Hilary Benn, le nouveau Ministre de l'griculture du Royaume-Uni est végétarien : les éleveurs sont furieux !

“Farmers' dismay over the arrival of 'bean-eating' Benn”

By Oliver Duff

Published: 29 June 2007

* Of all the surprises thrown up in Prime Minister Brown's reshuffle (and this one was only a surprise if you didn't read Pandora this week and last), none will cause so much of a stink in rural England as the appointment of Hilary Benn, the new Secretary of State for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The sandal-wearing Benn has been asked to fill the wellies vacated at Defra by outgoing swot David Mili-band (who got the Foreign Secretary job that Benn coveted). Hilary is in charge of solar panels and cows.

One of his tasks will be lobbying on the behalf of British meat producers. Yet Benn is a fully-fledged vegetarian. Green-wellied country folk believe his bean-eating credentials place him at odds with the industry.

Benn has been a proud veggie for the past 35 years, even converting his father Tony to the cause. While on business as a capable International Development Sec, he declined meals cooked by Gordon Ramsay and (separately) by Ethiopians.

"This appointment comes as no surprise to rural Britain," declares Robin Page of the Countryside Restoration Trust. "It's an insult to all of us. We were promised change by Gordon Brown and we get more of the same: a minister with no rural roots, background or experience in farming at all. I now envisage many of the issues surrounding livestock will be ignored."

I rang Benn's spokeswoman to ask what he's eating for tea and if he owns any wellies. She referred me to the Defra press office - who appeared to have knocked off early.

* The model Caprice Bourret (or plain Caprice to you and me) is about to follow the well trodden Jimmy Choo-heeled footsteps of her fellow celebrities by launching her own fragrance.

"It's a great thing to do because the profit margins are just so big," she tells me at Tatler magazine's summer party, at Home House on Wednesday night.

"I'm hoping it will be released some time next January."

It is certainly a refreshingly honest answer from Bourret - who, thanks to a thriving lingerie business (and not her brief pop career with Chesney Hawkes), has accumulated a small fortune.

After all, you're not likely to hear Victoria Beckham extolling the virtues of her own bottled whiff on the back of its profit margins. Caprice: " That's because she probably doesn't know what one is."

Mrs Beckham?

* Chris Tarrant is making the most of his arrest by four flak-jacketed policemen at Nottingham's Plaza Hotel, after he had earlier thrown cutlery at a diner in a nearby Indian restaurant.

In the rather more salubrious surroundings of Mirabelle, Mayfair, the refreshed television presenter this week reenacted the exchange of silverware for a delighted audience. At the start of his after-dinner speech, Tarrant picked up a spoon and hurled it at diners, striking a young man (who did not dial 999.)

The worst moment of the original episode, Tarrant, recalled, was when the custody sergeant made him remove his laces. "As if I was going to do a Fred West!" he exclaimed, tipping his neck to one side and hoisting his fist above his head as if gripping a noose. The wine began to flow again quite swiftly.

* A glance at Tuesday's business for the Commons shows that the Tory turncoat and "oily baldie" Quentin Davies is introducing a 10-minute rule bill about pre-nuptial agreements. He wants them recognised by law. A little late for him after getting hitched to Gordon Brown!

* Next week, the brawny bass-baritone Bryn Terfel takes to the barely-scratched boards at Royal Festival Hall for a three-night reprisal of the musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Box office wallahs have decreed that the auditorium be filled with the aroma of piping hot "mystery pies" inspired by the demon barber, whose clients had untimely encounters with Todd's butcher/pie-maker accomplice, Mrs Lovett. "The contents of the Sweeney Todd pie will remain undisclosed," the theatre says, "leaving the purchaser to decide which combination of fresh ingredients has been used."

If that leaves you heaving and reaching for the mini tub of ice cream, a PR woman does promise that the delicacies will not be "filled with human flesh". She adds: "That would be over the top."

http://news.independent.co.uk/people/pandora/article2720060.ece