Isabel Oakeshott hunts Matt Hancock lookalike for new Covid WhatsApp show
Is there anyone who looks like Matt Hancock now? His nemesis Isabel Oakeshott is looking for an actor to play the former health secretary on a live show. Oakeshott, right, who co-wrote Hancock’s pandemic “diaries” last year and then betrayed him by giving his WhatsApps to a newspaper, is staging a show based on the news.
There have been setbacks. First, she says they had to move the venue from the Emmanuel Center after Hancock’s people complained about the show. Now, actor Laurence Fox has said he won’t be playing Hancock due to a feud with co-organizer Toby Young, so the two are on the hunt for a new star and someone to play Boris Johnson.
Hancock is busy. At a think tank event last night, he urged the Tories to “stand up to the reactionaries in their party”. He also said he would never perform on Strictly.
New rules for book lover Dua
Dua Lipa
/ Jordan Strauss/Invision/APPop star Dua Lipa turns to the written word. It started with her podcast, At Your Service, where she interviewed writers like Hanya Yanagihara and Lisa Taddeo. Now she has started a book club for fans who will be the first to read Douglas Stuart’s Booker Prize-winning novel Shuggie Bain. Next month Dua will be attending two Hay Book Festival events: first interviewing Stuart and then chatting about her love of books. They call Hay the “literary Glastonbury”…
Too much cuddling?
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak meets Volodymyr Zelenskyy
/ Simon Dawson / No. 10 Downing StreetUkrainian President Zelenskyy was warmly hugged by Rishi Sunak at Checkers on Monday, but did politicians always hug? Veteran journalist Michael Crick tells us that a hug “is a good thing if it improves relationships,” but adds that communist leaders used to be known for their intimacy: Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker once shared a famous kiss. “I can’t imagine Churchill or Thatcher hugging people,” Crick said.
Rory Stewart goes alone
Former Conservative leader Rory Stewart warned against AI last night, calling the new technology a “fundamental threat to our democracy and our culture”. Stewart, who usually co-hosts a podcast with Alastair Campbell, was alone at the Tacitus lecture at the Guildhall this year and said our leaders don’t take AI seriously. Is he considering a comeback in the technologically enhanced future?
Roxy beams at the cucumber
Londoner’s Diary 18 May 23
Models Tiger Lily Taylor and Roxy Horner attended the London Blockchain Conference dinner at Gherkin’s Searcys restaurant last night. Horner has just announced she’s expecting a baby with her comedian partner Jack Whitehall, who joked he was worried about getting less attention after the birth. Guests were treated to an idiosyncratic menu by chef Ollie Dabbous, one of the courses being a single tulip, see right. Elsewhere, models Akuac Thiep and Charli Howard celebrated the paperback release of DJ Fat Tony’s memoir in Mayfair, while Trinny Woodall and Donna Air attended an event hosted by The Female Quotient at the London Hotel.
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/londoners-diary-isabel-oakeshott-hunts-matt-hancock-lookalike-new-covid-whatsapp-show-b1082035.html Isabel Oakeshott hunts Matt Hancock lookalike for new Covid WhatsApp show
