Diary

Chancellor who made up numbers

LORD Healey, the former Labour chancellor, may be 91 next week but that has not stopped his more mischievous nature.

Arriving at Holyrood for the Festival of Politics, Lord Healey made sure he kissed the hand of every attractive woman he could find.

He revealed how, during the war, he was given the job of counting troops on and off trains. Eventually, he gave up trying to count and made up the numbers. This, he said gave him "a love of statistics which was to come in very handy when I became Chancellor of the Exchequer".


Blizzard of Oz gags expected

THE annual Antipodean invasion of Edinburgh is old news but have things gone too far? Writer, broadcaster and so-called "British institution", Clive James, joins fellow loud-mouthed Australian and last year's if.comedy winner Brendon Burns on stage at the Jam House to hand over this year's Intelligent Finance Comedy Awards on Saturday night. Aussies and Kiwis over-ran the Festival years ago, from performers to publicists to venue managers. We luv 'em anyway.


It's the way I sell 'em

IN POSSIBLY the ultimate indignity, the Fringe box office system was nominated for a leading comedy award yesterday, following its comically catastrophic behaviour this August.

The system makes the five-strong list of nominees for the inaugural 2008 Malcolm Hardee Award, given out for "comic originality of thought or performance". The award is named in honour of the Godfather of alternative comedy, who died in 2005.

The box office, which was singled out "for introducing surreal humour into the normally dull ticketing process", is up against Edward Aczel for Do I Really Have to Communicate with You, Otto Kuhnle for 1,000 Years of German Humour, Peter Buckley Hill and Aindrias de Staic.


Sales are pretty as a picture

MATTHEW Bourne's Dorian Gray, his first new show in three years, which premieres tonight, is officially the biggest-selling dance event in the Edinburgh International Festival's history. Exactly 11,212 people had booked by yesterday for the EIF's hottest ticket, breaking the festival's previous record of 10,146 tickets for Mark Morris's Hard Nut in 1995. With tickets still remaining for the King's Theatre show the total sales could reach maximum season capacity of 13,000 seats.