FilmakerJemima Goldsmith, who has had a number of high-profile romances, often wishes she had an arranged marriage instead. Saying she was “someone who did the absolute opposite”, Goldsmith said: “Frankly speaking personally it could have saved me alot of heartache and headaches if I’d just had someone to sort it out for me”.
Goldsmith has written rom-com What’s Love Got To Do With It? and told Australian TV that it came out of talks with friends about who their parents would choose for them. “If you had sane, functional parents who would agree - which I don’t - who would they choose for you and would it work?” she said.
At 21, Jemima wed cricketer and politician Imran Khan, and went to live with his family in Pakistan. “I did get to see arranged marriages up close... and some of them were like - to me, with my preconceptions - surprisingly happy and successful” she said. “I think there’s alot to be said for simmer then boil” she said, “walking into love rather than running”. She went on to have relationships with Hugh Grant and Russell Brand.
Jemima added: “I come from a long line in my family of unsuitable marriages and unsuitable matches.” Khan’s father, the late Sir James Goldsmith, once said: “When a man marries his mistress he creates a job vacancy.”
The ghost of Corbyn is still at large
Labour’s foreign affairs man David Lammy set out his stall for government in a speech at Chatham House yesterday, promising he would deliver a ‘Britain Reconnected’, including better ties with the EU.
We were intrigued when Lammy claimed his foreign policy would be “for the many, not the few”. While Tony Blair used the slogan, derived from a poem by Shelley, it is most famously associated with Jeremy Corbyn’s two election campaigns. Though Lammy nominated Corbyn for the Labour leadership in 2015, he has long since disavowed the old socialist and now enjoys a place in Keir Starmer’s top team. Slip of the tongue?
Daisy’s night terrors
STAR WARS actor Daisy Ridley says she could relate to her role as a socially awkward office worker in the new film Sometimes I Think About Dying, as she has anxieties too. “I have had times where I think I’m useless company,” Ridley says. “I have a really nice meal and say one thing and then I’ll be lying in bed thinking, ‘Oh my god, I didn’t mean that. Like, what if they took it wrong?’” Join the club.
Loyal to German playrights
WRITER David Baddiel spoke at the Anne Frank Trust’s lunch at the Hilton on Park Lane yesterday, held before Holocaust Memorial Day. Baddiel said his Jewish grandfather “never stopped being German” despite Nazi persecution: he was sent to Dachau before escaping to Britain. “Even though Germany had destroyed his life, he went to the grave saying Goethe was a better playwright than Shakespeare” Baddiel said.
Johnny sure is the daddy
TORY MP Johnny Mercer did some parenting as well as the day job in the office yesterday. He captioned this snap “Daddy daycare”. Elsewhere, singer Lily Allen showed off a new hair do. Out last night, Spice Girl Emma Bunton supported her bandmate Mel C at the latter’s new Sadler’s Wells dance show, while Sam Smith treated fans including influencers Anastasia Kingsnorth and Saffron Barker to a show at Soho’s The Windmill. And in Stepney Green, stars Máiréad Tyers and Bilal Hasna went to a screening of their new comedy series Extraordinary, which is about superheroes, for Disney+.
