[First published in ‘AM New York’]
TODAY VOTERS DECIDE if Tony Blair gets returned to office for an historic third term as Britain’s Prime Minister. He’s sure to win, but not by as big a margin as he wants.
He’s been endorsed by the U.K.’s top-selling daily newspaper, The Sun – owned by Australian-American Rupert Murdoch (below, right). Surprisingly. possible terms for that support emerged here in Manhattan last week.
The Week magazine, London-rooted but now also printing a U.S. edition, staged a debate on British election themes. It was at one of General Manager Justin Smith‘s periodic dinners for young opinion-formers in the Soho Grand Hotel. During some questioning from Editor-at-Large Sir Harold Evans, the PR expert and ‘reputation manager’ Peter Brown dropped an enticing pearl of intrigue.
He suggested that Murdoch’s Blair-backing came in return for the Prime Minister’s promise to stay in office an entire term – and not (as has been repeatedly rumored) hand over midway the position to his tough finance secretary, Gordon Brown.
As Brown (Peter, that is) emphasized to me later, Rupert fears Gordon would be less sympathetic than Tony on matters like governmental media regulations.
Peter’s sources may be good. Long familiar as The Beatles‘ business manager (succeeding their legendary Svengali, Brian Epstein), he currently works with Sir Nicholas Lloyd, ex-Editor of Murdoch’s largest selling Sunday paper, the News of the World. And one of his very best friends is Peter Mandelson, formerly Blair’s own political Svengali, and now a Blair-apppointed British commissioner in the European Union. In fact Brown recently vacationed with Mandelson in St. Barth’s.
But Blair’s chief Labor Party representative in America, Christopher Jones, commented:
“Tony Blair has already announced he’ll serve a full third term. Why would he make secret promises – to anyone – to do precisely that?“
ANOTHER AUSTRALIAN broke cover this week. Barry Humphries, newly free of a Broadway run as the incorrigible Dame Edna Everage, gave New Yorkers a rare glimpse of another of his characters.
It’s a hard sight to take: ‘Sir Les Patterson’ (left). He’s supposedly the Australian Embassy’s Cultural Attaché, but Humphries portrays him as the boorish, boozing antithesis of everything cultured or diplomatic.
Massive media coverage is unlikely. Humphries feels he’s playing to a satire-challenged America. Vanity Fair magazine used to carry a Dame Edna advice column, and “she” once disparaged the usefulness of the Spanish language – except for addressing “the help” – and all hell broke out.
Actress Selma Hayek led outraged responses among the Hispanic community, and Vanity Fair Editor Graydon Carter ended the column’s run.
At the Les Patterson evening (in an aptly-named venue, “The Zipper“), satire raised its risky head again. Following First Lady Laura Bush‘s recent well-scripted jokes about her husband, Sir Les felt able to share “a confidence“.
The First Lady, he said, has been calling him for counseling with her former problem-drinker, whose white-knuckled behavior after nearly 20 years without alcohol now gives everybody such grief.
“We’ve got to get him to drink again!” she cried, according to Sir Les.
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