Pasta? They’re pasta their best, says Dell’Olio

The fusilli are flying after Nancy Dell’Olio claimed that Italian chefs in Britain cannot get their pasta right. “Giorgio at Locanda Locatelli, Giuseppe at Cipriano, Lorenzo at San Lorenzo — I think they all boil it too long,” the former girlfriend of Sven-Göran Eriksson, who hails from Puglia, tells Olive magazine.

Itching for a foodie fight, People contacted Lorenzo Berni. “She should not say these things,” he said. “The [former] Italian President [Oscar Luigi] Scalfaro came here. He ordered spaghetti and after he had eaten it he said, ‘Forget my second course, bring me another spaghetti’. For 45 years, spaghetti is my religion,” cried Berni, before collaring an unsuspecting customer. “Tell them,” he roared. The mystery diner agreed: “I’ve just had pasta with cheese and tomato and it was fantastic.” Locatelli told us: “I’m very surprised at this comment. There is no right or wrong way. How you like to cook your pasta is your own decision.”

Dell’Olio now eats “haddock and proper fat chips, always”.

— John Motson tells us that he is considerably richer after hanging up the BBC’s big match mike at the end of Euro 2008. “During the tournament I backed both finalists,” he says. “I stand to pick up a substantial amount from the bookmakers.” Asked precisely how much, Motty becomes unusually coy over the statistics. “Heh-heh. I’ll keep that one to myself,” he chortles.

— David Cameron’s appearance at the NHS’s 60th birthday party held at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, was not strictly ballroom, says George Sampson, winner of Britain’s Got Talent. “He struck me as the type who would stand at the back of the dance hall and move his shoulders,” said Sampson. “He has got no rhythm. He looked like the kind of guy who would be an embarrassing uncle.”

Unpredictable, but amazing

The Face: Grace Jones

In a music world shorn of dotty Amazonian divas with a neat line in conical headgear, the news that Grace Jones will release her first album for 20 years is a good thing.

The Jamaican-born model is a clips-show legend because of her 1981 fisticuffs with Russell Harty — never turn your back on Grace — but her ground-breaking series of club classics, merging funk, reggae and rap is often overlooked. Encouraged by Andy Warhol, Jones has turned her life into an unpredictable work of performance art. Yet she was also persuaded to become the unlikeliest Bond girl in A View to a Kill.

Now aged 60, Jones recently gave a “sensational” comeback show at the Royal Festival Hall. On signing a new deal to release the album Hurricane, she simply said: “Grrrrrrr”.

Postscript

More gloomy portents for Gordon Brown from the Ledbury Poetry Festival. Organisers collated the themes from the 972 poems entered by the public to gauge the mood of the country. Romping to victory was “sadness” (incorporating “death, decay, despair, disillusionment”) — which accounted for 33 per cent of the submissions.

— Izo.com, the bountiful source of all things Russian, reports that the Mrs World contest — yes, it exists — was won by Mrs Nataliya Shmarenova, the Ukrainian entrant. One stipulation — she will lose her crown if she divorces within the next year. The Ukraine State Statistics Committee (yes, that also exists) tells us that the national divorce rate in that country is 55 per cent. So, good luck there.

— He may have lost millions to a shady manager, but the supposedly gloomy singer Leonard Cohen still had time to make a busker’s day en route to his gig at the Glastonbury festival. The guitarist Justin Towell received a pound from the singer on the streets of Bath. A quid? That’s what we thought.

— “I didn’t realise how many Abba songs I knew. I knew them all,” said Tom Hanks at the London premiere of Mamma Mia! on Monday. “Before I did this film if you’d asked me how many Abba songs I knew I’d have said half the words of Dancing Queen and that would have been it. But I knew them all. Every single one of them,” he said, as if through gritted teeth.

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