Trimble gels his quiff and heads for Memphis
Friday, 10 August 2007
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* In his recently published diaries, Alastair Campbell claims that after a meeting at Stormont Bill Clinton said of a "churlish" David Trimble: "Someone should tell him that part of the art of politics is smiling when you feel like you're swallowing a turd."
But despite appearances, the former Ulster Unionist leader isn't all doom and gloom. On Tuesday, Trimble (now Lord Trimble to you or I) appears on the Radio 4 programme Great Lives. Hosted by the journalist Matthew Parris, the show gives guests the opportunity to speak about their hero. Instead of pulling some obscure politician from Northern Ireland's troubled history out of the bag, Trimble opts to speak about his love for Elvis Presley.
"I became conscious of Elvis the summer of 1957," says the Nobel Peace Prize winner. "You could not go along the seafront of Bangor past the amusement arcades and the jukeboxes without hearing 'All Shook Up' thudding out pretty well every day all day."
No doubt to the amusement of old colleagues, he adds: "I was conscious of the controversy around it and that led to a little bit of excitement. There was a dress that went with it - the hair being brushed back."
Unfortunately, I was unable to get hold of Trimble yesterday to ask which hit ("Crying in the Chapel", "Suspicious Minds") he launches into when passed the karaoke mic. Perhaps he is en route to Memphis, quiff gelled, flares on, with the 1,500 British Elvis impersonators for this week's convention marking 30 years since the King's death.
* Turn again Stringy! Boris Johnson will be happy to learn he can loosen his belt by a notch as he moves up a (bicycle) gear on his way to the London mayoral offices.
Peter Stringfellow, self-proclaimed "King of Clubs" and lifelong Tory supporter, has generously ruled himself out of the Conservative candidacy to give Boris a clear run at Ken Livingstone. "I gave becoming mayor serious thought, but I'm reluctant to change what I'm doing. I'm in love and business is fine," he tells me. "But I wouldn't rule it out for the future."
Stringy touted himself as a runner before the 2000 contest, pledging to massacre Trafalgar Square's pigeons. He worryingly admits he'd like to see Jeffrey Archer on the Tory ticket. But of Boris, he says: "He has a sense of humour and character; he's an upfront, honest man." (Boris's missus may disagree.) "And my girlfriend loves him."
* More pregnancy news: the actress Helena Bonham Carter, 41, expects her second child with her film director husband Tim Burton "later this year". The couple, pictured together right, met on the set of Planet of the Apes (he liked her hairy chest) and have a three-year-old son, Billy-Ray.
English rose Bonham Carter has most recently won plaudits for her portrayal of Harry Potter villain Bellatrix Lestrange, the female Death Eater (boo, hiss).
She is cast again for the sixth movie, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, scheduled to begin filming in two months for a November 2008 release. Her publicist said yesterday that Bonham Carter was not due back on the Potter set until the spring.
Burton was in the delivery room last time, an experience he described as "like my own private Alien movie. I'll tell you, it was the weirdest thing I've ever seen."
* If you haven't yet fled the country and are still chewing over where to holiday this year, then wait just a fortnight longer and you will be able to buy Lonely Planet's standalone guide to that international hotspot, Afghanistan.
For a destination so popular in the Sixties and Seventies with sockless hippy types on their way to Goa, it is fair to say that the book doesn't really go in for the big sell.
"The risks are varied and omnipresent," the guide notes, "from kidnapping to improvised explosive devices, from suicide bombings to land mines, from diseases to highway robbery."
Pack your suitcase!
* On 11 September, vanloads of Scotland Yard's baton-jabbing finest will invade London's Docklands for the arms fair. Some 20,000 visitors, camouflaged and suited, will thrill one another with the size of their ballistics.
The "Space Hijackers" anarchist protest group has decided to take on the arms dealers at their own game. At previous arms fairs they have handed out prosthetic limbs (effect of land mines) and sex toys ("make love, not war"). Instead, this year, the protesters are buying their own tank. They have set up an online Blue Peter-style "tank-o-meter" and have already collected £2,000. Says one protester: "We need five grand for a Russian T-72. Two grand buys us a Second World War armoured personnel carrier with big guns on top. You can get them off men in fields in Kent." He adds: "We will only take our foot off the accelerator if a policeman puts a flower in our cannon, or if the police stage a sitdown protest in front of our tank."
