The newest chant in soccer: 'Who's that Berkeley in the black?'
• Many challenges confront the culture secretary, Jeremy "Berkeley" Hunt, each day, but still he seeks to learn. Last year he started training as a soccer ref, the better to understand the people. It's going well, he told a ConservativeHome function. He finally qualified as a level 7 ref last month, and thus was given the responsibility of officiating a real match. One player did, he said, call him the word that rhymes with Berkeley Hunt – as James Naughtie did in 2010 – but unlike Naughtie, the footballer's abuse was deliberate. Berkeley chose leniency. "I only gave him a yellow card – not a red – because it wasn't entirely unjustified," he said.
• A quiet year so far for Godfrey (never less than eight pints in a single sitting) Bloom, the Ukip MEP for Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire. Once you have damned women for failing to clean behind the fridge, and the president of the European parliament for being a "Nazi", it's not clear where you go next. Broaden the canvas perhaps, and with that in mind, we see Godders is now taking aim at funding given to Europe's main organisation for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, ILGA-Europe. A slew of questions to the European commission about the funding criteria and the group's legitimacy. He's receiving brickbats from all sides, of course, but vilification has never stopped him before. A panto villain available all year round. That's Godfrey.
• And after the gladiatorial clash at the high court between Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky, we wait for a verdict. And wait. And wait. Just as draining for them, we suspect. And as Judge Elizabeth Gloster mulls it all over, London-based Boris offers advice to those still stuck in his homeland, oppressed by his enemy Putin. Church leaders must play a bigger role in events, says Boris. Alas, the church is unconvinced. "The past activities of this man lead one to believe that you should listen to this man attentively and do exactly the opposite," says Orthodox church spokesman archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin. Harsh. But we say much the same of Godfrey.
• Throughout a stellar career in Fleet Street, Donald Zec was peerless. He was the Daily Mirror's man to beat for showbiz scoops. Bogart, Kirk Douglas, the Beatles; when they talked, they talked to him. Same goes for Marilyn Monroe. That's a fact. Assert the contrary at your peril. Perhaps the message has now got through to the various arms of the Murdoch empire. They do keep taking on the legendary reporter; each time they come off worst. At issue are the memoirs of Colin Clark, the inspiration for the all-star movie My Week with Marilyn. Clark didn't much like Zec – "little creep", he called him. And what really irked the author was Zec's behaviour. All that sneaking, as he put it, into their park-side house to get interviews and photos. The cheek of the man; he actually put his arms around Marilyn's waist. "Zec was telling everyone who would listen that Marilyn was a personal friend of his," notes Clark on 15 July 1956. But that would not have been an unreasonable thing for Zec to do. For Marilyn and he were friends. He was, indeed, a confidant. In 1997, the Sunday Times was forced to retract. "The review also said that Miss Monroe and Mr Zec were 'total strangers'. We now accept that this was wholly untrue." Now, 13 years later, another reprint and another grovelling apology, this time from Murdoch's HarperCollins. The allegations are "without foundation and should not have been published", concedes the publisher. "By the time of the events described in the book, Mr Zec knew Monroe personally. We apologise to Mr Zec and his family. All future editions of the book will be amended." Even now, they bow to Donald Zec – the man who got the scoops.
• He is delightful when we make contact. No wish to gloat. He has only ever wanted to set the record straight. "I was astonished to find the book still maintaining the same allegation," he says. "It offended me because it's nonsense." The end of the matter, one hopes, for at 92, he has other things to think about. "I don't want apologies," says Zec cheerily. "I just want a few more years."
