Londoner's Diary
An urgent call out to all babyfaced men with acting chops: want to play David Cameron? There are whispers that prolific playwright Jack Thorne, author of the sell-out stage play Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, is helming a new ITV drama about the phone hacking scandal that will feature the Foreign Secretary and former prime minister as a central character.
Cameron was in Number 10 during the scandal, which culminated with the Leveson Inquiry where he gave evidence.
It’s hoped the show, to be based on former Guardian journalist Nick Davies’s book Hack Attack, will come out next year.
Yet who could fill such a distinctive role? An experienced thesp will be required, one who can nail down Cameron’s distinctive Etonian drawl and cool demeanour. Then there is the question of resemblance.
Hugh Bonneville, of Downton Abbey and Paddington fame, most closely resembles Cameron. They share a beaky nose, ruddy complexion and shiny cheeks. But just as actors miss their moment to play the Dane, Bonneville at 60 is perhaps too old to portray a young David Cameron in his prime ministerial heyday.
Henry Cavill, on the other hand, is just 40 and might well pass as Lord Dave. He has just one problem: he’s far too chiselled at the moment. A number of iced buns would be required to slacken that jawline before he could play Cameron.
James McAvoy has a Cameronesque swagger and could, with a shave, make the part his own. And Andrew Garfield, while he doesn’t display a similar physiognomy, has the posho credentials to give a vibes-based interpretation of the former PM.
Has Starmer found the zeitgeist tape?
First there were Love Island jokes at Prime Minister’s Questions and now Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is off-handedly making references to reality TV show The Traitors. Last night, at a reception for female journalists in parliament, Sir Keir made a laboured comparison between the show and the Conservative party, describing it as “sort of like the 1922 committee: they all get together in a crumbling historic building, they take lumps out of each other, before regular, secretive votes.” Har har. But where does he find the time for all this popular culture?
We are starting to think that the “zeitgeist tape” might be real. Thought up in political satire programme The Thick of It, the tape was a mythic vessel of pop culture watched by the prime minister each week. “It’s EastEnders highlights, choice bits from all the reality shows, 10-second news and videos, that kind of thing,” says Malcolm Tucker, the fictional spin doctor in the show. But why let a good idea go to waste? In PMQs today, Starmer compared the Tory government to “the longest episode of EastEnders ever put to film”.
PopCon's Clarke gets a frosty reception
Conservative MP Sir Simon Clarke's recent demand for Chancellor Rishi Sunak to resign has received sharp criticism from his fellow party members, with one of them referring to him as a "tosser."He seems to have misjudged the mood among Tory MPs, who want it all to go away. But can Sir Simon, pictured, at least count on support from his close ally Liz Truss? Apparently not. The former PM says she doesn’t want a leadership challenge either. Truss and Clarke only this week announced they were teaming up to launch “Popular Conservatism”, an organisation that will push for a more Right-wing agenda in the Tory party. The importance of coordination should be their first order of business.
