The Londoner: Alastair Campbell orders Boris Johnson: ‘Off yer bike’

Alastair Campbell says he intervened on the side of House of Commons authorities as Boris Johnson tried to bring his bicycle through the 1 Parliament Street entrance to the Palace of Westminster.

Campbell, the People’s Vote advocate and former spin doctor for Tony Blair, was with Labour MP Alison McGovern at the entrance to the parliamentary estate yesterday afternoon when, it is claimed, Johnson tried to enter with his bicycle. “Alastair and Alison were just going through security when Boris bumbled in and the security woman told him that he couldn’t bring his bicycle through this entrance,” a source says. “Boris said he knew, but continued to try and come in with his folding bike. So Alastair quizzed him on why he was ignoring the rules, using rather Anglo-Saxon terms. Boris demanded to know why Alastair was even there. The three of them got into a heated debate on Brexit which resulted in them telling Boris he had ruined the country.”

Johnson eventually conceded defeat and sought another entrance. Following the incident, Campbell and McGovern sat down to record an episode of the Progressive Britain Podcast, out today, in which they explain what went on.

“We weren’t very polite to Boris Johnson just now,” Campbell ponders. “We weren’t impolite,” McGovern disagrees. “Just factual... and mentioned that he’s ruined our country.” “And also he was bringing a bike through, and he was told by the woman he wasn’t supposed to.” “Did you tell him off?” host Stephanie Lloyd asks. “Yeah”, Campbell confirms. “I did, yeah.”

Regulations on the Parliament website state that folding bicycles must be “authorised in advance” or they will be refused entry. The Londoner has reached out to Johnson for comment. He was in Staffordshire this morning for a “wide-ranging” speech at the headquarters of construction firm JCB.

Oppression time

Audience members from last night’s Question Time are being called on by the Media Diversified campaign to file complaints to the BBC after staff allegedly “stoked up the anti-Diane Abbott sentiment” before the broadcast. Three audience members separately tweeted about “humour at Diane’s expense from BBC staff before the recording”, with one commenting that “Fiona Bruce basically made fun of Diane Abbott in the briefing”. The programme, filmed in Derby, showed new host Bruce challenge Abbott on numerous issues to audible jeers from the audience.

"We firmly reject claims that any of the Question Time team treated any of the panel unfairly before and during the recording last night", a BBC spokesperson says.

Our wasted youth

Timothée Chalamet spoke about youth and sobriety at a post-show discussion for his new movie, Beautiful Boy, this week. “Everything about being young is in tension with being sober,” said the actor, who plays a teenager struggling with addiction in the new film, out today. “When you’re young, you’re shopping around for your personality. Your friend shows up at school in a crazy outfit and you’re like, ‘That’s not who you are!’” The event, held at the Picturehouse Central, Piccadilly, was in aid of charity AddAction.

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An update on the arms race between broadcasters and protesters in Westminster. The BBC now uses “double-height platforms” to avoid protesters’ signs creeping into shot. But the demonstrators have responded by “extending the height of their placards”, BBC head of newsgathering Jonathan Munro writes in a letter to the Spectator. Time for a triple story platform?

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A healthy attitude to diversity from the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre: a casting breakdown for its forthcoming revival of Evita, seen by The Stage, specifies that it is seeking a black performer to play the lead. Jamie Lloyd, the acclaimed director, is behind the production of the Lloyd Webber musical.

Ophelia tells new to turn over a new leaf

W1A star Ophelia Lovibond championed female representation again last night as the actor and #MeToo activist celebrated the winners of a women-only filmmaking competition. The Female Film Force, launched by Bumble, gives five £20,000 grants to aspiring female filmmakers: the resulting short films were screened last night to an audience including Lovibond and fellow actors Phoebe Fox and Stefanie Martini. Lovibond has a novel technique for dealing with men who talk over her on set: she sits down, rather pointedly, and opens a book until they notice she’s no longer paying attention. “And you think, ‘That’s quite bad — it took you two pages. And I was supposed to be a part of that conversation.’”

Elsewhere, Lady Amelia Windsor and Mary McCartney were at The Bibi Fund’s gala dinner for childhood cancer research at The Banqueting House on Whitehall, while Lady Mary Charteris enjoyed a special Love Magazine screening of See Know Evil at Islington’s Everyman Screen on the Green.

SW1A

Senior Tories say that Sir Mark Sedwill, the Cabinet Secretary, has felt marginalised over the decisions being made over Brexit within Downing Street. “He just doesn’t know what’s going on,” one told us this week. So Sedwill, at least, may be relieved by the scale of the defeat of the PM’s deal: in a constitutional crisis Theresa May simply cannot ignore the country’s most senior civil servant.

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Paul Scully, Conservative Vice Chair for London, says his new beard isn’t specially for Brexit as “the way the Speaker and others have been in the Chamber, I’d risk looking like Father Time by the time we end up leaving the EU”. He admits, though, that “no beard is better than a bad beard”.

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Jacob Rees-Mogg is officially joining the LBC radio hosting team. “I look forward to finding out what the public really thinks over the next couple of months,” he says. Sounds like a call for a People’s Vote, no?

Quote of the Day

'As Eeyore said, “It never hurts to keep looking for sunshine”’

Andrea Leadsom looks to the Winnie the Pooh character — or is it Philip Hammond? — for wisdom in these turbulent times