Steerpike

There was only one topic of discussion at the launch of Nadine Dorries’s novel Four Streets last night - will Maria Miller survive? The conversation was particularly pointed because Ed Vaizey and Helen Grant — Miller’s now former colleagues at the Department of Culture Media and Sport — were both present. They at least tried not to gossip. Vaizey was invited to speak by Dorries in his ‘capacity as a Culture Minister and a friend’. He gave a comedy turn; lavishing Nadine with praise for her ‘brilliant, brilliant book which I have not yet read.’ He continued: ‘I asked Nadine for a copy and she said you can buy it off Amazon — it costs the equivalent of about 18 and a half pints of milk, not that you would know, posh boy.

Mr Steerpike longs for the day that he has a bar named after him, so he went to doff his cap to Gerald Scarfe at Scarfe’s Bar last night. Cartoonist Scarfe has spent the last four months decorating the bar at the Rosewood Hotel in Holborn. Politicos or royal junkies will love it: Farage, Brown, Cameron, Clegg and the first cartoon of wee baby George are all in evidence. ‘If the Prince of Wales can have a pub named after him, why shouldn’t I have a bar?’ says Scarfe, who treated me to a whistle-stop tour of his work. ‘There won’t be enough time to paint Maria Miller [before she goes],’ he joked. The walls did, however, present a small connection to the beleaguered Culture Secretary.

The potential for brouhaha lurks on any party guest list; but the stakes are not often as high as they were last night at the Savile Club, where hacks and MPs – both past and present – gathered for the launch of Jerry Hayes’s naughty memoir An Unexpected MP. Tension mounted when former News of the World executive Alex Marunchak came face to face with Tom Watson, self-styled scourge of the Murdoch Empire. Readers may recall that in March 2012 Watson made a series of allegations in parliament about Marunchak concerning the News of the World and the murder of the private investigator Daniel Morgan in 1987.

The Daily Mail has been holding habitués of the corridors of power to account for so long, it has decided that it deserves a corridor of its own. The Editors Hallway has just been unveiled in Northcliffe House, home of DMGT. It's a sight to behold, complete with a Vegas-style lobby, pomegranate White Company candles and an all-male line-up of editors since the 19th century. There’s even a picture of Mrs T in the ladies loo. Our only question is: if this is a hallway belonging to the editors, shouldn’t there be an apostrophe? Perhaps it’s an ironic joke about the Mail’s rigorous editing standards.

Nick Clegg had been given the night off babysitting; but, after the poll verdict on tonight’s EU debate with Nigel Farage, he may wish he’d stayed at home with the kids. As the dust settled, the Deputy Prime Minister was bundled into a car and fled the field of battle. Meanwhile, Nigel Farage headed for a victory lap at the Reform Club, where his party donors had been watching. Backstage, Westminster’s hack-pack was necking cheap vino and Pret sandwiches after carrying out a spectacular volte face. Initially ‘the spin room’ had called the duel for Clegg, on both style and substance. But, as news of the Sun/YouGov poll filtered through to the scribblers, headlines were rewritten and awkward tweets deleted.

The last season of Game of Thrones ended while a rough and ready rabble from north of 'the wall' were preparing to make life difficult for the establishment down south in King's Landing. Ahead of the fourth season premier, one of these northern wildlings, Ygritte (AKA Scottish actress Rose Leslie), has told the forthcoming issue of Spectator Life: 'If we are going to be dictated to by anyone, I would prefer it to be Westminster rather than Brussels.' Quite right,  and what a refreshing measure of Euroscepticism and pro-Unionism. Fans of HBO's epic adaptation of George R. R. Martin's novels have pointed out that Leslie needs to take this debate onto Channel Four News so that she can drop her character's most famous phrase: 'You know nothing, Jon Snow'.