Ian botham

Thursday

Stephen Fry

How Rory Stewart led me astray

I have just returned from a tour of Australia and New Zealand, on whose citizens I inflicted An Evening With Stephen Fry. I first ‘played’ Australia in 1981. The Cambridge Footlights Revue that Hugh Laurie, Emma Thompson, Tony Slattery, Paul Shearer, Penny Dwyer and I had put on in Edinburgh attracted the attention of an Australian impresario called Michael Edgley. Would we be interested in taking our show around his country? Tony had another year of university to go and in the end Hugh and Emma joined up with the previous year’s Footlighters, Robert Bathurst and Martin Bergman. That summer Ian Botham had sensationally and all but single-handedly wrested the

Monday

Steerpike

Will beefy Botham get bowled out?

Much was made of Ian ‘beefy’ Botham’s ennoblement in 2020. The hero of Headingley was the headline announcement of the 36 new peers created in Boris Johnson’s dissolution honours’ list; a year later he received another bauble as a UK trade ambassador to Australia. The then Trade Secretary Liz Truss claimed he would ‘bat for business down under’, with the cricketer subsequently undertaking a nationwide tour Down Under in June this year. Botham’s Brexit-backing credentials have earned him fans in government but that enthusiasm isn’t shared by all in the Upper House. Given his many sporting and philanthropic commitments, it’s perhaps no surprise that the cricketing icon hasn’t turned out much