Watch out London: Paris seeks a best friend

What can you possibly give the hotel heiress who has everything? A friend. In news to delight VIP rope-holders across the West End, Paris Hilton is moving to London. Her mission? To find companionship.

“I love LA,” says the socialite. “But London, watch out — I’m coming to town and bringing my fast-paced life with me. I’ve decided to look for a new BFF across the pond.” For the benefit of non-Facebook-speakers, BFF means “best friend forever”.

“I need a best friend who is hot, who can keep up with me and, most of all, who is real and won’t be a backstabber,” says Hilton, who intervened in the US presidential election to declare herself “ready to lead”. She could be around for a while. “I’m not leaving London until I find that amazing girl or guy who can meet the challenges of being my British bestie.”

Candidates for the position of official diamanté BlackBerry holder must accompany Paris to parties and pass “tests of loyalty, endurance and girl politics”. Graciously, Hilton will allow an ITV2 camera crew to follow the whole process. But will the BFF be deleted from her contacts book when the filming stops?

— Sir Jimmy Savile fixed it for the police. Spotting a car accident in Leeds, the TV veteran stopped to help. “I was directing the traffic through so it didn’t block up. A copper came across and said, ‘You're doing a great job there Jimmy’, and he gave me a high-visibility jacket to wear.”

Does he really need to be so fluorescent?

— Colin Brazier, the afternoon face of Sky News, is urging the middle classes to produce larger families. More children means fewer paranoid parents and risk-averse kids, he argues in a 6,000-word polemic published by the think-tank Civitas. Brazier has sired a brood of five. His colleagues Eamonn Holmes and Dermot Murnaghan both have four kids. It must be something in the Sky coffee.

— “If you believe the politicians, we have a broken society, in which the courage and morals of young people have been sapped by welfarism and political correctness,” laments Boris Johnson. “And if you look at what is happening at the Olympics, you can see what piffle that is.” What a shame that David Cameron says his main aim in government would be to heal Britain’s “broken society”.

From sink estate to silver screen

The Face: Thomas Turgoose

A chance meeting with a casting director transformed the prospects of a sink-estate tearaway. Today Thomas Turgoose, 16, is one of British film’s hottest prospects as directors seek to capture his mix of cheeky insolence and boyish vulnerability.

Asked to audition for Shane Meadows’s 2005 film This is England, the story of a bullied young boy who falls in with a group of skinheads, the lad from Grimsby demanded a fiver. Turgoose, a truant known to the police, walked off set during filming, unable to cope with the discipline required, but he returned — and took the Most Promising Newcomer award in the British Independent Film Awards — followed by his GCSE exams.

He renews his partnership with Meadows in Somers Town, which is released this week. Turgoose is evidence that raw talent can be mined in the least promising circumstances.

Postscript

Lily Allen blogs that she “doesn’t really know what’s going on” with her new album, blaming EMI’s recent troubles for the late release. The Olympics and football “are both far more entertaining”, she admits.

— Magistrates in North Wiltshire have banned a gig by Pete Doherty’s Babyshambles at the Moonfest in Westbury, citing public order fears.

— Grace Jones has declined to lash out at Amy Winehouse. “She should be treated gently,” purrs Jones.

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