London theatre needs Kevin Spacey

Lee Anderson, deputy chairman of the Conservative party, popped a few monocles by saying asylum seekers reluctant to stay on a Home Office barge could ‘fuck off back to France’. Wash your very mouth out! Where did Anderson think he was performing? At the Royal Court theatre? The Guardian, which long teased Mary Whitehouse for being a prude, clutched its pearls at the ‘nasty’ remark. Westminster journalists, few of whom can complete a sentence without an F-word, wrote about Anderson’s ‘shock’ remark. Radio 4’s Nick Robinson (so one gathers, not having been a Radio 4 listener for seven years) was so aghast that he had to be given camomile tea and a cold compress to the brow. Now that Huw Edwards has been excommunicated, can it be long before Nick is asked to front Songs of Praise? Then Suella Braverman’s wheeze was torpedoed by the discovery of nasties in the barge’s water supply.