The Telegraph’s weekly Peterborough diary column offers an unparalleled insight into what’s really going on at Westminster and beyond
Such is the praise for BBC newsreader Huw Edwards for his calm and soothing broadcasting style that MPs are honouring him with a drinking game. A player is given a topic and told to expound on it, left arm extended in Edwards’s inimitable 10 o’clock news style. Hesitation or repetition is punished with an instruction to drink.
Tory MP Bim Afolami tells me: “Huw Edwards is a national treasure, and his performance on the BBC during the period of national mourning was quite brilliant.” Over to Edwards. “This is news to me,” he tells me. “I just want to thank the bus driver who stopped in the middle of Brixton High Street, opened his window and shouted ‘Huw you’re the boss!’ This is easily the high point of my public life.” Iechyd da, Huw!
Panto season is nearly upon us and Diana Moran, famed as the 1980s breakfast TV fitness guru, the Green Goddess, once caused much amusement at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Moran, 83, who was playing the Fairy Godmother in Cinderella at the nearby Theatre Royal, popped in for the Christmas Eve carol service between the matinee and evening performances, in her costume covered in bright pink sparkles.
“I was busting to spend a penny,” she said. So her co-star Eric Sykes suggested using the chapel’s disabled lavatory. “I reached behind me to pull the flush and unfortunately it was the alarm,” she said. “There was a big commotion. Security quickly surrounded the toilet and tried the door – and out I came in full splendour. Everybody had a laugh, including all the congregation. Eric never let me forget it.”