Diary: Morrissey disgruntled again
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Your support makes all the difference.As this column reported a mere fortnight ago, the terminally disgruntled Morrissey (né Smith) rained on the royal wedding parade, telling Radio 4's Front Row that the Windsors were "benefit scroungers and nothing else. I don't believe they serve any purpose whatsoever". The glum one has since released a rare statement via his website accusing the BBC of "Iranian censorship" for having "chopped and cropped" the interview, and thus "confiscated" his opinions. Morrissey, it seems, was especially irate that the media all but ignored the death of punk musician Poly Styrene in favour of "blubbering praise" for Kate Middleton. Warming to his Middle Eastern theme, he controversially went on: "The message is clear: What you achieve in life means nothing compared to what you are born into. Is this Syria?? [sic]"
Incidentally, Morrissey has a Very Best Of LP out this month, and I'm delighted to be able to grant him the free publicity.
* Future national treasure Stephen Graham – star of This is England and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides – is less than impressed by the super-injunctions of some fellow actors. "That injunction stuff is a load of bollocks," the televisual tough guy told me at the Bafta Craft Awards. "Everyone's human. We all make mistakes, but deal with it. A lot of couples out there have to deal with it so why should it be any different [for celebrities]?" Luckily for this gossip columnist, Graham shares none of [REDACTED]'s qualms about revealing the details of his sex life. "I have a boy and a girl," Graham says of his children. "I want to concentrate on them – and I don't want any more. So I'm going to get the snip soon. But the wife knows, and she's fine about it."
* James Corden's claim that George (né Gideon) Osborne was the wittiest of his green room companions at The Andrew Marr Show was greeted with some scepticism, but I can well believe it – and not just because the only other people in said green room were Messrs Clegg and Miliband (E). Gideon, of course, once crafted jokes for former Tory leader William Hague when he faced Blair at PMQs. What's more, I'm assured the young fellow was green with envy at his master taking all the credit as Westminster's Funniest Man, c.1999. Alas, judging by Gideon's own lacklustre performance at the Despatch Box (describing renowned Labour self-portraitist Chris Bryant MP as a "pantomime dame", for example), he's a lot funnier in the green room than he is on the stage.
* Based on her bullish encounter with Bryant, her apparent dismissal of anti-Coalition protests, and the Blair-esque philandering PM in her soft-porn novel First Ladies, many accuse Sky News presenter Kay "Hurly" Burley of Tory bias. Not a bit of it, claimed the erstwhile ice dancer on Richard Bacon's radio show yesterday. Her 18-year-old son voted one way at the election, she told Bacon, and she voted the other. Aha, her host cried, surely the young man is a leftie student? Not necessarily, she replied – just the other day, her son had said, cryptically, "Mum, I think I'm a natural Conservative." (And I'm sure he'll appreciate her revealing as much to the public.) "Nobody," she claimed, "knows how I vote." With a pencil, Kay. With a pencil.
* A footnote to Fart-gate, from The Guardian's venerable Michael White, who was first with the news of Danny Alexander's illicit trading of emissions in an empty Sky News studio. "Sources told me too late for my own deadline," White kindly informs this column, "that Sky staff maliciously allowed Andy Burnham – the father of young children – to use Danny Alexander's polluted studio after the miscreant had left, without warning him that it was a toxic site."
* Despite his party's drubbing at last week's local elections, former Sheffield Council leader Paul Scriven can, I'm told, look forward to a new life in the Lords. Unlike so many Lib Dems, Scriven has stuck by his chum and Sheffield neighbour, Nick "29 Shags" Clegg, through thick and thin – and Clegg will be keen to reward him. Should he be made to wait for the feel of ermine at his neck, however, sources suggest Scriven could try his hand in the music business. Locally, he is "fondly" remembered as the star of a music video advertising Sheffield's Mercure Hotel, in which he crooned an inadvisable cover version of Lou Reed's "Perfect Day".
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