themselves. Tony Blair would have done well to have an aide close at hand to say “remember you’re a Womble” now and then.

And if he was being particularly messianic, that aide could have added: “Re-member-member-member what a Womble Womble Womble you are.”

A nice conceit, but who was really inside those Womble costumes?

Orinoco was usually Mike Batt, who wrote the band's songs. And very successful he was. According to Wikipedia, The Wombles were the most successful act of 1974, with albums in the UK charts for more weeks than any other act. (If you can remember some of the other bands in the charts in 1974 this does not seem so strange.)

Wikipedia goes on to say that on one occasion the costumes were filled by members of Steeleye Span, and on other occasions such respected musicians as Chris Spedding and Clem Cattini could be found inside them.

But the most interesting Womble was the guitarist Robin Le Mesurier, the son of John Le Mesurier from Dad's Army and Hattie Jacques.

As a profile in the Daily Express recalls:

He first hit the big-time as a member of The Wombles, Mike Batt’s chart-topping band bedecked in furry outfits inspired by Elisabeth Beresford’s children’s books. But he lost that job when a joint owned by his brother was discovered in a police raid on the family home.

Robin recalls: “I came home after shooting a TV show to find six police officers tearing the place apart. They dug up the garden, took carpets up, emptied drawers out and even searched my mother. All they found was one joint that my brother had. They said to me ‘You’re coming too.’ The solicitor told us to plead guilty. Mike Batt called to say Elisabeth Beresford had said what I’d done was politically incorrect so I had to go.”

I think Le Mesurier should have said that he found the joint in the street and had tidied it up.

House Points: Is Jack Straw the new Sarah Palin?

Today's House Points column from Liberal Democrat News.

A moose in the lobby

Chris Huhne told us in his speech at the Bournemouth Conference that this government has introduced 3,600 new criminal offences since it came to power in 1997. "Labour’s new legislation takes the same amount of shelf space as 200 copies of War and Peace," he said. "And it is twice as heavy as John Prescott."

So it’s no surprise that a few of those offences have slipped through without anyone noticing. At Home Office questions on Monday the Labour MP David Drew raised the case of a friend and constituent who had been arrested at Kingsnorth climate camp for "aggressively picking up litter". Is it any wonder the Wombles are threatening to move to New York?

The work of reducing our liberties is now so great that Gordon Brown has been forced to split it between two cabinet ministers. While Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, was busy at the Commons dispatch box, Jack Straw, as Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, was making a speech down the road at the Royal Society of Arts.

There he invented something called the ‘criminal justice lobby’ and announced that it has been running Britain’s prisons for the past decade. This of nonsense, of course, and not just because it is ministers who runs our prisons. Anyone who works with public sector professionals will know how quickly they come to endorse every new twist of government thinking. They know which side their bread is buttered.

But try telling that to Straw. According to him, the members of this lobby are obsessed with the needs of offenders when they should be worrying about the victims of crime - though he was notably short of practical proposals for helping those victims. More punishment was his recipe. Worse than that, they insist on using long words like "criminogenic".

Believing in left-wing conspiracies, vengeful, anti-intellectual. Does Jack Straw remind you of anyone?

It’s Sarah Palin, of course. If you gave Straw a beehive hairdo and he started wearing his glasses again, it would be impossible to tell them apart. You betcha!

"Now on 'Autumn Watch’ we are going over to Simon King who is with some moose in Blackburn" "Thank you, Bill, and the news here is that the moose are looking distinctly nervous."

Calder's Comfort Farm

My latest column for the New Statesman can be found on the magazine's website:

Levy’s recent memoirs are disappointingly sketchy on the subject, but it is known that Jack Straw, Patricia Hewitt and Dr John Reid all appeared as Wombles at one time or another.

BritBlog Roundup 136

Story of the Week

Bloggerheads and Craig Murray's blog have been down for several days following action by lawyers acting on behalf of the Uzbek billionaire Alisher Usmanov. A number of other notable blogs, including those written by Bob Piper and Boris Johnson, have also disappeared, as action has been threatened against the server hosting the blogs rather than the individual writers.

