It's the bunting season. But Boris isn't a good sport
✒It's bunting season. Hurrah! London Mayor Boris Johnson so adores a trestle table that he appointed his own "street party ambassador", bubbly Babs Windsor, to encourage Londoners to burst forth spontaneously into council-sanctioned, government-endorsed road-based celebrations. So we weren't surprised to hear of the mayor's concern when, after almost knocking over a constituent on his bike near City Hall this week, the man asked for Johnson's help in clearing red tape that was blocking his own planned party. Unfortunately perhaps for the mayor, his near-victim was Graham Smith, campaign manager of Republic, whose "Not the Royal Wedding" party was blocked this week by Camden council. The mayor supports street parties regardless of their cause, a City Hall spokeswoman tells us, but can't intervene in individual cases. C'mon, Boris! It would be such a shame if Republic's planned auction of honours – "If you fancy being a lord for the day you can give us a fiver" – were to find itself without a festive home.
✒Our presence is solicited at the launch of a new "bubble tea" cafe in Soho, which the Taiwanese government sees as a "perfect opportunity to enhance the country's cultural identity in the UK". What is it, we ask Taiwanese ambassador Siao-Yue Chang, that makes tapioca floating in a milk-based tea such a fitting standard bearer for her nation? "Like Taiwan, bubble tea is sweet and has universal appeal," she tells the Guardian, "and makes beverages without the soft and chewy tapioca balls that are its namesake dull and bland by comparison." Take that, lapsang souchong! "This ingenious combination of tea and tapioca is representative of Taiwanese creative spirit ..." Yes, yes.
✒Yesterday's item on the Hitchens brothers prompts reader Richard Heller to mail his fond recollections of Oxford in the late 60s, where everyone's favourite left-a-bit, right-a-bit polemicist Christopher was a contemporary. Back then, of course, young Hitchens's politics were unambiguous. "Night after night in the late 1960s he used the well-upholstered Balliol JCR to argue for the true path to socialism and plot insurrections against the capitalist system and its handmaidens, the College and University authorities. Since most of his audience were drunk, stoned or playing all-night poker, he was forced to acquire high skills in rhetoric and argument to rouse them." Imagine his dismay, therefore, to hear of the recent defeat of a motion to declare Hitchens a "hero" of the JCR. Alas, it being the Easter break and with the college's students off in Klosters or occupying something, we are unable to demand an explanation.
✒Bad news for the organisers of "Radical Media", a conference planned for October and intended, among other things, to promote dialogue between activists and mass media. Conference planners, including the New Internationalist, Peace News and Red Pepper, have received a letter demanding a name change from a US-based company called ... Radical Media. "We are a transmedia company that develops, produces and distributes TV shows, films, commercials, brand identities, advertising concepts, digital content and event-based entertainment," declares its site. Radical. Bookings for the Rebellious Media conference will be opening soon.
✒And so we come to the final extract from our Diary book of the week, the surely-by-now bestselling Kate: Kate Middleton: Princess in Waiting, by Claudia Joseph. (Don't be sad. There may be other stuff to read about her in the coming fortnight.) Our scene is St Andrews, where Wills, Kate, a chap called Fergus who never talks to the press and "one other student who has never been identified" are sharing a house. William grants an interview: "Everybody thinks I drink beer, but I actually like cider." A society photographer spills his secrets: "It's amazing when I think back that I was never able to photograph Kate, let alone William." Somehow, happily, the pair get it together. You know what's next: Mustique, chewing gum, helicopters, fascinators, Kenya, I do, so does she, snog on the balcony. And they all lived happily ever after ...