Thursday, July 13, 2006

Will Lord Levy be the "Whispering Grass"?


Good news. Have arrived in Trimingham on the North Norfolk coast and the 3G card works. So much for the four days peace and quiet you thought you were going to have... Beau Bo D'Or tells me that the cells at Colindale Police Station were a bit hot around the collar today. Talking of having your collar felt, wonder when Tony's turn is... It will be very interesting to see how many beans Lord Levy spills to Inspector Knacker. If he goes down, will he take Tony with him? Now there's an image for you to conjure with.

PS For those who are too young to understand the headline to this post, Windsor Davies was the star of It Ain't Half Hot Mum and he had a number 1 hit with a song called Whispering Grass in about 1975. UPDATE: readers remind me it was Don Estelle who had the hit, with Windsor davies as his sidekick. My excuse is that I was 13 at the time and more interested in Abba.

22 comments:

Anonymous said...

How did Lord Levy get HIS Knighthood - anybody know?

Anonymous said...

Nothing like a Dame said...
How did Lord Levy get HIS Knighthood - anybody know?


........



shoreleee shome misstake?????????. Don't you meeeen "Peerage"

Inamicus said...

Surely some mistake - you mean Don Estelle... (although WD was on the recording)

Anonymous said...

Telegraph 16.04.2006:

"Sources close to Lord Levy said he would tell police that he was against getting wealthy backers to offer secret loans instead of publicly declared donations - but was urged to do so by Mr Blair to save the party from bankruptcy.
.........

If Lord Levy - nicknamed Lord Cashpoint after raising £40 million for Labour over the past decade - tells police that he was simply acting under orders, it makes it far more likely that police will go on to question the Prime Minister."

Anonymous said...

One of Tony's cronies. He was appointed Baron Levy of Mill Hill (a tacky name if ever there was one) in 1997. Possibly as a reward for (temporarily) squeezing a million quid out of Bernie Ecclestone for Labour.

See Wikipedia

strapworld said...

Do not worry. One or two of those very worried people within and without number 10 will start to sing! May take some time but every night when they are alone, with just their thoughts and fears the pressue will grow.

Softly softly chatchee monkey!

Have a lovely birthday party and a nice rest in Gods Country.

Anonymous said...

OldSarum said...
Whispering Grass was the ‘B’ side to Wandering Star and sung by Clint Eastwood of all people

but shurely Wandering Star was sung by Lee Marvin?

PoliticalHackUK said...

Anyone care to name some Tory peers who got their honours for services rendered?

Lord Black of Crossharbour, for example? Lord Kalms?

Anonymous said...

The B side of Wandering Star was 'I Talk to the Trees' ('That's why they put me away,' as Spike Milligan in Eccles persona added), not 'Whispering Grass'. They put Clint on it to make Lee Marvin sound good.

And Iain, being more interested in Abba is a confession, not an excuse.

James Graham (Quaequam Blog!) said...

Such political bias... to mention Don Estelle and not mention his enormous 1999 hit 'Trail of the Lonesome Pine' with the even more enormous Cyril Smith. Tsk.

Anonymous said...

nothing like a dame, Lord Levy is nothing like a knight. He's a lord. The clue is in the title.

Anonymous said...

Yesterday, on the Daily Politics programme, it was reported that a few weeks ago there was a mysterious fire at Lord Levy's offices.
It's the first I've heard of it.
Does anybody have more details?

Anonymous said...

Re the not so trivial pursuit. Blair was born dodgy with an opportunistic streak. In Govt he showed scant regards for established rules and procedures for running a professional office(coffee table cabinet, small cabal of advisers etc). He either directly or via Campbell or Pole instrucetd or authorised the loans for peerages route to get Labour out of the financial mire. What works philosophy in action. Levy will not act as Patsy. Campbell and Pole will play deadbat. Knacker needs emails. Good luck and good morning.
Happy Birthday Iain - may all your scoops be big ones.

Anonymous said...

How long before Charlie Falconer is ask to clear up this little local difficulty with public enquiry. The chairman? A safe pair of hands of course. Now we've had Hutton and we've had Butler. Who's left....?

Anonymous said...

The only saving grace about this whole episode is that it will at least curtail Blair's political options in the future. He won't possibly have the gall to take up a peerage in the future - will he?

Anonymous said...

Not so much "Whispering Grass" as "Gimme, Gimme, Gimme".

(feeble tribute to Iain's Abba Years)

Or just possibly a cameo in that Joel Gray/Liza Minelli number about making the world go around.

Or with Madge in "I'd be surprisingly good for you".

Three tracks for Levy's (self-produced) comeback album - any more?

Anonymous said...

If he grasses, it will be on the tories too - note that the PAC was told yesterday by the police that far more tories were in the frame than labour. My guess is that Michael Howard will be interviewed soon from what I hear on the grapevine. Also John Major is apparently up for a chat with Her Majesty's Constables. The loathsome Blair sharing a cell with the ghastly Prescott and the useless and pathetically inadequate Major - who will sleep on the bottom bunk?

Behind the scenes I actually think though that this is some sort of redistribution of power being played out - a sort of Night of the Long Interviews. I suspect Scotland Yard is gaining the upper hand against MI5 and this is part of the playing out of that particular Great Game. The ministers are just pawns; nobody cares what happens to them. The Great Powers are at work and heaven help anyone in the way. Inspector Knacker is being controlled by the FBI who have their own agenda; no doubt a decision was taken a few months ago in the White House to replace Blair and this is just the opening sequence of the ballet. Watch this space.

Anonymous said...

Griswold - on Blair running a coffee table cabinet, all previous prime ministers in living memory have done exactly the same thing. The problem is that most of the other MPs in all parties are also complete shits and therefore utterly untrustworthy - the only recourse is to bring in one's pals from outside the house to advise. The issue is more with the choice of advisors; Blair and the Blairina (Madame Cherie) seem to have really really poor judgement when it comes to picking friends. Most laughably in the case of Chaplin, but many other fine examples. Even Mandie, whilst often praised as an operator, is the worst sort of ghastly oozing lounge lizard and not a fit and proper person to let into respectable organisations of any kind. And he is now managing trade for Europe! The old Papacy with it's retinues of hideously corrupt cardinals, catamatimes-made-ministers and fat accountant-priests could scarcely have come up with anything more Byzantine!

Anonymous said...

The Blairina. I like that!

No other prime minister has had "rolling meetings" on his couch in his "den". For these rolling meetings, I always imagine Blair and a colleague being rolled down corridors on the couch by his staff. Or rolled around the "den" to catch the sun. The man's a joke.

Lounge lizard describes Peter Mandelson to a T.

Anonymous said...

Yes, I did mean to say Peerage. I had been reading about Rudyard Kipling turning down a Knighthood and typed that word instead of Peerage.

There was a fire at Levy's offices recently as someone has mentioned. There was also a fire at the police station the day Levy was arrested and that's why he had to back the next day.

He's not a firestarter, is he?

ziz said...

Shirley it's time for Lord Levy to have a dissapearage.

Anonymous said...

Lord Faulkener, Lord Levy, Lord Mandelson (if Blair got his way). How about Lord Prescott ? The toadying way this bunch of spineless invertebrates achieved their paper glory is not much different to how the life peers achieved their's (together with a good few counties). However, the idea of President Blair is just too awful to even think about.