Londoner's Diary: Douglas Carswell hasn’t the gravity to talk about tides

Getty Images / Jack Taylor / Stringer
21 September 2016

The most surreal of debates was waged this week on Twitter, when Professor Paul Nightingale of Sussex University used a celestial analogy when considering Brexit trade talks. “Want to understand trade?” he asked. “Think gravity: size & distance matter. UK-Ireland greater than UK-China. Jupiter is big but the Moon moves tides.”

Ukip MP Douglas Carswell responded: “Actually, it’s the gravitational pull of the Sun,” he said. “The Moon’s gravity does spring/neap tides. I’m surprised thehead of science research at a university refutes idea Sun’s gravity causes tides.”

“Douglas,” Nightingale responded. “This isn’t a controversial point. Its in Newton’s Principia.”

The Londoner was roused enough to contact the Astronomer Royal Lord Rees and astronaut Dr Helen Sharman to throw some light on the debate.

“The Moon is about twice as important as the Sun,” hooted Lord Rees. “All elementary!” Sharman diplomatically confirmed that the tides are caused by a combination of the two influences. “They are caused by the interaction of the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun,” she told us. “The Moon is closer but then the Sun is obviously more massive.”

For Hugh Aldersey-Williams, author of Tide: The Science and Lore of the Greatest Force on Earth, Carswell’s errors say much about our country’s attitude. “What I find interesting is how from the time of Canute the tide has been used as a metaphor,” he says. “Here we are living on an island yet when it comes to the tide we know rather less than we should.”

Was Nigel Farage’s recent skinny-dip all in the name of research?

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To the St Martins Lane Hotel last night for the afterparty of Pinter’s No Man’s Land. Actress Frances Barber warns Americans to bring a translator. “It’s not an easy play to follow,” she explained. “And my friend this evening is American so I had to whisper to her throughout: all the references they make to Hampstead Heath and Jack Straw’s Castle, they’re very English. And here everyone knows what they mean.” The Londoner paused.

Some sticky memories for Tony Blair

News breaks that Tony Blair is shutting down his multi-million-pound companies Tony Blair Associates, Firerush and Windrush, in an apparent attempt to refute his reputation as being avaricious. That’s sad for those who have been trying to work out who our former PM has been offering his advice to. Then The Londoner recalled being told about how one Blair staffer lost a USB stick containing several years of Blair business accounts spreadsheets “somewhere” on the London Underground. Nothing ever came to light, but somewhere in TfL Lost Property the scoop of the decade may lie dormant.

In the fashion week ’hood

London Fashion Week closed with the Burberry/Dazed party in a courtyard on Manette Street, Soho, in a pop-up sculpture garden. Singer Foxes was there, as was designer Alice Temperley, reclining against a horse.

Queen of grunge Courtney Love and her daughter Frances Bean roamed the courtyard with CEO of Dazed Jefferson Hack before they headed for dinner.

David Bailey’s son Sascha Bailey animatedly told The Londoner how he often gets mistaken for Mick Jagger. “You know that picture my dad did with Mick in a hood? A lot of people come in to the studio and say: “What have you done with your son in the hood?”

Should Strictly’s Balls be tanned?

An evening of self-discovery and Strictly last night, for Life Lessons from Ed Balls at the School of Life. The BBC’s dancing show is challenging the ex-MPs inhibitions. “My big debate at the moment is fake tan or no tan. It’s my last rubicon,” he said. “Who has fake tan at the age of 49?”

If producers do persuade him to bronze up Balls thinks we won’t know it. “You won’t be able to tell if I’ve got fake tan on Saturday,” he predicted confidently, and made a damning allegation. “David Cameron may well have had a fake tan.”

The one-time shadow chancellor now spends his time in training, and we we were pleased to hear he is is keeping up his piano lessons — perhaps more so than his wife Yvette Cooper. “This morning I said to Yvette as I left the house: ‘I’ve just finished my piano and now I’m off to dance’,” he revealed.

Balls told therapist and interviewer Tanya Byron, at the evening in Cecil Sharp House in Primrose Hill, that losing his seat last year had been tougher for other people than him. “I spent three days comforting other people on my demise,” he said. “I would say ‘It’s OK’. They said ‘It’s not OK’.”

“In a sense you died and were resurrected to Strictly Come Dancing,” said Byron.

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Sasha Dugdale won a Forward poetry prize at the Royal Festival Hall for her poem Joy, about William Blake’s 45-year marriage to Catherine. Poet Michael Horovitz was thrilled. “William and Catherine graced London in every way. They lived in Soho, Lambeth and Peckham.” What would they have made of it now? “Blake accepted the destructive side of human nature,” Horovitz replied.

Farewell to my Pollock

Grayson Perry was in tune with the art at the opening last night of the Royal Academy’s autumn blockbuster Abstract Expressionism, in a fetching geometric dress designed to echo the paintings.

Guests included artist Tracey Emin, writer Howard Jacobson and Viscount Linley, but it was an emotional experience for one attendee — American Ben Heller, who bought Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock in the 1950s for $32,000 dollars — a fortune in those days.

He had come over especially from New York to see the vast canvas, which he sold in 1973 to the Australian government. “Come to say my farewell,” said Heller, now in his early 90s and once a good friend of Pollock.

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Surprise sale of the day: comedian and artist Vic Reeves tells us Damien Hirst has bought 43 paintings off him. Cows in formaldehyde must not go with the decor.

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