Been in Zanzibar with the swish family McKenna, editing ‘Jerusalem’ and admiring the construction of ‘Bobbylon’.

French Bean and Bobby Love are building the most extraordinary
hotel; a wonderfully, happily, helplessly crazy undertaking of walled
gardens, bespoke luxury and fantasy location. The latter describes it
as 'hotel as theatre'. I can't do better.

French is to the manor born, raising Moo and Loo and growing organic. Bobby cuts a more intriguing figure: the Scouse adventurer who remains thoroughly English in an environment where pretending not to be English is the most English of traits. What does this mean? Among other things, it means rocking a Kangol on the building site. Class. All he’s missing is a sidekick called Tattoo.

And ‘Jerusalem’? It’s pretty much done. I hope so anyway. I think I’m proud of it. I’m certainly proud of the work. Even if it’s ultimately washed away by a freak storm, I’ll know I built it to be as sturdy as current technology allows.

In other news, I note that Bob and Morgan have signed their deal. Of course Bob, being Bob, was Bob about the whole thing; and the British media, being the British media, reacted accordingly. A lazy ITN reporter wondered whether the people of Z were finally free of ’28 years of brutal dictatorship’. Even the most fervent Mugabe hater shouldn’t tolerate that easy lie of a man who won a landslide victory that ended an apartheid regime. Of course, Bob is Bob for many reasons, but the dullard reporter gives a decent insight into one of them.

Incidentally, it seems the ‘comment’ facility on here is currently up the Swannee in that it’s not currently recording email addresses. So if you ask a question and you want a reply, could you paste it in the body of the comment? Many thanks.