The word on the street: Veronica Wadley, Tessa Jowell, Bafta Television Craft awards, Jonathan Fenby
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Your support makes all the difference.Who says that Veronica Wadley, editor of the London Evening Standard, doesn't have a sense of humour? She called in the staff of Londoner's Diary to tell them: "You're all fired." After watching the faces go white, she said she had in fact called them in for a glass of champagne, after a good week. One can understand why they took her at face value. Earlier, she had stopped at the diary's desk to remark on how well staffed it was.
After steering the communications Bill through the House last week, Tessa Jowell had lunch two days later with journalists. Taken aback by their hostility to her easing the path of Rupert Murdoch and the big American media giants, she said as she left that she looked forward to the next lunch with "the xenophobes".
Kate Adie was in fighting form at the Bafta Television Craft awards at the Savoy on Sunday. Introduced by Harry Enfield, the host, as "formidable on film but fun in the flesh", Adie bemoaned the communications Bill and the "possibility of Channel 5 being run by a rodent with big ears". That probably rules out a big-money move to Sky News, then.
At the same ceremony, Bob Geldof managed the rare feat of being a presenter who heckled the crowd. Introducing the award for best soundtrack, Sir Bob said writing music for TV was "a piece of piss", for which you were paid "an extravagant amount of money". Earlier, he said the Bafta "Craft" logo was being obscured by Harry Enfield's bum, so that it read, "Bafta Crap". "Which explains", he told Enfield, "why you've never won one." Enfield could only mouth the word: "Bitch!"
Jonathan Fenby, former Observer editor, is writing a biography of Chiang Kai-shek for Simon & Schuster, due out next year. It is the first book on him in English for 25 years, and Fenby promises that it will contain "lots of personal material". Does that mean Chiang Kai-shek and sex? The Fenby blush suggested that it does.
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