Set the pulse racing

I ALWAYS imagined the ruling class raised its offspring on Eton Mess, Dover sole, hot buttered crumpets and Tanqueray gin, but it turns out I've been wrong all along. They raise 'em on lentils.

Not lentils such as your granny might throw into the pot when she's making soup from a ham hough, however. These are green lentils from the French commune of Le Puy-en-Velay in the Auvergne, a very particular sort of legume thanks to its Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status (see also Champagne, Feta, Prosciutto and Buckfast Tonic Wine).

And how do we know all this? Because the lunch menu at Prince George's posh new £18,000 a year school in London has been revealed, and one of the canteen's signature dishes is smoked mackerel on a bed of Puy lentils – presumably not washed down with a £7000 Château Lafite-Rothschild wine (though that may be on the menu in the staff room as the headmaster congratulates himself on attracting such a famous pupil).

Unsurprisingly, the producers of Puy lentils are rubbing les mains together avec glee as they anticipate a spike in sales from readers of Tatler and the Daily Mail. As celebrity endorsements go, it'll be just like when Jay-Z started drinking Cristal champagne. Only with lentils. And a four-year-old schoolboy instead of a New York rapper. And of course Cristal, while gassy, doesn't repeat on you in quite the same way. But apart from that, exactly the same.

By the by, for anyone spluttering into their flat white right now, I was joking about Buckfast Tonic Wine having PDO status. That could change in time, of course.

Chop horror

IT'S nowhere near time to put the clocks back and we aren't even out of September, so it's odd that George Osborne is already getting into the Hallowe'en spirit. Or maybe it isn't. Maybe he finds that the scary clown persona fits him in his new job as editor of a London evening paper. Either way, a profile of the former Chancellor in this month's edition of Esquire shows him in full Hallowe'en mode, and does him even less credit than his time in government.

The profile was written by someone called Ed Caesar, ironic given that Osborne's Roman haircut always puts me in mind of the Emperor Nero. Anyway, tucked away in the profile was this beauty, concerning Osborne's relationship with a certain Mrs T May of 10 Downing Street. “According to one staffer at the newspaper,” Caesar writes, “Osborne has told more than one person that he will not rest until she 'is chopped up in bags in my freezer'.”

How very (insert slasher flick/Stephen King novel of choice here) of him. And also how respectful to women and how cognizant of the issues surrounding threats of violence against them.

Unsurprisingly, one or two neatly-shaped eyebrows have been raised and one or two well-manicured Twitter fingers put into operation as a result of Osborne's comments. One belonged to Tory MP Nadine Dorries, who took to social media to call for him to be banned from the upcoming party conference. “I have contacted Chief Whip and asked that Osborne's conference pass be withdrawn for expressing a desire to see a woman, the PM murdered,” she wrote. Fair enough.

Hilariously, Caesar also quotes a former aide of Osborne's who said: “He [Osborne] doesn't want people to think he's an asshole, because he's not an asshole.” Funny way he has of dispelling the notion. Responding to that, Theresa May's former chief-of-staff Nick Timothy had this acid rejoinder: “Not sure why he worries people think he’s an arsehole.”

When asked for a comment about the whole gruesome business, the Prime Minister's spokesperson simply said: “The contents of the former chancellor’s freezer are not a matter for me.” 

I'm interested, though, so here's what I think: it's filled with Eton Mess, Dover sole, gin – and now Puy lentils. Well if it's good enough for a boy-king it's good enough for a man-boy with an emperor complex.

Clown in the dumps

STICKING with scary clowns – and with one heavily kohled eye on last week's item about new horror film, It – The Sun airs the concerns of professional clowns Biddley Bob and Tommy Bungle who think the movie is going to do for their business what George Osborne's years of austerity did for everyone else's.

“People see a clown and think they’re evil killers. The film is another nail in the coffin for the clown industry,” says Tommy. “It is nothing to do with clowning and everything to do with a cheap Hollywood movie raking in millions. I’ve seen it and I prefer Disney,” says Bob. Hear, hear, say I.

Backing them up is Pam Moody, president of the World Clown Association (WCA). She revealed to the Hollywood Reporter that ahead of the film's release, the WCA issued a press kit to “prepare” clowns for the deluge of bad publicity – in common parlance, a ****storm – which was about to come their way. It doesn't seem to have helped much. Moody also revealed that many professional clowns are reporting cancellations of bookings for parties and children's events. “That’s very unfortunate. The very public we're trying to deliver positive and important messages to aren't getting them.”

It gets worse. One WCA member arriving early for a children's birthday party which hadn't been cancelled waited outside. Before she knew it, there were four armed police officers surrounding her car. “Someone in the neighbourhood called in a clown sighting,” said Moody.

Votes for willows!

GIVEN how little has been happening in the world recently – let's see, there was only that hurricane, the start of the Grenfell tower inquiry, Jean-Claude Juncker unveiling his vision for a new Europe, the end of clowning as we know it and North Korea threatening all-out nuclear war – I'm amazed there hasn't been more coverage of Scotland's Tree Of The Year competition. BBC Scotland aren't even televising the award ceremony, though I'm sure if they shake out the piggy bank there'll be enough for a short highlights package to be tucked away in a late night corner of the schedules. You know, like they do with the football.

Anyway, voting opened last Monday and the shortlist of six has some excellent trees on it, each a fine example of arboreal grandeur. Among them you'll find a pair of sycamores – one in the grounds of Beauly Priory, the other a 200-year-old specimen in Kirkwall known as The Big Tree – as well as a splendid oak in Dunfermline which was planted in 1904 by Andrew Carnegie, and one of the oldest holly bushes in Scotland.

My favourite, though, is the spruce which was pulled out of the muddy, no-man's land gloop of Passchendaele as a sapling by Lieutenant David McCabe and sent home in an ammunition box to his father in Perthshire. Lieutenant McCabe died in battle in 1917 but the tree, now fully grown, still stands in the Abercairny Estate in Crieff. It gets my vote. In fact it already has.

The winning tree gets a £1,000 Tree Care award, by the way. Or, as organisers The Woodland Trust would have it, “a bit of Tree LC”.