Brian Clough and Matt Forde, Tennis with Boris, Our Gavin

                                               People

Meeting your heroes is dangerous. The comedian Matt Forde tells Richard Herring’s podcast that, as a ten-year-old mascot at Nottingham Forest, he met his idol, Brian Clough. Forde was suffering from eczema, so when Clough saw him he said: “Bloody hell, son. You are an ugly bugger.” He gave Forde some cream from the physio but it later transpired that it also caused skin cancer. Years later Forde met Clough again and asked him to autograph a picture of them that day. “Ah!” said Clough with a fond smile. “You looked a lot better back then.”

(The Times, 2019)

Politics

The Dolls' Dinner Party, 

Pierre Bonnard (1867-1947)

Photo Credit: The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham
[CC BY-NC-ND]

…The news, splashed over the front of the Daily Mail, that the wife of a Russian oligarch donated £135,000 to the Conservative party to dine with the Prime Minister and six of her female cabinet colleagues raised a few other questions. What was the point of the dinner? What was discussed across the table? And is there anything politicians won’t do for money?

I suppose the purpose of the evening was clear: it enabled Lubov Chernukin, the wife of a former minister in Vladimir Putin’s government, to donate to the Conservative party and get something in return.

…in 2014 she paid £160,000 for the opportunity to play a doubles tennis match with Boris Johnson and David Cameron…In total, she has made donations to the party totalling £903,000 since 2012.

(The i, 2019)

Gavin Williamson, the defence secretary, has just been sacked for allegedly leaking a National Security Council discussion on the Chinese corporation – Huawei. 

The Gossiping Blacksmith, 

Edward Penny (1714-1791)

Photo Credit: Tate [CC BY-NC-ND]

…But leaking is a complicated business in which the lines get blurred. For a while, the Williamson affair may lead to people clamming up. However, if past experience is any guide, that won’t last long. I often wondered why people told me things they shouldn’t have and often there were logical explanations, from principled whistleblowing via a weakness for gossip to the narcissism of wanting to look important. I’m not sure they always knew themselves. After a while, perhaps it just becomes a way of life.

(Gaby Hinsliff, The Guardian, 2019)

Isn't Williamson the minister for education now! Perhaps he'll be sacked again then.