High-flying Hilary: the National Trust Director-General’s air miles
The National Trust’s general election “manifesto” – unveiled last month by its director-general Hilary McGrady – demanded that future governments “recognise the impact of climate change on the nations’ heritage, landscapes and natural environment”. So I was interested to learn that McGrady regularly travels hundreds of miles from her home – a 250-year-old lock-keeper’s cottage near Belfast – to work. The Trust’s head office is in Swindon.
When I ask the Trust how McGrady’s commuting squares with its climate change commitment, a spokesman says McGrady “offsets any flights she takes” and works in some of the other of the Trust’s properties in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, not just the Swindon HQ. “Hilary is from Northern Ireland, and therefore travels to England and Wales up to two or three times a month when necessary,” the spokesman adds. “Our approach, when possible, is to reduce business travel, use sustainable transport or swap to virtual meetings.” Food for thought for the Trust’s members at the charity’s annual general meeting next weekend.
Wired for work
Sir Cliff Richard, who has marked 65 years in showbiz with a new memoir and album Cliff With Strings – My Kinda Life, is slowing down by taking a day off between shows. But when I ask Richard if he ever feels like retiring, the pop star, 83, tells me: “I don’t ever want to retire, but I am probably going to stop – like a red light.
“If you see a red light, you stop. When it turns to green, you think, ‘OK, I might go now’. So I’ve left myself open to still be available to do things, as long as I can. Fortunately, I can still sing live. And I don’t need AI for help.”
Tie-less peers
After I disclosed last week that male MPs will have to start wearing ties in the Commons chamber, Baroness Stowell of Beeston wants peers to follow suit. Stowell, a former leader of the House of Lords, wants a “statement of expectation” about male peers wearing ties to be published in the Lords’ Companion to the Standing Orders, which now only specifically bans hats in the chamber.
Ties are “universal symbols that signal respect for our work and the people we serve”, she tells me. “When the powerful dismiss such symbols when no longer useful to them, they risk denying the same opportunities of success and status to everyone else.”
Lords’ Speaker Lord McFall is not budging. His spokesman says: “Members are expected to behave with respect when they are in the Chamber and this will include the way they dress.”
Reed’s Yorkshires
Ping! A WhatsApp arrives from shadow environment secretary Steve Reed, who is cooking a joint of Aberdeen Angus beef, with his promised recipe for Yorkshire puddings, after he told me of his recipe for the perfect roast potatoes.
Reed’s “Yorkies” comprise 35g plain flour, 15g self-raising flour, one egg, 50ml milk, 20ml cold water, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of dried sage. The mixture is then heated for 25 minutes in a 220C oven with a tablespoon of vegetable oil.
“Adding the dried sage is a little tip from one of my neighbours when I lived in Sheffield,” he says. “They call them seasoned pudding when the sage is added.”
Can any Peterborough readers do better?
Fry will never go full Monty
National treasure Stephen Fry and Monty Don can’t see any point in slowing down. “The trouble is I have been poisoned by a work ethic,” the 66-year-old tells Monty Python star John Cleese on his Dinosaur Hour show on GB News tomorrow night. “I’m addicted to it. I have above my desk a quotation from Noel Coward, which is: ‘Work is more fun than fun’.
“And I’ve been very lucky to find that. A lot of people would say ‘how fabulous it is that I’m going to retire’ or ‘how fabulous I’m no longer working, because I can garden’. I would rather eat my own legs than dig and fork and be a Monty Don.”
Des’s African adventure
Sports broadcasting legend Des Lynam has been spending his time imagining conversations between the different creatures he sees in his garden. The result is two whimsical books – Now Who’s Talking? – with line drawings by Bryony Hill, widow of his old Match of the Day colleague Jimmy Hill.
Lynam, 81, is now planning a third volume about Africa. But he won’t be heading to the Kalahari for inspiration, preferring to imagine the conversations between the pairs of elephants, lions and warthogs from his sitting room. “I’ll make it up,” he says.
Peterborough, published every Friday at 7pm, is edited by Christopher Hope. You can reach him at [email protected]
