Archbishop turns his back on the heavens

Backpackers will have to make room for Rowan Williams’s mitre on the rattlers after the Archbishop of Canterbury announced a crackdown on the sin of flying.

“This year I’m trying to take a rather more radical approach to my own air travel,” the environmentally concerned primate tells Green Futures magazine. “The only fixed [flight] this year is a trip to Auschwitz. After that I’m looking at travelling by train in Europe, and not going further afield, and just seeing what that feels like and what issues it raises.”

Dr Williams has picked up the challenge laid down by Richard Chartres, the Bishop of London, who renounced air travel for a year.

Lambeth Palace has recently taken delivery of a hybrid car. But don’t expect to see the Archbishop cycling to next week’s explosive General Synod encounter in York. “I can’t cycle,” he says. “I keep falling off. I have a deaf ear, so my sense of balance is hopeless, I’m afraid.”

That’s what the rebellious Anglican clergy have been telling him.

Downing Street has relented on its “no engagement” strategy with David Davis and will allow one minister to debate with the civil liberties campaigner before next week’s by-election. Tony “Bruiser” McNulty, Security Minister, has volunteered for battle. Sky News has booked Davis v McNulty for an 11am showdown on Sunday. Perhaps High Noon would be more appropriate.

Daytime television will be shocked out of its slumbers when Jimmy McGovern, creator of Cracker and The Street, masterminds a new series for BBC One. Each episode of Moving On will focus on a family moving in or out of one street, against a backdrop of contemporary issues such as the credit crunch. The show is shot in Liverpool: McGovern could be reviving the leftie spirit of Brookside.

The Face: Ben Whishaw

The verdict is delivered tonight on Ben Whishaw, whose performance as a vulnerable young man charged with murder after a wild night out has gripped five million viewers in the BBC One thriller Criminal Justice.

“It may be uncomfortable viewing, but sometimes it’s important to feel uncomfortable,” says Whishaw, 27, who has sought challenging roles since his precocious lead role in Trevor Nunn’s 2004 Hamlet. Whishaw, a RADA-trained actor returns to the National Theatre in a modern adaptation of The Idiot this month, after completing an all-star remake of Brideshead Revisited, in which he plays Sebastian Flyte.

Barristers have attacked the “aggressive” portrayal of their profession in Criminal Justice. But viewers are keen to discover whether or not the accused man is really the “innocent” portrayed by the in-demand Whishaw .

Postscript

— The madman of rock, Alice Cooper, tells Uncut magazine he goes shopping for, erm, eight hours each time he visits a new city. Then it just gets wilder: he loves golfing with Ronnie Corbett. “You look at him and you wouldn’t think it, but you know what?” says Cooper. “That guy can hit the ball pretty well.” We think we’ll read that as a double-edged compliment for Ronnie.

— Dear Reader, it’s Independent Book Week. Giles Brandreth, Jilly Cooper and the Today programme’s James Naughtie are all volunteering in their local bookshop for a day to promote loveyourlocalbookshop.co.uk. Naughtie turned up bright and early at the Kew Bookshop in southwest London and plonked a copy of his new paperback, The Making of Music, on the counter’s prime selling slot. To children, he frequently recommended the Montmorency series by his wife, Eleanor Updale. There’s altruism.

— Billy Bragg tells Q magazine that his mum is not exactly on message. “My mum doesn’t even understand what I do for a living. I ring her and she says, ‘Where are you?’ I say, ‘I’m in Chicago.’ And she says, ‘Why can’t you be a bricklayer like your brother?’”

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