Andy McSmith's Diary: The Voice winner Jermain Jackman says Jeremy Corbyn discovered him

'Not many people know this - I’ve known Jeremy Corbyn for about 10 years'

Jermain Jackman, winner of The Voice 2014 (Charlie Forgham-Bailey)

I confess that it had never occurred to me that the many talents of Jeremy Corbyn included an ability to spot a potential star singer, but Jermain Jackman, who found fame as the 2014 winner of The Voice, has said: “Jeremy Corbyn discovered me.”

Corbyn, who was always assiduous about turning up to events in his North Islington constituency, was judging a singing contest at a local school and was impressed by the young Jackman’s voice.

While visiting Parliament for an event organised by the Labour MP Chuka Umunna on combatting gang violence, Jackman revealed to a Daily Mirror journalist that he has an ambition to be Labour MP for Hackney North when Diane Abbott steps down.

“I love Jeremy Corbyn,” he said. “Not many people know this. I’ve known Jeremy Corbyn for about 10 years .... When I was 11 years old he would call me in the morning and say ‘Jermain, I’m speaking at an event on this campaign and I’d love for you to sing, so come along and sing’. So we became this sort of double act. He would talk for 15 minutes, and then he’d say “and I’d like to bring on Jermain Jackman”, and I’d come on and sing.

“This was way before The Voice. I was like 11 years old. I was singing “You Raise Me Up”, “A House is Not a Home”, you know, all those inspirational songs. Covers.

“You could say that Jeremy Corbyn discovered me.”

Well done, Mrs May

There was graphic, shocking footage earlier in the week of a Donald Trump rally in Kentucky, during which the candidate demanded that protesters be removed from the hall, and a heavily built man in a red cap is seen repeatedly shoving and snarling at a black woman. The assailant was identified by the New York Daily News as a 25-year-old white supremacist named Matthew Heimbach. His activities have already been noted over here. Four months ago, he boasted on Facebook that he had had a letter from the Home Office telling him that Theresa May had banned him from entering the UK for advocating “anti-Semitic” and “neo-Nazi” ideas. Seeing him in action suggests that Mrs May called that one right.

A very undigital MP

Julian Lewis, outed this week as the MP who refuses to use e-mail, tells me that he had had a succession of people approach him, or text him, to congratulate him on his Luddism. He may even have been receiving congratulatory e-mails – but how would he know? “I’m starting a counter revolution,” he boasts.

I can’t get no... slumber

Matthew Freud, great grandson of the founder of psychoanalysis, former son in law of Rupert Murdoch, friend of Tony Blair’s favourite, Peter Mandelson, and second cousin of the minister for Welfare Reform, David Freud, has apologised to neighbours kept awake by a party held at his £20m mansion in Primrose Hill to celebrate London Fashion Week.

It sounds like a great party, with Kate Moss, Bob Geldof and Idris Elba adding star dust, but as guests sang along to Rolling Stones tracks, others in the neighbourhood were trying to sleep. One lady emerged in her pyjamas to plead with the security guards to get the noise turned down.

“It went on to at least 3am,” she told the Camden New Journal. “They were singing ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’. Well, I couldn’t get any sleep.”

Mr Freud, who runs Freud Communications, an international media agency, said: “I am profoundly sorry .... I recognise that the arrivals and departures of these occasional events are a mighty pain in the arse for people living very close by. My apologies are sincere and my neighbours’ stretched tolerance deeply appreciated.”