Anger as junior minister blames 'Hairy Angel' Susan Boyle for swine flu pandemic



Thank goodness ministers are taking the swine flu outbreak so seriously. Or at least some of them are.



Just as Gordon Brown was gravely announcing that two more Britons had been diagnosed with the virus, one government figure, I can disclose, decided that the potential pandemic was a great opportunity for a joke.

In a bizarre attempt at humour, junior minister Sion Simon suggested that unlikely Britain's Got Talent singing sensation Susan Boyle is to blame.

Blog too far: The 'Hairy Angel' Susan Boyle and Labour MP Sion Simon

The MP for Birmingham Erdington, 40, posted his comment online on his Twitter page, writing: 'I'm not saying Susan Boyle caused swine flu. I'm just saying that nobody had swine flu, she sang on TV, people got swine flu.'



Tories were horrified by what were seen as 'insensitive' remarks.

Even fellow Labour MPs were aghast. 'It's infantile, isn't it,' one says. 'Hasn't he got enough to do?'

For Simon, the minister for further education, was posting what he thought was a witty aside on the crisis just as it was confirmed a 12-year-old Devon girl had contracted the virus.

This is not the first time that grammar school-educated Simon, who read PPE at Oxford University, has made an online blunder.



In 2006, he posted a spoof of David Cameron's video blog on YouTube, in which, pretending to be Cameron, he offered people one of his children and the opportunity to sleep with his wife.

Both main parties condemned the stunt as 'tasteless', while an unrepentant Simon said Cameron's attempts to reach out to youth culture was 'pathetic'.

Simon was also part of a failed plot to force Tony Blair to resign.

Shortly after becoming Prime Minister, Brown appointed Simon vice-chair of the Labour Party.



Last night, after I contacted his office, a recalcitrant Simon removed the offensive comment from his Twitter page and made the following posting: 'Earlier I repeated a joke that was in poor taste, which I now regret.



'I apologise wholeheartedly for any distress or embarrassment caused.'









Meanwhile, Dan Snow, broadcaster son of former Newsnight presenter Peter Snow, is using Twitter to post bulletins about his stay in Mexico, where the virus started and where he is filming a documentary about the Aztecs. '

There's no kissing and I'm not allowed into bars,' he wrote. 'It's like being a teenager again.'



Sources say the BBC, which has removed all non-news teams from the region, has scrapped Snow's plans for a live broadcast on The One Show, to conceal that he is still filming in dangerous territory.







Is Doodle Hirst's new masterpiece?



Sheep-pickling artist Damien Hirst is never slow to fire off legal warnings to those who seek to profit from his multi-million-poundselling artworks, by copying or selling works without his permission.



But he was caught off guard when foxy Ukrainian TV star Olia Freimut asked him to draw a picture she could sell while she was interviewing him in Kiev, at the opening of his retrospective show Requiem.

Joke pays off: Ukranian TV star Olia Freimut

'As a joke, I asked Damien if he would be so kind as to paint me something that I could sell,' explains Olia, 27, who once worked at the BBC.



'I was amazed when he started drawing a picture of me on the back of a press release. He put dollar signs in my eyes because I wanted to sell it for money. He also included his signature butterflies.'



Then Hirst, 43, who made £111 million in a two-day Sotheby's auction of 223 pieces last September, added the flourish that could make the sketch worth thousands - his signature.

Adds Olia: 'I don't think I am going to sell it. I want to keep it as a memento and pass it on to my three-year-old

daughter Zlata.'



Says a spokesman for Hirst: 'He often does scribbles and doodles for people that ask him. If I were her, I'd hold on

to it.'

The politics of women

Embroiled in a nepotism row over her daughter Georgia Gould's attempt to secure a Labour seat, publishing chief Gail Rebuck attempted to put the claims into context.

Row: Georgia Gould

The chief executive of Random House says: 'My mother went out to work at 13, not because she wanted to, but because she had to.'



Collecting the Veuve Clicquot Businesswoman of the Year award, at the Saatchi Gallery, Ms Rebuck - wife of former New Labour pollster Lord Gould - suggested her daughter's success was less an issue of nepotism and rather one of feminism.



'Only 19 per cent of MPs are women,' she says. There are still far too few women in politics.'







Sad news reaches me from Rome where Carla Powell, formidable wife of Margaret Thatcher's adviser, Lord (Charles) Powell, is mourning the loss of her Yorkshire terrier, Douro.



The pup, named after the Duke of Wellington's heir, was brutally kicked to death by a Romanian employee.



'I am so very sad - he was the love of my life,' she tells me. 'He was a gift for my 60th birthday from Lady Palumbo and Lady de Rothschild. I've only just been able to bury him, as it took me seven days to find him.



'The awful man who killed him had lived under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, but that's no excuse.



'He has been fired, of course.

' Lady Powell is also not happy that her plans to escort Lady Thatcher to a meeting with the Pope have been leaked by her pal Paul Johnson in the New Statesman. 'Paul is a dear friend, but he is naughty for saying this, as it make things difficult for the security people.'







Why has writer Anthony Holden been lying low since disappearing from his Sunday newspaper slot last year? The answer lies in the unlikely setting of Lausanne, Switzerland, where he was named the first president of the International Federation of Poker.

A lifelong poker fan, who has written bestselling books on the subject and played for England, Holden, 61, was head-hunted six months ago to set up a global governing body for poker, with the aim to win the game recognition as a skilful 'mind-sport'.



'We plan to stage an international team poker tournament in London alongside the 2012 Olympics,' he tells me. 'It's time it was seen as a mind-sport of strategic skill, rather than lumped in, for legal purposes, with gambling'

Since spliting from his second wife, U.S. novelist Cindy Blake, Holden has earned something of a reputation as a ladies' man. He enjoyed a two-year fling with Lady Jane Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington's daughter, who famously turned down a proposal from Prince Charles.











PS

As if Gordon Brown doesn't have enough on his plate, he is now under attack from Tony Blair. Blair impersonator, actor Michael Sheen, that is.



The Frost/Nixon star lambasts Brown over the use of Canadian black bears for Guardsmen's caps. In a letter to the Prime Minister, on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Sheen calls it: 'A deplorable waste of military funding. It is also a waste of animals' lives.'



Backing him are comedian Ricky Gervais, ex-007 Sir Roger Moore and actress Pamela Anderson.