Andy McSmith's Diary: Tory MP Lucy Allan in two minds about her Facebook comments

Lucy Allan MP has kept out of the public eye since her weird behaviour before Christmas, when she posted online a version of a constituent’s Facebook comments with three words added at the end of them to make it appear that she had received a death threat.

She then wrote a late night diatribe about “bully boy councillors, thugs and henchmen” that named names, and ranted down the phone at an employee who had taken time off because they were sick.

After four weeks’ silence, she has given an interview to the Shropshire Star, admitting that her treatment of her employee was “stupid.”

Of her Facebook outbursts in general, she is quoted as admitting that they were “not professional”, adding the strange observation: “It’s maybe what Lucy would do but I am an MP now…”

This appears to mean that she is not one person but two. There is little Lucy, who posts crazy stuff online, and grown-up Tory MP Lucy Allan who tells her she must stop.

Ex-con peer is expert witness

History is about to be made. This evening, the chamber of the House of Lords will hear from Lord Hanningfield, who has done about as much as any man can to lower the reputation of the place.

The last occasion on which he addressed the main chamber was on 15 June 2009, a few months before he was charged with fiddling his expenses, for which he spent two months in prison.

Since his release, he has claimed more than £60,000 in tax-free attendance allowances, without sharing with his peers any lessons he may have learnt from his time behind bars.

Tonight, he will talk to them on the subject of “education standards in UK prisons.” To give him his due, he will bring a personal knowledge of the subject that only three other ex-convicts among the current crop of peers could offer.

Tebbit loves a little whine

That old Thatcherite bruiser Norman Tebbit, who was badly injured and whose wife, Margaret, was paralysed when the IRA blew up the Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1984, is not paying heed to the warning from the Chief Medical Office, Dame Sally Davies, that there is a link between red wine consumption and cancer.

“As I look forward to my 85th birthday in the spring and my brother’s 89th in the autumn, she is unlikely to persuade me to desist from my nightly half bottle, or he from his,” Lord Tebbit writes on his latest blog.

“Indeed, I much preferred the good advice from the plastic surgeon who repaired some of the damage I sustained at the hands of IRA Sinn Fein over 30 years ago, when he arranged for a crate of red wine for me to drink to be placed under my hospital bed to improve my appetite and speed my recovery.”

Heirs and disgraces

George Bingham, son and heir of Lord Lucan, married on Monday. The bride, Anne-Sofie Foghsgaard, will be the next Lady Lucan if a court can be persuaded to rule that the 7th Earl of Lucan, who vanished in November 1974, is – for all official purposes – dead.

It is believed that he bludgeoned the family nanny to death after mistaking her for his estranged wife, and then killed himself. That was never proved, but if true, he had two violent deaths to his discredit, far fewer than his appalling ancestor, the 3rd Earl of Lucan.

He was the bungling commander at the Battle of Balaclava who ordered the Light Brigade to charge the Russian guns, causing 118 pointless deaths.