It’s been a tough few weeks for Chris Bryant since he claimed that ‘we can’t just have a culture dominated by Eddie Redmayne and James Blunt and their ilk’ in an interview with The Guardian. Privately educated Blunt didn’t take kindly to the comments and responded by calling Bryant a ‘classist gimp’ in an open letter.
If that wasn’t reason enough to be gloomy, the new shadow culture minister confides to Steerpike that even laughter brings him misery nowadays.
‘I broke two ribs this morning, so I’m in quite a lot of pain,’ he tells Mr S at Paddy Power’s Political Book Awards. ‘Bizarrely, getting out of bed in the morning I slipped and I was in hospital and in an ambulance and all that. I would love to laugh about it but I am really in quite a lot of pain so when Rory Bremner was being funny on stage that was really not pleasant.’
As for his beef with Blunt, there could be hope of a reconciliation between the pair now that Bryant has revealed himself to be a fan of the well spoken crooner’s tunes.
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