A tipple and a scribble with Gerald Scarfe

Mr Steerpike longs for the day that he has a bar named after him, so he went to doff his cap to Gerald Scarfe at Scarfe’s Bar last night. Cartoonist Scarfe has spent the last four months decorating the bar at the Rosewood Hotel in Holborn. Politicos or royal junkies will love it: Farage, Brown, Cameron, Clegg and the first cartoon of wee baby George are all in evidence.

‘If the Prince of Wales can have a pub named after him, why shouldn’t I have a bar?’ says Scarfe, who treated me to a whistle-stop tour of his work. ‘There won’t be enough time to paint Maria Miller [before she goes],’ he joked.

The walls did, however, present a small connection to the beleaguered Culture Secretary. Scarfe proudly showed me a framed copy of his Sunday Times cartoon that depicted Greece and Spain being breastfed by Angela Merkel. He boasted: ‘Mary McLeod, who works for Miller, was one of the five MPs to write to me complaining about this!’ The militant lactivists – who are on Rod Liddle’s case after his latest