With the exception of the Festival Hall — listed Grade I in 1988 — these efforts have been resisted by the management and rejected by government ministers of all colours. This merry-go-round began in 1991 but its latest turn may be the final one.
A certificate of immunity from listing was issued by minister for tourism and heritage John Penrose this week. It means that for the next five years the 1960s Brutalist-style buildings cannot be listed.
Cue huge sighs of relief from the Southbank board, whose members include Dame Vivien Duffield and Julian Lloyd Webber, which applied for the certificate so as not to have the purists of English Heritage and the Twentieth Century Society breathing down its neck as it pursues plans for a £20 million refurbishment of the Hayward Gallery and Queen Elizabeth Hall.
“It would be significantly more difficult to plan the future of the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Hayward Gallery without clarity of the parameters under which it could be done,” a spokesman tells me.
In the meantime, the Southbank Centre’s three-month long Festival of the World is bringing together “inspirational projects” until September.
Party pooping endemic in banking and business dip
Lady Thatcher’s favourite PR firm, Bell Pottinger, held its summer party at Lancaster House last night. Usually buzzing with City and Westminster gossip, this year there was a notable shortage of bankers and MPs. “Where are all my colleagues?” said Graham Brady, chairman of the Tory 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers. “I can’t see any.”
Sir David Frost, Adam Boulton and Anji Hunter were there.
James Henderson, chief executive officer of Bell Pottinger, confessed the bell was tolling for some of his chums, with scandals everywhere. Spectator boss Andrew Neil said that although Conrad Black is in London he would not be at tonight’s summer party.
“We’re holding it on a Wednesday for the first time because Thursday always clashed with my television show,” Neil told me. “After six years I realised I was missing a great party.”
*The All England Club invites all British paper editors to Wimbledon, but clearly they send the invitations out early; yesterday Richard Wallace and Tina Weaver were in the royal box. Wallace and Weaver, ex-editors of the Daily and Sunday Mirror respectively, were let go by Trinity Mirror two months ago.
First-class performance from Lily
LIly Cole put in a star turn at the second day of Liberatum’s summit at Soho House Berlin. She read an extract from Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka’s Samarkand before taking a seat alongside fashion icon Carmen Dell’Orefice.
Of his Nobel prize, Soyinka said: “The money was nice. Other than that, I don’t wish it on my worst enemy. It took a diabolical mind to create the Nobel Prize for literature.”
Soyinka asked how many audience members knew of his cousin, the Nigerian musician Fela Kuti. Perhaps unsurprisingly, double-first Cambridge graduate Lily Cole, left, was one of the few to raise her hand speedily.
The festival was attended by James Franco and drew to a close with a dinner devoted to actress Marianne Faithfull. “I love being honoured…I never thought this would happen,” she said.
Boris’s ex-wife gets a gong for her Islamic art
HATS OFF to Allegra Mostyn-Owen, who is still waiting for her ex-husband Boris Johnson to make good on his promise to appoint her an adviser on Muslim affairs. She has been named runner-up for an art prize in a summer exhibition, My Place on the Isle: Exploring Islam, Faith and Identity, organised by the Mica Gallery in association with the Saatchi Gallery, which hosted a party last night for the winners.
Mostyn-Owen, who has been running an art class at an east London mosque since 2005, designed a ceramic piece titled In Pieces about honour killing and domestic violence. “It is a cast of my own torso in clay, glazed so that the flesh looks like it is in a state of decomposition,” she told me. “My intention was to underline the actuality of murder, the constancy of violence and the nearness of death. At another level, the work also describes the objectification of the female form. In some ways, In Pieces is my story: it is my body and my trash. The rubbish is gathered from the life I live between Hammersmith and Newham, between where I live and where I teach.”
*BBC chief political correspondent Norman Smith tweets: “Pondering whether footering about on a Boris (Barclays) bike will now become socially unacceptable #moraloutcast Norman Smith.” Not according to former mayoral adviser Einy Shah. “Sad to hear Bob Diamond resigning,” she says, “an incredibly nice man who has helped me in the past and saved Londoners millions through the hire bikes.”
*My highly placed BBC source was right. I reported yesterday that Helen Boaden and Tim Davie had fallen out of contention for the BBC D-G job after the first round of interviews but that George Entwistle was still in with a shout. Felicitations to him on landing the job this morning.
Public are impressed by Queen’s progress
A great honour for the Queen. At a conference on progressivism yesterday the royal family, despite its hereditary principles and clutch of castles, was named as the most progressive institution.
The result came from a YouGov poll conducted for the Centre for British Politics and was announced at a conference at Senate House yesterday to the bafflement of the politicos present including Lord Hurd and Labour MP Jon Cruddas. In the poll the BBC came second and the Labour Party third, while the Lib-Dems languished at the bottom just above the trade unions.
YouGov also asked the public who the most progressive person is. Chef Jamie Oliver topped the list, followed by Stephen Fry. Boris Johnson bounded into third place followed by Lady Thatcher and David Cameron. Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg came just above Jeremy Clarkson.
*While his father Prince Michael of Kent was rubbing shoulders with Tracey Emin, Lord Freddie Windsor was out with a rather different crowd. Accompanied by his wife Sophie Winkleman, he was at the Masterpiece Midsummer Party at the Royal Hopsital Chelsea, in aid of Clic Sargent. The event included a high-rolling auction at which a print of Mario Testino’s photograph of Princess Diana went for £20,000.
*DAME Frances Campbell-Preston, former lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother, writes to say a remark she is alleged to have made about the Queen’s Jubilee celebrations was intended as a comment on her memoirs. “I once said, while promoting my books, The Rich Spoils of Time and Grandmother’s Steps, that writing your memoirs is like taking your clothes off in public,” says Dame Frances, 93, who is a little hard of hearing. “I never said the royal family is getting too much exposure.” The remark was picked up by The Oldie magazine, whose reporters can sometimes be hard of hearing themselves, and later featured on this page. Apologies to all concerned.