The Richard Gere Moment

That name had to come up eventually and now it has finally happened. I've blogged as CuriousHamster for nearly two years now so I suppose I should be grateful it has taken this long but I've always known it was only a matter of time before someone took the obvious cheap shot. Tonight's the night. I'm not good at all that suspense stuff so I'll tell you who it was straight away. It was Iain Dale.

For a full understanding of the rest of this, you'll need to have read this first.

OK?

Right, here are some facts.

Iain Dale is a trustee of a think tank called Policy Exchange.

Iain Dale is also one of the directors of 18 Doughty Street. He's in charge of scheduled programming.

18 Doughty Street is about to make an attack ad targeting Ken Livingstone, the current Labour major of London.

Nicholas Boles is the director of Policy Exchange.

Nicholas Boles is also reported to be the front-runner in the race to become Conservative candidate for major of London. Although Ken won't be standing again, any attacks on the current Labour major which drives down Labour's poll ratings could be of significant benefit the Tories come election time. In particular, they could be of significant benefit to Nicholas Boles.

In the interest of openness and transparency, I thought I'd ask Iain about these facts in the comments to his post plugging the attack on Livingstone. Iain's answers are most revealing but perhaps not in quite the way he'd like.

So is Mr Boles, the Policy Exchange director, still the front front-runner to be the Conservatives London mayoral candidate? Who knows? It's difficult to tell from Iain's answers whether he's even still a candidate.

I didn't think it was appropriate to trouble an independent charity with a request for information on what is obviously a party political issue so I've emailed a request for a full list of the candidates to Conservative HQ instead. Can't imagine it's the sort of thing the Conservatives are keeping secret so we'll hopefully find out what Mr Boles' position is soon enough. I've said this already but it really is quite surprising that Iain doesn't know.

Anyway, I'd like to point out for the record that I have never met Richard Gere. Not even once.

And finally tonight, a quickfire quizz. Who said "It's when I read this sort of rubbish that I know it's hitting home"? Was it:

A) Pete Doherty
B) Rocky VIII
C) Iain Dale

And at the buzzer...

Update

Just in case anyone isn't aware of it, this unlikely possibility having only just occurred to me, the Gere story is an urban myth. And the Great Wall of China is not the only man made object visible from space either. Vigorously mock anyone who suggests that it is. The wall is how wide exactly? And that's wider than, say, a motorway then, is it? Urban myths. Bah!