Sally bercow

Not long ago I was asked if I wanted to participate in a Channel 4 reality show called The Jump. Rather embarrassingly, I’d never seen it, but my agent’s description of it sounded quite appealing. A bunch of micro-celebrities are taught a variety of winter sports, including skeleton, bobsleigh, speed skating, giant slalom and ski jumping. Once they’ve mastered the basics, they’re flown to an Austrian ski resort where they compete against each other in a D-list version of the Winter Olympics. A lot more appealing than Celebrity Big Brother, I thought, and less risk of ruining your reputation (yes, George Galloway, I’m thinking of you). However, there was a

Although Quentin Letts has made it clear that his new novel The Speaker’s Wife is fictional, the satirical tome has set tongues-wagging in Westminster. Chris Bryant wrote in his Guardian review that ‘the person who is most recognisable from today’s Westminster’ is the novel’s clerk of the house — Sir Roger Richards —  ‘whose real-life counterpart Sir Robert Rogers resigned last year’. So what do other Westminster residents make of the book? Mr S couldn’t help but raise the topic when he bumped into the current Speaker’s Wife Sally Bercow at last night’s night’s Champagne Life private view at the Saatchi Gallery. Has Sally had a chance to read the book about an ambitious backbencher —

Now that former Central Office favourite Mark Clarke has been banned for life from the Conservative party, he could pursue a career in copy-writing. He seems to have a twisted aptitude for that sort of thing. When leading the Tories’ general election RoadTrip 2015 of young activists, many of them peachy girls, Mr Clarke was said to have had the slogan ‘Isolate, inebriate and penetrate’. Though he denies the bon mot, his approach was apparently wildly successful — which is more than can be said for his attempts to land a parliamentary seat. Several women, including at least one serving cabinet minister, fell for this plausible smarmer over the years. Mr

The Duke of York attended the World Economic Forum last week in what was his first public appearance since he was accused of abusing an under-age ‘sex slave’. While Prince Andrew chose to speak out in Davos to deny the allegations, members of his family appear to be lost for words. Mike Tindall, who is married to Prince Andrew’s niece Zara Phillips, agreed to an interview with the Radio Times on the condition that ‘any questions about the royal family, including Prince Andrew, will lead to it being called to an abrupt halt’. When the writer did venture a question as to how his wife is holding up, he was met with a terse reply. ‘Let’s