The best place to keep up with developments in this sorry affair is Chicken Yoghurt. The Yoghurt carries a list of the people who have blogged about it. It currently totals 193:

Curious Hamster, Pickled Politics, Harry’s Place, Tim Worstall, Dizzy, Iain Dale, Ten Percent, Blairwatch, Davide Simonetti, Earthquake Cove, Turbulent Cleric (who suggests dropping a line to the FA about Mr Usmanov), Mike Power, Jailhouse Lawyer, Suesam, Devil’s Kitchen, The Cartoonist, Falco, Casualty Monitor, Forever Expat, Arseblog, Drink-soaked Trots (and another), Pitch Invasion, Wonko’s World, Roll A Monkey, Caroline Hunt, Westminster Wisdom, Chris K, Anorak, Mediawatchwatch, Norfolk Blogger, Chris Paul, Indymedia (with a list of Craig Murray’s articles that are currently unavailable), Obsolete, Tom Watson, Cynical Chatter, Reactionary Snob, Mr Eugenides, Matthew Sinclair, The Select Society, Liberal England, Davblog, Peter Gasston Pitch Perfect, Adelaide Green Porridge Cafe, Lunartalks, Tygerland, The Crossed Pond, Our Kingdom, Big Daddy Merk, Daily Mail Watch, Graeme’s, Random Thoughts, Nosemonkey, Matt Wardman, Politics in the Zeros, Love and Garbage, The Huntsman, Conservative Party Reptile, Ellee Seymour, Sabretache, Not A Sheep, Bartholomew’s Notes on Religion, The People’s Republic Of Newport, Life, the Universe & Everything, Arsenal Transfer Rumour Mill, The Green Ribbon, Blood & Treasure, The Last Ditch, Areopagitica, Football in Finland, An Englishman’s Castle, Freeborn John, Eursoc, The Back Four, Rebellion Suck!, Ministry of Truth, ModernityBlog, Beau Bo D’Or, Scots and Independent, The Splund, Bill Cameron, Podnosh, Dodgeblogium, Moving Target, Serious Golmal, Goonerholic, The Spine, Zero Point Nine, Lenin’s Tomb, The Durruti Column, The Bristol Blogger, ArseNews, David Lindsay, Quaequam Blog!, On A Quiet Day…, Kathz’s Blog, England Expects, Theo Spark, Duncan Borrowman, Senn’s Blog, Katykins, Jewcy, Kevin Maguire, Stumbling and Mumbling, Famous for 15 megapixels, Ordovicius, Tom Morris, AOL Fanhouse, Doctor Vee, The Curmudgeonly, The Poor Mouth, 1820, Hangbitch, Crooked Timber, ArseNole, Identity Unknown, Liberty Alone, Amused Cynicism, Clairwil, The Lone Voice, Tampon Teabag, Unoriginalname38, Special/Blown It, The Remittance Man, 18 Doughty Street, Laban Tall, Martin Bright, Spy Blog The Exile, poons, Jangliss, Who Knows Where Thoughts Come From?, Imagined Community, A Pint of Unionist Lite, Poldraw, Disillusioned And Bored, Error Gorilla, Indigo Jo, Swiss Metablog, Kate Garnwen Truemors, Asn14, D-Notice, The Judge, Political Penguin, Miserable Old Fart, Jottings, fridgemagnet, Blah Blah Flowers, J. Arthur MacNumpty, Tony Hatfield, Grendel, Charlie Whitaker, Matt Buck, The Waendel Journal, Marginalized Action Dinosaur, SoccerLens, Toblog, John Brissenden East Lower, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Peter Black AM, Boing Boing, BLTP, Gunnerblog, LFB UK, Liberal Revolution, Wombles, Focus on Sodbury…, Follow The Money, Freedom and Whisky, Melting Man, PoliticalHackUK, Simon Says…, Daily EM, From The Barrel of a Gun, The Fourth Place, The Armchair News Blog, Journalist und Optimist, Bristol Indymedia, Dave Weeden, Up North John, Gizmonaut, Spin and Spinners, Marginalia, Arnique, Heather Yaxley, The Whiskey Priest, On The Beat, Paul Canning, Martin Stabe, Mat Bowles, Pigdogfucker, Rachel North (193).

