Steerpike | 21 March 2013

Westminster’s top amateur prize-fighter, Eric Joyce, may face assault charges after his latest unscheduled bout in the House of Commons. The Falkirk MP had to be restrained last week after an alleged unseemly set-to at the Sports and Social Club. Ex-soldier Joyce first revealed his flair for pugilism in February 2012 when he ‘went berserk’ in the Strangers’ Bar after declaring it ‘full of fucking Tories’. ‘He won’t have that problem in the nick,’ says a Conservative friend. ‘It’s full of Lib Dems.’
 
Panic in Whitehall! Jeremy Hunt’s decision to dump health officials in hospital wards in order to give them ‘first-hand experience’ on the front-line has caused alarm among civil servants. Which department will be next in line for this in-at-the-deep-end policy? The chaps at International Development are taking a more relaxed view. ‘Frankly,’ says one, ‘we can’t wait to get first-hand experience of spending government handouts on air-conditioned Land Cruisers and designer handbags for our mistresses.’
 
The election of a Jesuit to St Peter’s throne has focused attention on the Society of Jesus’s famous motto, ‘Give me a child at the age of seven, and I shall give you the man’. No one knows who coined this tribute to the Jesuits’ formidable aptitude for moral propaganda. Comedian Paul Merton, who was educated by the Jesuits at Wimbledon College in the 1970s, gets a laugh from his satirical version. ‘Give me a child at the age of seven, and I’ll show you a damn good time.’ All in jest of course. No hint of scandal has ever tainted the comedian’s alma mater.
 
Fabulous news from the V&A. The museum has avoided the threat of being smashed to pieces by its very own potter-in-residence. The noted ceramicist Keith Harrison became the V&A’s in-house mud flinger last October. He specialises in ‘live firings’ in unexpected locations.