He's thinking of running for London Mayor and BRIAN COLEMAN, Tory GLA member for Barnet and Camden, doesn't think much of the competition:

Very occasionally, your hard-working GLA member, cabinet member for the environment and deputy chairman of the Fire Authority ten-jobs Coleman as I believe I am known by the Labour Party has a night off.

Such a night was last Tuesday when I attended the West End first night of the new musical 125th Street at the Shaftesbury Theatre in my constituency, I hasten to add.

The excellent show (tickets available at all prices) was enjoyed by a collection of the usual West End glitterati of celebrities, models, football managers and people on Channel Five.

I was accompanied by our hard-working mayor, Councillor Joan Scannell, who had rushed from her residents' surgery to enjoy a night out. Now Joan and I may be Barnet's number one couple but the audience contained Barnet's number one celebrity of the moment, Australian outback survivor Tony Blackburn.

As I sat there considering how similar Tony Blackburn's hair was to that other Tony, Labour's mayoral contender Tony Banks MP, I thought that they had something else in common: they are both enjoying a second lease of life.

Tony Blackburn has been a celebrity since before my A-levels and Tony Banks had his greatest moments of fame damaging London's culture under his then great friend Ken Livingstone's reign at the GLC in the early Eighties.

Now whereas I wish Tony Blackburn continued success, I do think Londoners have had enough of GLC retreads as Mayor and I suggest Tony continues his well-deserved exile on Labour's backbenches in the Commons.

Which leaves us Labour's mayoral contender Nicky Gavron, millionaire ex-wife of Financial Times publisher Lord Gavron, and a former Haringey councillor who opposed the Archway Road widening.

Think of her every time you are sitting in traffic on that stretch of the A1.

Now Nicky is known as the "quango Queen" of north London and Ken remarked, when appointing her to the regional advisory committee of English Heritage, "to make time she is resigning from the north London sandwich board".

At one time I believe she served on 16 quangos. Whilst I accept that this may well give her a unique insight into London life as she dashes from one meeting to another in the back of a taxi, I would suggest that that a few fewer meetings and nights out would give her a better outlook on the lives of ordinary Londoners, as I remarked to Joan on the Tube home.

"I could not agree more" remarked the Mayor. Now I wonder who she was thinking of for Mayor of London...

September 23, 2002 15:30