Steerpike: Begging with the archbishop, dining with rebels, and playing Shakespeare

Begging bowls are out at Canterbury cathedral. Anglicanism’s principal shrine is in danger of toppling over if its custodians can’t raise an emergency fund of £17.8 million needed to shore up the nave, two wobbly towers and Christchurch Gate. A bid for £10.2 million to save the cathedral from the forces of gravity has just been rejected by the Heritage Lottery Fund. Canons may even shut the cathedral to worshippers while they finalise a last-ditch scheme to cadge the dough from US philanthropists. Failing that, they could try flogging the old ruin to the Emir of Qatar. He seems to own everything else these days.
 
Chris Grayling, affectionately known as ‘Uncle Fester’ in Downing Street, has vowed to sweep Britain’s prisons clean of drugs. The justice secretary will launch ‘a real, intensive in-your-face drive’ to stop narcotics from entering the system. The ‘criminal fraternity’, as he quaintly labels them, have successfully evaded the authorities by hurling contraband over prison walls stuffed inside tennis balls or attached to fireworks. One inventive dealer threw a dead pigeon crammed with heroin into the grounds of a jail in Yorkshire. The word from Uncle Fester is that such ‘ingenious methods’ will be combated with ‘really valuable new technologies’. Like asking a prison officer to stand near the wall with his eyes open.
 
I hear that rebel Conservatives have formed an exclusive dining club inside the Commons. Membership cards are handed out to dissident Tories who have defied the whips, voted against the coalition or snubbed ministers offering jobs or five-star freebies abroad. So secretive is the society that its name is changed on a regular basis. Last month it was ‘Nadine’s diners’. This month it’s to be renamed ‘Phil’s long-haul café’ with ‘Hammond eggs’ topping the menu, in honour of the Defence Secretary’s support for ‘eggsit’ from the EU.