Londoner's Diary: Miriam Gonzalez chokes on the price of UK artichokes

In today's Diary: Miriam spits at cost of British veg | Conchita takes back control | Denis Macshane on Gibraltar | Boris and Macron share musical tastes | Michael Cockerell on Boris | Celebsercise
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3 April 2017

As arguments rage over Gibraltar, Miriam González Durántez, pictured, lawyer and Spanish wife of former Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, appeared on The Andrew Marr Show yesterday to explain the Spanish side of the debate. But she didn’t let politics distract her from her big theme of the weekend: the price of artichokes.

Writing on her blog Mumandsons.com, she posted: “Artichokes are one of my favourite vegetables, together with aubergines and Swiss chard. I bought these [artichokes] last week at the truly exorbitant price of £1.99… per artichoke!”

González Durántez regularly publishes recipes with some propaganda thrown in for good measure. “How can they possibly justify that the price of a single artichoke is the same as the price of not one, but 12 packets of salt and vinegar crisps? Or eight Mars bars?”

Can we also read into this some concern for the fate of Spanish farmers? The country is the second largest producer of artichokes in the world. “I searched the prices in different supermarkets — it’s difficult to find artichokes for less than £1.40-£1.50 per unit at best,” she raged. “Insane. How much of that goes to the farmers’ pockets? As the granddaughter and niece of farmers I can tell you: very little indeed. “When governments spend money on marketing to convince us all to increase the number of fruit and vegetables we eat per day, they could think of how to work with supermarkets so that raw vegetables and fruits go down to a more normal price.” Or maybe, with the decline of the pound, we Brits will have to stick to turnips?

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(BBC News & Current Affairs via G)
BBC News & Current Affairs via G

The Londoner bumped into Michael Cockerell at his daughter Alice’s joint 30th birthday party with friends Sophie Coombs and Claire Cruick on Friday in the Sporting Clube de Londres in North Kensington. The documentarian regaled us with a tale of when he approached the then Mayor of London Boris Johnson to first ask about filming a portrait of him for his series on BBC2. Previous subjects included Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron. “What’s it all about?” Johnson inquired. “We want to show the real Boris Johnson,” Cockerell announced. “God forbid,” replied Boris.

Gibraltar’s always been a rocky problem

AFP/Getty Images

ONE person who foresaw the Gibraltar problem was former Europe minister Denis MacShane. Writing about the contours of Brexit a month ago for InFact magazine. MacShane noted that “Spain was always chip, chip, chipping in Brussels on anything when they could raise Gib — it needed a constant watchful eye.”

He also casually mentioned that “as Europe minister, I helped negotiate a kind of peace deal in Madrid that allows direct flights to Gibraltar even though the airport landing strip is clearly in Spanish territory”. Moreover if you go back further in history, things get trickier still. “I have read the original Treaty of Utrecht [1713]. The Gib chapter is right at the back and the UK agrees that there will be no commerce with Spain by land ‘except in cases of stormy weather’.”

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Quote of the day: 'It looks like someone in the UK is losing their composure’

Spain’s Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis on the Brits’ upper lip quivering over Gibraltar.

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Brexit stress? Celebs have it worked out

It seems celebrities are shrugging off Brexit woes by hitting the great outdoors and getting the endorphins flowing. Telegraph journalist Bryony Gordon flew to Ibiza and wrote: “Woo hoo to walking and hiking!” — she’s preparing to run the London Marathon. Presenter Davina McCall took to mountain-biking, snapping a smile but admitting: “so out of my comfort zone... actually petrified”. Gymnastics was also a favourite for Caroline Flack, who tried out a cartwheel. Actress Sadie Frost practised yoga, doing a right-angle dog position, showing off her toned bod while on holiday.

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AFP/Getty Images

Harmony at last across the Channel? A childhood friend of French presidential favourite Emmanuel Macron told The Sunday Times the aspiring politician preferred Brahms to Nirvana in his misspent youth. This will be music to the ears of Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who chose Brahms’s Variations on the St Antoni Chorale on Desert Island Discs in 2005. Macron previously said Boris was “flamboyant”. Could they make political music together?

Conchita’s frock shock

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Even Eurovision winners are looking for the exit. Conchita Wurst, the fabulously bearded and frocked Austrian chanteuse who stormed to victory three years ago, plans to hang up her heels and wig, she told an audience in London last night.

Having risen to fame as a drag performer, the singer wants to go back to being just Tom Neuwirth. “I don’t want to die in my eyelashes and wig,” she told the BBC’s Paddy O’Connell, who hosted the annual London Eurovision preview party at the Café de Paris.

Conchita has star power, so it was good to see this year’s UK entry taking notes. Welsh X Factor performer Lucie Jones is carrying our flag this year, and stopped chatting with friends and family to record Conchita’s performance on her smartphone.

Jones will perform Never Give Up On You — a message to the EU from Remoaners? — co-written by Danish Eurovision winner Emmelie de Forest, at the contest in Kiev next month. Jones also performed a duet with Spain’s Manel Navarro. We guess Gibraltar never came up in conversation. Rock on.

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Tweet of the day: “I wish I could write with the confidence of a man who has got to the age of 56 without understanding the decimal point.”

Professor James Chalmers responds to Simon Heffer’s proposal to bring back imperial units.

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Suki swings back into the Sixties

Suki Waterhouse channels Andy Warhol’s muse, Edie Sedgwick, as she poses beside celebrated Spanish fashion photographer and director Miguel Reveriego. The model turned actress appears on this month’s cover of Vanity Fair looking angelic in Burberry.

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Vigilante of the day: The Apostrophiser, who is giving Bansky a run for his money by going around Bristol incognito correcting wrong or missing apostrophes on public signs and shop fronts.

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