Londoner's Diary: Tom Stoppard argues: ‘Je ne suis pas Charlie’

Je suis who? While Boris Johnson schmoozes in Paris with his French counterpart Anne Hidalgo on cultural swaps, one of our country’s great intellectuals, Sir Tom Stoppard, has admitted that his fraternité is limited. “I really couldn’t, as it were, position myself in the heart of Charlie Hebdo,” says the playwright, who is also a patron of Index on Censorship, in an interview with the New Statesman.

“The ‘Je suis Charlie’ slogan was supposed to be a statement against extremism but actually it was a gratuitous swipe at the entire population of Muslim countries.”

He believes that “what we actually have to do is demonstrate by our behaviour that our values are better than theirs… It will take a long time and you’ll take a lot of hits for it but finally you can’t coerce people. You have to be more attractive than the competition.”

Stoppard, who has been in the playwriting business for 50 years, recently won the PEN Pinter Prize for his commitment to freedom of expression, a long-standing theme of his own plays, and he bestows his own patronage on theatre companies in repressive regimes such as Belarus. However, Stoppard has not leapt to the obvious side of the argument on Charlie Hebdo. On the magazine’s defiant editorial policy, he says: “If you are determined to flex your muscles and make your point bigger and better and louder, you always end up feeling bad. Whereas if you conciliate and give, you always feel relieved. This is the human truth about us.”

The Mervyn King phisher

An unusual request arrives from “Sir Mervyn King”, former governor of the Bank of England, via LinkedIn, asking for bank details so that he can wire over a sum of €20.6 million. “Good Day,” the message begins. “My name is Mervyn King, I work with Bank of England and was the previous Governor/Chairman of its Monetary Committee.”

The message promises a 60/40 split on the haul. Despite the odd grammatical and factual lapse, The Londoner was impressed by the audacity of the phisher posing as him. A triple-A rating, we feel.

Closure speaks volumes about V&A

The V&A’s trustees are today set to rubber-stamp proposals to close its publication department, The Londoner understands. That’s the sector responsible for titles including retrospective David Bowie Is and fashion tome The Biba Years, but even a six-figure profit last year couldn’t save it.

It will do little to quell a mutinous feeling spreading through the V&A, in particular over director Martin Roth. “He’s hardly there,” grumbles one senior source. A V&A rep says travel is part of Roth’s role — perhaps unwise when those at home aren’t happy. Chairman Sir Paul Ruddock is stepping down, to be replaced, we think, by Simon Jenkins. Can he calm everyone down?

Hirst keeps cool at Icetank

Lilah Parsons welcomed fellow model Katie Keight and artist Damien Hirst to Icetank Studios in Holborn last night, where she launched her campaign with fashion brand Yumi.

Keight and Hirst have hung around together for the past year: she was with him in Cannes last May when his gold-plated mammoth skeleton sold for £8.9 million at auction. It was bought by Warner Music owner Leonard Blavatnik and he said then he didn’t know where to put it.

Maybe the atrium of the Natural History Museum, if the blue whale can’t be brought in?

A Klass act at the school gates

Last year Myleene Klass launched class warfare over her points on mansion tax. The singer and model, sitting on the sofa with Ed Miliband on ITV show The Agenda, shredded the Labour leader on his policy. Now she’s taking on an even tougher cause: school-gate politics.

Last night Klass tweeted an email from a mother, whose child is in the same class as her daughter Ava. It was about birthday presents for her own daughter and another girl at the school. “Jane and Hannah would prefer a class birthday gift for their daughters this year. Sarah would like a Kindle and Lola a desk,” said the email. Klass changed the names of the girls before circulating.

The mums said they would collect donations every morning at the gates, recommending £10 per child ahead of the party next week and congratulating their own children for such studious gift choices. Klass gave a classy retort. “For Ava’s birthday she has requested a real live unicorn,” she responds.

“I will be collecting unicorn money via her book bag, in the playground or at www.getwhatyouregiven andendthismadness.com. Additionally I’d like a Ferrari and Leonardo DiCaprio, so by all means feel obligated to contribute to that too.”

The Londoner applauds Klass’s calling out of what seems a rather mercenary practice — but we hope little Ava’s party invitation still stands.

What goes around comes around, Amy

Last year Sony Pictures boss Amy Pascal was embarrassed by hacked emails in which she called actor Adam Sandler an a**hole, and joined in conversations labelling Angelina Jolie a “spoilt brat” . Vanity Fair now reports that she has bought “four separate hand-held devices, with various names and passwords” for privacy. A simpler way of doing it? Just be nicer.

Do call us, we called you

Tom Hughes may look like yet another of London’s drawling, ex-public-school actors but, refreshingly, the star of the BBC Cold War thriller The Game is a working-class Cheshire lad. He applied to Rada aged 16, after his parents went with him to the local internet café to Google which was the best drama school.

A few months later he got an answerphone message. “At the time I’d recorded something which said, ‘This is going to cost me shitloads of money to listen to, so unless it’s funny or important, don’t leave a message’,” recalls Hughes in the latest issue of Vogue. “And then I heard the principal of Rada say [in a rather a Shakespearean voice], ‘Hello there, Tom, this happens to be rather important. If you wouldn’t mind giving me a quick call back — it’s about your future.’”

Cork-popping of the day: champagne! Luxury group LVMH reports that sales of bubbly rose six per cent last year, good news because sales of cognac plummeted.