As Tim Worstall observes, if his lawyers were aiming to keep Mr Usmanov and his record out of the limelight, their action has not proved an unqualified success.

Green Banana and Ministry of Truth offer thoughtful accounts of why this affair matters. If you want to join the campaign on your own blog, Poliblog Perspective has produced some campaign buttons you can use.

It happens that I heard Craig Murray speak at the Lib Dem Conference last week. Geoff Payne was there too.

Another good way of fighting back would be to buy Craig's book Murder in Samarkand.


Announcements

Settle down school. Tompkins, see me afterwards.

Tim Worstall's blog has moved home and can now be found here.

Clairwil is doing a roundup of her very own. You can find the first one here.


Blogging

What is the most graceful way to handle things when you decide to close a blog down? Matt Wardman tells you.

And Media Influencer takes on Andrew Keen, a prominent critic of blogging.


Jose Mourinho

A Chelsea fan since I was so high, I am typing this section through my tears.

Arserant pays generous tribute to the Special One, but Blood and Treasure is less impressed.

K T Dodge crows that Mourinho's departure will be good for her team, Arsenal. I wish her joy with Mr Usmanov.


Liberal Democrat Conference

For the second time a Liberal Democrat Blog of the Year was made at Conferernce. And for the second time this blog was nominated but failed to win it. A total of six awards were made: Millennium Elephant gives a characteristically idiosyncratic account of the event.

The six short-listed bloggers for the top award also got to meet Ming the Merciless. The Emperor's own site has some pictures and Blog of the Year Quaequam Blog! wrote up the occasion.

Curious Snippets from a Cynical Optimist asks what the point of the Lib Dems is, showing how divided the party is on policy. Well, with that and continuing grumbling about the leadership, we look like a proper party to me.


Health

Dr Rays Focal Spot attended an NHS "consultation" exercise featuring Gordon Brown, Alan Johnson and Ara Darzi. He was less than impressed:

I can only say that the way the voting was done makes the "Blue Peter" voting fraud seem like, well, "Blue Peter".

The Devil's Kitchen writes about this too.

The Yorkshire Ranter suggests a better way of developing healthcare computer systems than the one the NHS uses at present. Squander Two Blog finds the British Heart Federation and the Daily Mail talking bollocks on peope's willingness to take exercise. No surprise there, in one case at least.

Rhetorically Speaking has no doubts about genetic screening for Alzheimer's disease.


Sexual Politics

Mind the Gap! finds two Guardian articles taking a simplistic view of sexuality. Stroppy Blog offers a qualified defence of Tarantino's new film Death Proof.

Guesting at Humaniform, Ruthie Zaftig reports how she broke up an anti-abortion demonstration.

And Mick Hartley puts the boot into Dr Freud magnificently:

As a good well-educated girl, shy and obedient, it may be doubted that the young Anna did in fact spend so much energy fiercely masturbating over fantasies connected with her father, only to forget all about them. Freudian dogma, however, demanded that such was the case. It is, of course, a happy male fantasy that women, underneath the demure exterior, are really sex-crazed. How much more exciting for Freud, then, to slowly force these supposed memories from his daughter's Unconscious, revealing that the old goat himself, her father, was the everlasting object of her lust. And, crucially and most disgracefully, poor Anna was in no position to do as Dora did, and walk away in disgust. As Freud's daughter she was trapped there. It's difficult to conceive of a more thoroughgoing example of the betrayal of a child - of, indeed, child abuse.

