The Second Serve // Art Burn

Now that Liz Truss’s time at No.10 seems all but over, political pundits are getting ever braver in alluding to the well-known Westminster whisper that Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng were once a little more than just colleagues.

Up until this weekend, Ephraim Hardcastle held the record for cramming the most innuendo into a paragraph, but Andrew Rawnsley put in a decent challenge in Sunday’s Observer, saying: “Close, extremely close, both politically and personally, they certainly were. Give these passionate allies and ideological bedfellows the two most powerful jobs in Britain and what could possibly go wrong?”

Somewhat less subtle was Sky News, who sent out a push notification for an analysis piece of theirs earlier today with the unfortunately truncated headline: “Truss has just removed one of her biggest remaining arguments for staying in power – anal…”

There’s been some talk over the weekend about Tory MPs plotting to install Defence Secretary Ben Wallace as a “caretaker” prime minister in an attempt to hold the party together. He’s always enjoyed great popularity with the party rank and file, but we can’t see it happening.

Ben initially pulled out of the leadership race this summer amid rumours that he wasn’t keen to invite too much scrutiny into his private life. Since then we hear he’s added another, much younger reason not to court the spotlight too.

What celebrity news from Somerset? Sources from the south west tell us that a magnificent state-of-the-art dairy farm recently went on the market in Taunton and a number of nearby farmers were all tripping over themselves to get their hands on it.

Sadly, they found themselves outbid by an out-of-towner. Even more galling to them, this fella is planning on ripping out all the dairy stuff and rewilding the whole property.

Who was this mystery buyer? A Mr B. Cumberbatch.

In Issue 1046, we asked:
“Which fancy London hair salon has a rather unexpected piece of art hanging on its walls? An original Rolf Harris.”

We didn’t want to mention this salon by name at the time because we didn’t want any vigilantes paying them a visit to put their windows out (also: it was never entirely clear to us if the owners knew they had a Rolf Harris hanging on their wall, as the painting had been given to them as a gift).

However, as it’s since gone out of business it doesn’t look like it will make much difference if we tell you now that the name of the place was… The London Grooming Company.

There’s been plenty of touching tributes to Robbie Coltrane since the big man popped off last Friday, but he had already achieved the ultimate tribute a famous person can earn: getting a chip shop to name a meal after him.

An off-menu item at the Edinburgh chippy L’Alba D’Oro was the ‘Robbie Coltrane’ – an order that consisted of two fish suppers doused in salt and vinegar, two pickled onions and a black pudding “fer the dug”.

Staff then watched on in astonishment as Robbie sat outside in his car and polished off the lot – with no sign of any dog.

RD writes:
“Thursday’s newsletter reminded me of a story I was told a few years ago by an ageing anarchist I met at a punk gig. He lived in a squat somewhere in South London in the 80s and one summer an art student moved in, using one of the rooms as a studio out of term time. He disappeared when university started again, leaving a load of canvases behind. When the weather got colder the remaining squatters threw all his abandoned art on a fire.

“Years later my acquaintance saw the man whose art he’d burned on TV. It was Damien Hirst.”

Last week saw audio rounds based around Boys Names, Girls Names and Questions. This week, we’ve got another 50 songs all twisted up into five new mixes for you to untangle.

There’s a point for every song you can correctly name and a point for every artist too. That means there’s 20 points on offer each day; 100 across the course of the week.

Monday’s theme: Body Parts

[Play it here]

Headline Of The Weekend: “Seth Green Claims Bill Murray Dropped Him In A Rubbish Bin Aged Nine”
[Read on NME]

Happy birthday, Lincoln the otter!
[See at Oregon Zoo]

House music stars sue the genre’s first legendary label
[Read on Pitchfork]

Gawker trains its sights on James Corden’s pal, Ben Winston
[Take a read]