Pandora: All aboard! Tory's name is 'too foreign' for ballot paper

Those who lament the loss of "characters" in Parliament could do worse than support the budding candidacy of the Conservatives' chap in Hazel Grove, Stockport: one Annesley Abercorn.

The 23-year-old, who has enjoyed the political support of the nightclub owner Peter Stringfellow, wears his own conductor's uniform when driving his Routemaster. He also owns a 1955 Green Goddess fire engine, a 1972 ice cream van and a three-wheeled milk float. His voicemail was recorded by the Speaking Clock man.

Students at North London's Highgate School around the turn of the millennium may think this ambitious fellow looks strangely like someone they knew, Annesley Abeyakoon.

And they'd be right.

The amiable and able Abeyakoon anglicised his name by deed poll to "Abercorn" because colleagues advised him his name sounded "too foreign", a friend explains. While Annesley was there he awarded himself the middle name "George".

"He took the view that that his name would scare people on a ballot paper. Let's just say he's been mentored a lot by Andrew Rosindell."

Rozzer, the pro-death penalty MP for Romford in east London, campaigns with his patriotic bull terrier Spike, and resigned only in 2001 from the Monday Club, which opposed non-white immigration.

"Anglicising my name was totally my choice," explains Abercorn. "I didn't really seek any advice."

We wish him well in the spotlight of public life.

Never mind the panto dame, here's the Sex Pistols

Chorus: "Sid's on smack!" Audience: "Oh no he isn't!" Ah yes, impromptu violence, hard drugs, sex and airborne vomit fun for all the family.

The Sex Pistols chronicler Julien Temple yesterday threatened to drive a final nail into the casket of the band as a once-respected musical force: he would like, he said, to turn his firstdocumentary about the Pistols into a panto.

"I'm thinking of doing a pantomime of The Great Rock 'N' Roll Swindle with John Lydon," said the film-maker. "He'd be great. You'd have to adapt something like Dick Whittington.

"I don't know whether we'd get [manager] Malcolm [McLaren] to play the Big Bad Witch of whatever, but it's a funny idea anyway."

Temple might want to give Lydon a nudge. When I called the singer's colourful sidekick John "Rambo" Stevens in Los Angeles and woke him up, he grumbled: "Wot? It's the first I've 'eard of it. I don't believe it. Wot?"

Perhaps McLaren will be amenable. He has memorably approved the idea "of 'Bollocks' being in lights on Shaftesbury Avenue".

Madeley brought to book

Where is Richard Madeley's anticipated literary opus about fathers and sons? The daytime telly presenter, 51, told Pandora last April that his publisher had paid him a chunk of the belting 500,000 advance and demanded the manuscript by Christmas.

"He has not handed it in as yet, I'm afraid," says a source with a beady eye on the in-tray. "He is plodding along. It has taken a bit longer than expected but will be worth it."

The "truthful, painful" book, Madeley explained, "is about how the sins of the father are not necessarily visited upon the son". It spans four generations, from his grandfather to his son Jack, 21, who was recruited to tap out the final chapter. This epilogue is now listed only as a "maybe" for inclusion.

Less play, more work, lads!

Curtain call

Spotted, scoffing noodles at Sunday night's Spice Girls concert: Lembit Opik. When asked if he was being disloyal to the Cheeky Girls, who arguably have a similar vocal ability to Posh and Co but lack the back catalogue, he replied: "I'm here to see the world's second-best girl band." The creep.

A frisson of excitement! Pandora cracked open the voddie yesterday morning when Penny Gold, playwright behind The President's Holiday (about the 1991 Soviet coup against Mikhail Gorbachev), announced something of a, er, coup: 76-year-old Gorby is to attend the thriller in a fortnight. Alas, he has not yet confirmed. "Wishful thinking," I'm told. The clear stuff is back in the freezer ...

Lewis bemoans Britain's road hogs

For tax reasons, our Formula 1 runner-up Lewis Hamilton has quit the concrete utopia of Stevenage for a villa overlooking the lapping edge of Lake Geneva in Switzerland.

Just as well, perhaps. Lewis complains that he has found conditions on Britain's crowded road network less than ideal, and says that he suffers from the road rage of competitive drivers "all the time". "They have to race to get there before you. They're in such a rush," he explains. "They can't spare one second to let you move into the next lane."

Be warned. Hamilton, whose comment interrupts the acreage of female flesh in this week's Nuts magazine, adds: "I can look after myself because of the boxing and karate." He possesses a black belt "just for defence".