Unleashed? Boris Johnson’s book is lost in its French translation

Boris Johnson has launched “une offensive de charme” as he tries to flog his memoir across the Channel. The former PM appeared on Radio France on Monday and spoke for half an hour in what he called “barbaric” French, though he does know the lingo.

When asked for his favourite French language writer, Johnson immediately said Georges Simenon, author of the Maigret books: it’s hard to know what first attracted him to a novelist who believed in writing fast so that he could spend more time on his love affairs.

Johnson also told L’Express that he worried that the memoirs’ French title Indomptable didn’t fully reflect the English title Unleashed. Perhaps his publisher has done him a favour. “A thesaurus suggests the literal translation, “déchaîné”, would see Unleashed become Unhinged.”

Amid a news landscape which could be generously described as suboptimal, there is still room for comedy. Two stories got mixed up on Sky News on Monday, who cut to footage of surface to air rockets being blasted into the air while the unwitting newsreader said “Farmers preparing to protest in Westminster as inheritance tax anger grows”. Looks like Jeremy Clarkson is taking no prisoners.

Charlie chastening

Richard Curtis is now an Oscar recipient, if not an Oscar winner. The Four Weddings and a Funeral scribe was given the Academy’s Jean Hersholt Humanitarian award on Sunday, in recognition of his charity work. Accompanied by his proud partner, the broadcaster Emma Freud, Curtis noted that another of his guests was less impressed. “I overheard my son Charlie describing this to his girlfriend as ‘the Oscar for people who never made a movie good enough to win an Oscar’,” said Curtis.

He hoped that the montage of his career might gain his son’s admiration, but the boy was unmoved by the talking heads paying tribute. “You couldn’t get anyone else to be nice about you?” the young Curtis said. “You had to get mum?”

Al Pacino’s memoir Sonny Boy contains a delightful inapt name. After being ripped off by his accountant, the film star sought another one and was given a recommendation. “His name was Shelby Goldgrab,” Pacino says. “What a name for an accountant.”

Blithe spirits

Dame Patricia Routledge was an onstage surprise at A Marvellous Party, a charity gala in London’s West End to mark Noel Coward’s 125th anniversary. The 95-year-old actress said she cut her teeth as an assistant stage manager doing Coward plays at the Liverpool Playhouse, which gave her some top (PG) tips. “Make sure the teabag is steeped in water for long enough to resemble whatever they are meant to be drinking,” she said. “If it was whisky the colour was deep, if it was sherry it was light.”

The evening also included a clip of Coward in 1969, in which he was asked about how he had educated himself after leaving school early. “I was a regular visitor to the Battersea public lavatory … I mean library!” he said “Oh dear. What a Freudian slip.”

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