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He was in line to be chairman of The Guardian’s owner, The Scott Trust, only to stand down after internal protests, but former Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger still can’t resist commenting on his old paper’s affairs. At a Financial Times event on Saturday Rusbridger even predicted the end of the Guardian in print. His successor Kath Viner must be thrilled.

“It seems obvious to me that one day we will turn off our printing presses,” Rusbridger told FT editor Lionel Barber and a media audience. Barber was interviewing Rusbridger and Economist editor Zanny Minton Beddoes on the future of the press. The Guardian man wouldn’t be drawn on a date for closure, despite Barber’s best efforts.

Rusbridger was editor of The Guardian for 20 years, breaking stories such as WikiLeaks, phone-hacking and Edward Snowden’s NSA revelations. He left to a hero’s send-off but holes in The Guardian’s finances have complicated his legacy and he decided not to take up the Scott Trust chairmanship he had been offered before he left.

The paper announced losses of £69 million earlier this summer. Rusbridger’s vision of a free and far-reaching website expanded The Guardian’s readership without a corresponding rise in income.

Rusbridger said The Guardian was in a tough battle with Facebook for profits. “Everything is now a media company,” he said. “In general news, [social media] are walking away with the money.” The Guardian declined to comment this morning.

Minton Beddoes was far more positive about The Economist’s future, predicting it would remain in print. We are “retro chic, like vinyl”, she said.

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After two months spent growing a beard, Michael Gove has found a new way to keep busy on the back benches. He is to rejoin The Times as a “columnist and book reviewer” from October — where he worked for almost a decade before turning to politics. The Londoner asked News UK if Gove would top the £275,000 Boris Johnson earned as a Telegraph scribe. “We do not comment on individual contracts,” they said. Let’s hope the Brexit champion hasn’t mellowed.

UKIP steals the limelight in Kensington

Has Kensington MP Victoria Borwick lost her territory to Ukip? She did this weekend at least. Yesterday a crowd gathered at the Odeon Kensington. Led by Ukip’s Liz Jones, the group was protesting after word reached them that this week would see the demolition teamstart work on the Art Deco gem. The building’s façade will be retained but the upper levels will become flats. We didn’t spot Borwick in the crowd, nor campaign backers Benedict Cumberbatch and Richard Curtis. Perhaps they feared the Ukip association? But misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows.

Kate comforts Sadie the sexbot

Kate Moss turned out to support her BFF Sadie Frost last week at the press night of new play Britten in Brooklyn at Wilton’s Music Hall in the East End. The play looks at composer Benjamin Britten’s exile in New York in the 1940s, where he partied with glittering characters such as W H Auden and burlesque star Gypsy Rose Lee, played by Frost. Reviews have been mixed, with The Times comparing Sadie to a “malfunctioning sexbot” . Sounds like a sell-out to us.

Zac was all mouth and no trousers

The Londoner has missed former mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith, so we couldn’t help but accept the invitation to the launch of the Barnes Film Festival on Friday. Goldsmith, the local MP, was called upon to speak.

Guests were invited to wear sustainable gear and the person deemed the best dressed was promised a prize. “I want to put my hat into the ring for the clothes competition, which I didn’t know about,” Goldsmith said.

“I should get it because, by sheer coincidence, I came here in a jacket which was my dad’s, who died 20 years ago. The suit trousers fell apart... in parliament actually. This suit was crafted before I was born: if that ain’t sustainable I don’t know what is.”

Attendees demanded an explanation. “My trousers came off on the day that I gave my maiden speech as an MP,” Goldsmith added. “I was chain-smoking and I was thinking ‘What the hell am I going to say, how am I going to say it?’ I realised my time was up so I jumped up in order not to miss my slot, and a little piece of flint caught the back of my 40-year-old trousers and ripped the back off. It wasn’t just a little rip, it was like a cat flap. You could see my bottom — so I had to get into the chamber walking along the wall.”

We’d give Zac the shirt off our back, but we’re not sure about trousers.

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To Primrose Hill on Saturday for Pup Aid, an event to encourage the adoption of rescue dogs. Designer Meg Mathews and local Mary Portas also dropped by. The Londoner also met Chloe Khan, a reality TV star who had passed us by. She was rather frank about how she hopes to take advantage of BA’s new flights to Tehran, which she said is the world’s rhinoplasty capital. Is that true? Who nose?

Please not the pants, Ed

Ed Balls Day came early on Saturday as the former politician jived his way into the nation’s hearts on Strictly. “Can we take a moment to appreciate that in a month the BBC has provided us with both Ed Balls dancing and Gary Lineker in his pants?” enthused Maddie Soper on Twitter.

That kicked off the banter. “As long as we don’t get Ed’s balls dancing in my pants,” responded Lineker, who stripped off for a bet after his former team Leicester City won the Premier League last season at 5,000-1 odds. The former shadow chancellor bounced back an offer which could be the BBC’s biggest ratings goal of 2017. “If Leicester win the Premiership for a second time...” he teased. Ed, Gary: please keep your balls under control.

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Word of the day: braconid. Chingford’s Brett Smitheram was victorious at the World Scrabble Championships in Lille, receiving 181 points for a genus of parasitic wasps. Bingo!