John Gibson: Griffiths is so greedy for grub too

Published on Tuesday 23 June 2009 09:14

Creepie crawlie. Or just plain creep? We've been riled by more details on how Nigel Griffiths, Labour's MP for Edinburgh South, has been fleecing taxpayers.

Apart from funds for his bricks and mortar (not to mention his sexual frolics in the Commons), Naughty Nige has been exposed as one of the 16 biggest MP spenders on food. Again we pick up the tab.

Thank God the lunch he promised me in Edinburgh never transpired. Otherwise your scribe might have been embroiled in the Great Westminster Swindle. Tarred with the same brush as Grabber Griffiths? I couldn't have lived with it.

Besides, he billed us for 1250 for portrait photographs of himself. Can we have some ten-by-eight portraits of you please, Nige, so we can chuck darts at them?

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister, admitting the "hurt" the scandal is causing him, is pronouncing: "I could walk from all this tomorrow." Well go, Gordon, go! On yer bike! Nobody's stopping you. Start walking now and remember to send us the sick bags before your exquisitely-timed star turn in Songs of Praise.

Post script: most irksome chancer of them all (no, not you Beckett) could prove to be Keith Vass, with the silk scatter-cushions and accent that makes Joanna Lumley sound like an East End tart.

Vass has since procured the cushiest of numbers as chair of the parliamentary home affairs committee. Do we laugh or cry?

Yankee doodle do

So I'm not a Yankee doodle dandy, but that hasn't prevented US consul Lisa Vickers inviting me to her pre-Independence Day reception in the Caledonian Hotel's Pompadour Room on July 1.

You couldn't have chosen a more venerable venue, Lisa. Obama, even Springsteen, would have approved.

The Caley are with you. Your guests are offered preferential post-reception room rates of 120 single occupancy, 140 double. The price per room per night includes a Caley Hilton breakfast buffet. Yee-hah!

Afterwords . .

. . . confession from Desmond Tutu: "I have a tendency to enjoy the limelight."

We'd noticed, Des, we'd noticed.