The Word on the Street: Royal mix-up; Tessa springs eternal; Dyke's expenses
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Your support makes all the difference.The Queen was going to sing "All You Need Is Love" on stage at last night's jubilee concert, announced the London Evening Standard last week. The item was followed up by The Daily Telegraph with a front-page story and an editorial. Surprise, surprise, the Queen didn't do any such thing. Nor was she ever going to. Furious BBC sources say they told the Standard she would come on to the stage at the end of the show to wave. The Standard asked what the last number of the night would be. The BBC sources said: "All You Need Is Love." They should have known how the new, imaginative Evening Standard would meld it all together.
¿ Hope springs eternal in the heart of Tessa Jowell, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. She is unable to see the first stages of the World Cup finals, but says she plans to go to the Far East to see England in the semi-finals.
¿ BBC staff are rather hopeful of an increase in hotel allowances after the DG himself had a dose of the internal spending limits. Senior management were summoned recently to a seminar in London Docklands dedicated to "cutting the crap". Greg Dyke generously decided to join the out-of-towners forced to stay in a hotel in Blackheath, south London. He was apparently rather shocked to discover what around £60 a night got you in the capital.
¿ The White House pool report from President Bush's meeting in Rome with Pope John Paul II last week omitted one detail. The author, the Washington Times correspondent Bill Sammon, neglected to write that, after Bush departed, Sammon himself walked up to shake the Pope's hand. "I figured if the Swiss Guards are going to take me out, they're going to take me out," he later told The Washington Post, adding: "I've got five kids in Catholic school. I was thinking of asking the Pope for a bulk discount on the tuition, but I thought better of it."
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