Londoner’s Diary: Westminster drinking culture like freshers’ week, says ex-MP

PARLIAMENT had a drinking culture “like freshers’ week,” a former MP has claimed. Heidi Allen said that there was “massively” a problem with the drinking culture when she was an MP between 2015 and 2019, partly because people were “away from home”.“You would literally see MPs wineglass-hopping from room to room,” Allen told a Bright Blue event, “[with] no interest whatsoever if they’re in an event about dogs and in the next room was an event about saving Palestine... bored evening on a Thursday night waiting for the last vote, it’s gone 10, so why not?”Allen, who was a Tory MP before switching to Change UK and then the Liberal Democrats, added “the smell of alcohol in the voting lobbies could be quite strong sometimes”.

She explained to the discussion, which was about whether Britain is getting the right MPs, that with Parliamentary lobbyists in Westminster there would often be “a couple of corridors” full of events.

My legacy won’t be tainted, love

MARC ALMOND has complex feelings about his possessions. “I’m actually going through my archive and destroying stuff — demos, photographs... everything”, the Soft Cell singer tells Mojo magazine. “I’ve said everything about myself that needs to be said — and everything I haven’t told, I definitely want to keep to myself.” Almond’s purge is driven by fastidious curation: “I’m making a big bonfire of my life, so when I go I’ll leave nothing but what I’ve approved.” The hard sell?

Needs must for tweeting author

LAURA LEXX was sceptical when publishers approached her to turn her viral tweets from the first lockdown into a book.

“I was thinking, “No... It’s a very thin joke”, the comedian says of her widely shared posts about Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp. “Stretching this to a book is a very bad idea.” But then she had a change of heart. “I lost all my income,” she quips on Richard Herring’s podcast. “And I thought... ‘Do you know what? I could write a book. That sounds like a really good book’.”

Ker-ching

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THE haggis was toasted at yesterday’s Boisdale Burns Night supper amid bagpipe recitals, Burns poetry and whisky drams. Actor James Cosmo and artist Jock McFadyen joined host Ranald Macdonald at the Canary Wharf do. Elsewhere, sculptor Alex Von Moltke held a private view in Belgravia.

SW1A

BORIS JOHNSON has a unique capacity to enrage people. Former MP Anna Soubry tells PoliticsHome that found herself shouting so loudly at the TV when he appeared on PMQs last week that she had to apologise to her neighbours for the noise. Will it be Johnson or his critics raging from their sofas next?...

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IN the running for the next BBC political editor, Any Questions host Chris Mason says he’s “flattered to be linked” to the role but adds “there are plenty, though, better suited to it. Love Any Questions, Breakfast, Newscast, Panorama”. Not quite ruling himself out.