In last month's Brussels diary, Manneken Pis suggested that Tony Blair's claim to have listened to the speeches of Danny Cohn-Bendit in his youth was probably untrue, given that Blair was only 15 in 1968. We wrote that this appeared to be a "weird embellishment of his private life, like his claim to have once watched Jackie Milburn play for Newcastle United." No 10 contacted us to demand a correction, pointing out that despite multiple claims to the contrary, the prime minister has never claimed to have watched Milburn play—and they sent us retractions from other newspapers to prove it (no, really, they did). Still no word on where Blair was in May 1968, however. But, as they say, if you can remember where you were in the 1960s…
A footballing Joan of Arc
At last there is light at the end of the tunnel for the French, writes Tim King. The EU referendum, joblessness and losing the Olympics to perfidious Londonistan have all zapped French morale. So what has changed? The return of Zizou. Zinédine Zidane, star of French—and world—football, who retired from the national team last year, recently announced to general astonishment that he was putting himself up for next year's World Cup. "Zidane gives hope to the people of France," crowed Le Parisien: share prices rose on the news, unemployment fell, and even Chirac's personal ratings limped gallantly up a point or two. But the reasons for the euphoria went deeper than whether the hitherto lacklustre Bleus, languishing near the bottom of their World Cup qualifying group, might just scrape through their nailbiter against the Faroe Islands on 3rd September. It stems from Zizou's explanation: "What happened to me is a bit mystical," he said. "At 3am I suddenly woke up. I spoke to someone. From that moment an irrepressible force took over me. I had to obey this voice." Joan of Arc watching her sheep, Napoleon contemplating the globe, De Gaulle staring at a BBC microphone, Zizou lying asleep—no one knows when or where the sacred flame of France will strike. But with Zizou at its head, true France, eternal France will fight on—at least against the Faroe Islanders.
The NYT's cockroach problem
When New York Times editors set up a competition to produce a future-proof time capsule, entries flooded in from the likes of Zaha Hadid and Santiago Calatrava. But none was able to match the ingenuity of computer scientist Jaron Lanier, who came up with the idea of encoding every word of every 1999 issue of the New York Times Magazine—flattery will get you everywhere—into the DNA of cockroaches. Lanier's submission was detailed and serious, pointing out that roaches were more likely to survive the next 1,000 years in New York than any man-made structure; noting the stability of the cockroach's genome; and identifying useless DNA sequences that could be engineered to carry the NYT information. Lanier was honest enough to note the possible pitfalls—crosswords might prove tricky, and there might be a problem if Washington Post cockroaches started to interbreed with NYT ones—but the newspaper was impressed enough to accept the entry and get Herbert Muschamp to write it up. And that wasn't all—CNN picked up the story and interviewed Lanier on air, and a French professor of computer science wrote a ponderous essay based on the idea. The problem? The whole thing was a joke.
Mutual moan
It is well known that Gordon Brown and Robin Cook patched up their difficult relationship a couple of years before Cook died. What is less well known is that Brown and Cook enjoyed regular moaning sessions—in Cook's office in Portcullis House—about how Blair was screwing everything up. In fact, the mutual moan had become the real foundation of their tentative new friendship. Now the intriguing question is who can fill that Cook-sized hole in Gordon's political life.
Scardino
Albert Scardino's resignation as executive editor of the Guardian following the sacking of Dilpazier Aslam has passed almost unnoticed. Aslam was the trainee journalist who wrote an aggressive comment piece after 7/7 and was then sacked after refusing to leave the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir (see our mini interview this month). Scardino, husband of Pearson boss Marjorie, was known to be furious about the sacking, which Aslam is challenging in court. Will Albert now be a witness for him?
Don't be evil, Google
What's happening to Google? The search engine company, renowned for its relaxed and "ethical" approach to doing business, has gone into a giant sulk with technology news website CNet. Elinor Mills, a CNet reporter, used the search engine to glean some relatively trivial information about Google CEO Eric Schmidt's personal life. Now Google (corporate motto: "don't be evil") has instructed its employees not to speak to CNet for a year, citing "privacy issues."