History

Investigations of a Dog looks at the developing historiography of the English Civil War (part 2 is here).

Elizabeth Chadwick: Living the History visits Wymondham (pronounced "Windham") Abbey in Norfolk and finds that English Heritage has got Roger Bigod all wrong.

Matters of fact seem harder to establish in Sri Lanka, where the story that Lord Ram used monkeys to help him build a bridge from the Indian mainland is suddenly a topic for controversy. Pickled Poltics reports.

Finally, Diamond Geezer on a bit of London history: the closure of the New Piccadilly Cafe.


Politics

The first one in this section is really on economics. Virtual Economics is your guide to the wisdom of, er, Terry Pratchett.

Pickled Politics (again) asks whether referendums are good or bad. Most impressively, the writer (Rumbold) uses the correct plural.

Shane Greer (who recently took over the Diary whilst Iain Dale was on holiday) thinks that Miranda Grell, the Labour candidate who smeered her Lib Dem opponent as a paedophile, is "stupid". That is a rather charitable view.

Gray Monk is not impressed by the political class which leads us these days. Burning Our Money is no more impressed by the rates for clearing up crime that the police claim. A nice bit of Sherlock Holmes parody there.

And to complete our trio of unimpressed people, read Mr Eugenides on the new Scottish cabinet.

At least someone is pleased: Earthquake Cove celebrates the Lib Dem and Green condemnation of the academic boycott of Israel.

There is a better than average meme circulating at the moment: as you would expect, Miserable Old Fart has a longer memory than most of us.

Finally, the f word marvels at Croydon Conservatives' website:

Interestingly today’s “main story” ... isn’t the arrest of their MP (and London Assembly member) but that the council tax rise is the lowest in five years.

Goodbye

That's all for this week. Next week's Roundup will be hosted at Philobiblon. Please e-mail your nominations to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com.

And please support Bloggerheads and Craig Murray.

Lord Bonkers' latest diary

The new Liberator arrived in the post today. So it is time to post Lord Bonkers' latest offering. (You can find an archive of the old boy's diaries on his own website.)

Monday
To Wimbledon to watch an afternoon’s lawn tennis. When I arrive I get the most terrible shock: the linesmen and umpires are all dressed like little Steel; every man jack of them sports a blue shirt with a white collar. I down a stiff Pimms to steady my nerve, but even so am obliged to make my excuses and leave before the final set.

Besides I have always had mixed feelings about these championships: year after year I bid for the ball boy contract, only to find that Barnardo’s had undercut me again. The Well-Behaved Orphans were only asked to officiate once, and funnily enough that year both the gentlemen’s and the ladies’ singles were won by unseeded players and I rather cleaned up at Ladbroke’s.

Tuesday
Walking along an obscure corridor at Westminster I spy the Conservative member for Suffolk South coming towards me. Ever one for a jape, I wait until we have almost drawn level before greeting him with the words “Yo, Yeo!” Would you believe he does not laugh? Some people have no sense of humour.

Wednesday
The afternoon finds me in Notting Hill, reconnoitring the route of the carnival procession on behalf of the Rutland Morris Men. Passing a rather grand house I spy a familiar figure with a shining pink face climbing a ladder; he is followed by two speechwriters, a man carrying a clean shirt and another with an inflatable Boris Johnson. Yes, it is the leader of the Conservative and Unionist Party, David Cameron, and he is busily erecting windmills on his roof.

To his credit, Cameron has been an enthusiast for wind power since his days at Eton, where he employed two fags to fan him. However, being something of an expert on these matters through my discussions with Malachy Dromgoogle, I cannot help but notice that he is rather overdoing it. I point this out, but the fellow is not to be told and continues to put up more sales. The inevitable happens: the wind gets up, there is a horrible sheering noise and the whole roof takes off with Cameron and his entourage still aboard. I gather they were last seen passing over High Wycombe.

