Londoner's Diary: Philip Green has his cake; Lionel Barber doesn’t eat it

You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. But how do you win round a scrupulous newspaper editor? If you’re Sir Philip Green, the high-street fashion magnate, you might try almond cake.

Last night Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times and recipient of the Légion d’Honneur was given the prestigious Media Society Award at a ceremony at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair. Accepting the prize after an evening of tributes from speakers including BBC media editor Amol Rajan, Peter Bazalgette, Nick Clegg and the Today programme’s Sarah Sands, he discussed his run-in with Green over the phone. The issue? The BHS pension crisis of 2016 and the pink un’s coverage of the fallout.

“Sir Philip Green and I once had a rather salty shouting match, which went something like this,” Barber recalled. “You never come to my office,” said Green. “Well you never come to my office,” said Barber. “What do you want?” “I’m sorry, what do I want?” “What do you want? Do you want a cake?”

“A cake?” Barber spluttered, before acquiescing and, though not actually much of a cake fan, expressed a preference for almond cake. Green visited the following day. “Sure enough... Sir Philip comes to the office of the Financial Times bearing an almond cake, which went nowhere towards convincing me that he had a solution to the BHS pension crisis.”

Barber also recalled a meeting with another difficult character: Donald Trump. No almond cake but he did try a little icebreaker: “Glad to see you are a subscriber to the FT,” Barber said. “Yeah,” said Donald. “But you lost and I won.” The meeting went downhill from there. Shocking.

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Roy Hodgson, the former England manager now in charge of Crystal Palace, was watching a very different spectacle on Tuesday night — the opera Satyagraha. Performed by the ENO at the Coliseum, Philip Glass’s work is a tough three-and-a-half hours. It is also sung in Sanskrit, with no surtitles.

Hodgson is a noted linguist — he speaks German, Italian, French, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and even Finnish. Is he trying to add Sanskrit to the list?

Kay’s secret to being electric in the cold

A HOST of talent flocked to the London Hilton last night for the Royal Television Society’s TV Journalism Awards. Guests included Sky’s Kay Burley. With all her on-location experience, how does she handle blizzards? “I’m northern so I don’t really feel the cold,” she said. “When it’s cold, southerners don’t go out. Northerners just get their coat.” Even while waiting outside No 10 for hours? “On a shoot we have this rubber matting whi ch covers the electric cables,” she explained. “It gets really warm so I just stand on that and it stops the cold going up my skirt.” The current affairs version of a Marilyn moment?

Quote of the day

‘Big Brother even stopped Ann Widdecombe singing God Save the Queen’

Celebrity Big Brother contestant Rachel Johnson tells The Oldie that all “commercial” songs were banned in the BB house, even the national anthem

Stars come in from the cold to party

Kudos to the regulars on the society scene: they know how to keep calm and party on in the face of cold weather. And The Londoner toiled on too last night. First to Soho’s Broadwick Street for the launch of the design collaboration between What We Wear and Axel Arigato. What We Wear’s founder, Tinie Tempah, welcomed guests including Vanessa Kingori, publishing director at Vogue. Then it was back into the cold and down to Hotel Café Royal for the launch of Queer Britain, the LGBTQ+ Museum. Diver Tom Daley raised a glass to the endeavour. Not exactly the weather for a trip to the pool, after all.

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Will Poppy Delevingne’s newest role prove to be a masterpiece? Earlier this week the model, who has gone into acting, uploaded Irving Penn’s celebrated portrait of Pablo Picasso with the comment “Back to work.” She is playing the Cubist’s mistress and muse, Marie-Thérèse Walter, in the news series of Genius, produced by Ron Howard starring Antonio Banderas. Delevingne’s sister Cara has enjoyed success in Hollywood: how long before a big budget sister act?

All rosy in Liz’s garden

Forget the Beast from the East, Elizabeth Hurley’s already thinking about summer. And that means “pressure regulators, polytubes and barbed fittings.” Come again?

The actress, model and swimwear designer, above, has fallen for the charms of homely horticulture, and immersed herself in the workings of hosepipes. “My garden in Herefordshire was like the Kalahari last summer and I spent every waking moment wrestling with giant hosepipes,” she says. “I’ve spent hours Googling irrigation and now know everything anyone needs to about ‘leaky hose’ systems.”

Hurley is taking to rural life with aplomb. “I have struck gold with my new house”, she writes in the new issue of Spear’s magazine. “I long to give up London altogether and live full-time in bucolic bliss.”

And for those wondering if she’s wasting water: “No lectures on watering during a drought,” she adds. “I’m not on mains water and have my own borehole.” Well, well, well.

Tweet of the day

Times Literary Supplement editor Stig Abell’s ironic take on recent interventions by two ex-prime ministers

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Coinage of the day: the Royal Mint has unveiled 26 new 10p coins with designs that show an A-Z of what makes Britain British. Archaeologists will learn that we loved the Loch Ness monster, fry-ups and queuing. Plus ça change ...

We can all brush up like Beckham

A CLOSE shave for David Beckham last night at Electrowerkz in Angel, where he launched his new grooming label, House 99, in collaboration with L’Oréal Luxe. The world of hairstyling is a natural one for the former footballer to turn to — he has run the gamut from skinhead to ponytail. Suits you sir...