Election time again in Westminster, with 11 politicians hoping to own parliament’s top cat. This is the first time since 2020 that Battersea Dogs and Cats Home has run its “Purr Minister” contest. Voting closes at 5pm today via its website. Sir Lindsay Hoyle won last time with Patrick, an admirable name for a cat, and this year Mr Speaker offers Attlee, who “knows Furskine May like the back of his paw”. Yes, it really is that twee. Stella Creasy says her pets, Chilli and Bandit, are “femeownist ally [sic] cats” (ouch), while Scott Arthur, a fellow Labour MP, demands mandated cat naps and an end to Larry’s “dictatorship” as Downing Street mouser. His cat is called Millie. Surname Tant?
The Church of England can move quickly when it wants. Within hours of Justin Welby resigning there was an act of damnatio memoriae in the Canterbury cathedral gift shop with the withdrawal of the Welby Christmas tree decoration, 69 of which have been sold this year. Fortunately, you can still buy Nativity figures. The Church needs all the wise men (and women) it can get.
The distinctive decoration has been withdrawn from sale at Canterbury Cathedral
JO BURN/BBC
Broad church pays homage
Meanwhile, the supreme governor of the CofE had five bishops round to the Palace for tea yesterday. The newly bemitred prelates for Exeter and Sodor & Man went to “do homage” to the King, witnessed by the Bishop of Hereford, who had the title of Clerk of the Closet and a £7 annual salary, while John Inge, the recently retired Bishop of Worcester, handed over as Lord High Almoner to Graham Usher, Bishop of Norwich and a favourite to succeed Welby. For the first time the Anglican oaths were administered by a Muslim (Shabana Mahmood as lord chancellor) but I suspect the bishops had other things to talk about with the boss.
Pete Clifton, editor-in-chief of the Press Association, won a lifetime prize at the Society of Editors awards on Tuesday and recalled his first story 43 years ago. It involved a trial in Northampton of a drunk who had thrown a rock through a chip shop window. After struggling to get a coherent answer, the magistrate asked why he’d been carrying a rock. “I’m a f***ing archaeologist,” he replied.
Smoke and mirrors
The actor Timothy West, who has died at 90, played Winston Churchill in a BBC series in 1979, a role that required colour-changing contact lenses. “Wear them for an hour a day and avoid bright lights and smoke,” the optician advised. West explained this would be tricky. “I start filming on Friday,” he said. “I’ll be working eight hours a day in studio lighting and smoking a cigar most of the time.” It turned out to be a role that involved him offering far more tears than blood, toil or sweat.
West at home in south London
GEOFF PUGH/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK
Timely pyramid scheme
In 1977 West took a company to Egypt to do Antony and Cleopatra beside the Sphinx. Before opening night the British embassy told him there was an important amateur production of the same play on in Cairo at the same time and said it would be diplomatically helpful not to give it competition. Undaunted, West’s team immediately switched and did Hamlet, featuring Elsinore’s famous illuminated pyramids.