Thursday
These days one cannot have one’s footman open the Manchester Guardian for one without coming across an article by Lord Hattersley. It happens that I knew the young Roy Hattersley; he was 14 when I first met him and, as a scion of one of the area’s leading Labour families, already an Alderman of Sheffield. He would insist upon being borne into the council chamber shoulder high by cloth-capped workmen, while the various ward parties would vie for the honour of presenting him with meat-and-potato pies.

With gravy running down his chin, he would spray pastry crumbs over the assembled company while demanding that the council pull down all the terraced houses and replace them with tower blocks. “And I want a multi-storey car park and pedestrian underpasses and a gyratory system and I want them now!” he would demand in a barely broken voice, while stamping his foot. In short, he represented all that was best in the municipal socialism of the 1960s.

Friday
I was sorry to see that fellow Michael Brown sent to gaol. If anyone had it in mind to send him a cake with a file in it, I think that would be a nice gesture.

Saturday
There can be fewer sadder tales than that of Mark Oaten – or Rising Star as I still think of him. This innocent Red Indian brave, through a strange concatenation of circumstances, found himself elected Member for the historic city of Winchester. It must have been a shock to someone more used to hunting buffalo or putting arrows through the hats of passing stagecoach drivers, but at first he made a good fist of things and was re-elected a couple of times with a juicy majority.

However, as is so often the case, fame turned his head and he began to get ideas above his station (which is Waterloo for Winchester, incidentally). In rapid succession he had himself made Kennedy’s Parliamentary Private Secretary (“Rising Star carry heap big firewater,” as he once remarked to me), Chairman of the Parliamentary Party and Shadow Home Secretary, jettisoning his moccasins and acquiring a suit along the way. In this last post he hit upon the idea of making prisoners study. (Locked up and made to learn Latin verbs? It sounds just like public school and I am sure the European Court would step in.)

Then hubris took hold of him and he stood for the leadership of our party. I need not recount here the distasteful details of his fall here (they may be purchased separately from the Bonkers Head Press under a plain brown wrapper), but that was the end of poor Rising Star. Now he is attempting to make a living in show business. I cannot see it working for him, but when he calls today I use my good offices to find him a part in a keep-fit video being made in Jamaica by a friend. It’s name? Pilates of the Caribbean.

Sunday
It gives me no pleasure to see Lord Levy in trouble with the Old Bill. In the 1970s he was the manager of my old friend Alvin Stardust – in those days a regular denizen of the “hit parade” and frequently to be heard inviting listeners to be his coo ca choo – and I learned nothing but good of him. In particular, he would use his influence in the music world to secure work for aspiring Labour politicians who were temporarily embarrassed for funds.

In those days there was a popular group called The Wombles whose members dressed in the most amusing furry costumes. The advantage of that garb was that simply anyone could appear on stage as a Womble and the audience would be none the wiser. Over the years Jack Straw, Margaret Beckett and Dr John Read were all pleased to dress up and earn a few bob in this way. I also recall that a struggling young lawyer named Anthony Blair would occasionally appear if briefs were slow coming in.

Just as a Roman Emperor would keep a slave on hand to whisper “remember thou art moral” in his ear from time to time, so our current Prime Minister would be well advised to have an aide say “remember you’re a womble” now and then. “Re-member-member-member what a womble womble womble you are,” he might add.

Lordi help us

When I repeated the observation that the Eurovision Song Contest had been won by "a sort of cross between Klingon warriors ... and The Wombles", I was not far off the mark.

An interview with Mr Lordi - Tomi Putaansuu - on the BBC website reports that he:

described himself as "a huge monster freak", naming Freddie Kruger, the Incredible Hulk and Monster from the Muppet Show as his favourites.

Lordi Lordi

A nice comment on last night's contest:

a sort of cross between Klingon warriors ... and The Wombles won.

And a note to whomever (hem, hem) wrote the British entry: It was not teachers who said "what did you learn at school today" but parents.

Still, I liked those St Trinian's girls.