Ben Schott

Ben Schott: I’m Tony Blair’s brother (according to Google)

The globe (Golden and otherwise) has rightly fallen h-o-h for Olivia Colman who, before The Crown, The Favourite and Peep Show, had an early role as Bev in the ‘Bev-Kev’ ads for AA insurance. But I was there at the very beginning, when she starred opposite her husband-to-be in a 1995 Cambridge production of Alan Ayckbourn’s Table Manners, directed by the incomparable Kate Pakenham. I was in charge of the sound and lights, which weren’t very elaborate, given the 80-seat Corpus Playroom could be lit with a 100-watt bulb. But I did have one minor creative triumph. Act one, scene one opens in an empty dining-room in late afternoon, and I persuaded Kate that as the lights faded up, so should Radio 4 — allowing Olivia to switch off the radio as she entered. And so each night I recorded the opening fragments of the PM show, and watched the audience grin as they recognised that day’s headlines. This tiny humble-brag serves merely to cheer on Olivia, and request the BBC reinstates PM’s fabulous jingle.

Two weeks into Veganuary

Bloomberg has finally entered the race after [selflessly avoiding splitting the vote] / [bottling the opportunity of a lifetime] in 2016. Forbes guesstimates Mike’s fortune at $52.4 billion — which would place him at no. 19 on the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, were he not too coy to list himself. And this raises an interesting question: if you’ve a fortune equal to the GDP of Serbia, why run? Admirably, Mike wants to end America’s gun epidemic. As President this would be almost impossible, but as a billionaire he could simply buy up every gun manufacturer, and halt consumer sales. The US firearms industry is worth around $8 billion — but even if this figure were tripled, Mike would have enough cash left over to buy Twitter and kick off the Nazis.

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