Only Jewelery

A celebration of the achievements of the most famous siblings in British advertising could never be billed as a mere anniversary party.

Oh no. The "Saatchistory" is what it's being called, a monumental bash to mark the contribution that Maurice and Charles Saatchi have made to British cultural life over the past four decades.

It promises to be quite an occasion. The grandees of the Conservative party have been invited, including David Cameron and Baroness Thatcher – whom the brothers propelled to power with their "Labour Isn't Working" poster in 1979 – and Lord Heseltine, who was a mentor to Maurice early in his career.

Also on the guest list for the party at the Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, west London, are famous names from the creative industries, such as Lord Puttnam, Sir Roger Moore, Bono, Sir Elton John and Sir David Attenborough, as well as Charles' friends from the arts world, such as Tracey Emin, and titans of British advertising, such as Sir John Hegarty.

But one particularly important guest could be missing – and that's Charles himself. The famously reclusive art collector was known to hide away from clients when they visited Saatchi & Saatchi's offices and avoids exhibition launches at his art galleries.

Lord Bell, who founded Saatchi & Saatchi with the brothers and who now presides over his own communications empire, had doubts about the elder Saatchi's attendance. "If he's not going then why should I? I don't happen to like nostalgia very much. I'm more interested in the future than the past. I will probably pop in for half an hour," he said. "They're all desperate for me to come but if it's being held at the Saatchi Gallery and Charles Saatchi can't be bothered to come, why should I bother? I keep asking whether he will come or not and they keep saying they don't know. I know what 'don't know' means with Charles – it means 'no'."

But others close to the event, which will take place on 9 September, say that Charles, who is married to the television chef Nigella Lawson but shuns the media, is more involved in the event than he might wish to be known. One said: "In public he says he's not at all interested in advertising but behind it he's micromanaging the whole thing, he's all over it like a rash. He probably wants everybody to come and say, 'What an agency! What a gallery!'"

The party will take place against a backdrop of the exhibition Newspeak: British Art Now, which is thought by organisers to be appropriate given that the advertising associated with the Saatchi brothers has often made the news. The art will be accompanied by a retrospective display of creative work produced over the past four decades by Saatchi & Saatchi and M&C Saatchi, the operation the brothers set up in 1995 after they were forced out of their original venture.

From the groundbreaking 1970 "Pregnant Man" poster, with the question "Would you be more careful if it was you that got pregnant?" through to M&C Saatchi's hatchet job on Gordon Brown before the last election, the creative work has been as distinctive as the family's Iraqi Jewish surname.

In spite of his reluctance to attend the party, Lord Bell is lavish in his praise of the brothers' achievements. "They have consistently produced communications work which changed the marketplace, captured people's imagination and made a real difference," he said. "They turned advertising from a cottage industry into a proper economic sector and made the world take advertising seriously."

Sir John Hegarty, who made his name as an art director at Saatchi & Saatchi before founding Bartle Bogle Hegarty, said that the brothers brought advertising into a modern era. "The Swinging Sixties didn't happen in advertising until the 1970s, with Saatchi & Saatchi leading the charge."

The party will be attended by around 1,500 guests, who have been told to "dress as you like". Saatchi & Saatchi, which is now part of the French-owned Publicis Groupe, recently worked for the Labour party on its election campaign, and senior Labour figures are also understood to have been invited.

Robert Senior, chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi, said that through their "ambition and fearlessness" the brothers had "defined the industry both here and abroad". He said: "That has to be commended and celebrated." And no doubt it will be at the Saatchi Gallery next month, whether or not Charles deigns to appear.

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Thick black lines surround a variegated quilt of colour. A lack of conventional perspective makes way for what is known in art circles as "facet-like stereometric" shapes. Then there are the strange, stretched heads, distorted arms and higgledy-piggledy eyes. To the layman the portrait is reminiscent of Pablo Picasso, or at least a reasonable copy. But the canvas belongs to a wholly different kind of prodigy.

Hamad Al Humaidhan, a 10-year-old Bath resident born in Kuwait, has been dubbed the "Young Picasso" by, well, eager publicists keen to market his talents. But there is no doubting his keen eye, nor the passing resemblance of his work to the Cubist master. Now, Al Humaidhan is selling his work for £650 a go, and is due to exhibit in Liverpool and Llangollen, Wales.

"My Dad told me my painting was like a famous artist," says the 10-year-old over the phone. "I asked him who. He told me it was Picasso. He said he wasn't going to show me any of Picasso's work. He said I had to produce more. So I did, and he brought me an art book and showed me. I'm happy that people have said they like what I do. Now I want to be a professional sculptor or painter when I grow up."

Hamad's situation is typical of children throughout history whose cognitive or creative endowments have thrown them into the public eye. We're all familiar with his Requiem, but what about the ordeal faced by Mozart's parents, Leopold and Anna? From the salons of Salzburg to today's youth-obsessed media climate, the question facing proud mothers and fathers remains the same. Should you let nature take its course or should you nurture your offspring to within an inch of their life?

Hamad's story started in 2006. He tried to reproduce a photograph of footballer Cristiano Ronaldo from a magazine. His father, Walid, a police officer, had moon-lighted as an artist in Kuwait and kept blank canvases at home. Hamad discovered them, put some art equipment lying around to good use, and produced a composition that stunned his father. The boy's technique includes "closing his eyes, seeing an image of a painting in his head, and transferring it to the canvas". If only all art were that simple.

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Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has urged the European Union to pay Libya "at least €5bn (£4.1bn) a year" for Tripoli to stop the waves of clandestine African migrants who sail from the country's Mediterranean shores in smugglers' boats toward Western Europe.

Otherwise, Colonel Gaddafi warned during a speech in Italy, Europe "could turn into Africa" with millions of immigrants.

The Italian government's practice of returning those found at sea to Libya without screening them first for asylum has been criticised by human rights groups and Catholic Church officials. As part of a treaty with Italy, Libya agreed to crack down on the thousands of African migrants who set off from Libyan shores for its former colonial master. Premier Silvio Berlusconi's key partner in his conservative coalition is the anti-immigrant Northern League party.

Mr Berlusconi's tribute to Colonel Gaddafi at a gala evening for his "friend" on Monday saw the two of them review some 130 Carabinieri horsemen saluting the Libyan as he arrived at the barracks and a shout from the mounted regiment's leader of "honours to the leader of the revolution, Muammar Gaddafi".

Mr Berlusconi thanked his counterpart for strengthened ties between Tripoli and Rome and dismissed as being behind the times those criticising the Libyan leader for trying to convert Italians to Islam during the visit. The dinner in Colonel Gaddafi's honour was reported to have stretched into the early hours of yesterday morning.

With Colonel Gaddafi dressed in white robes at his side, Mr Berlusconi hailed the North African leader for signing a friendship treaty exactly two years ago that the Italian called a "model of diplomacy in the era of globalisation".

But left-leaning opposition lawmakers and pro-Vatican politicians in this predominantly Catholic county criticised the government's failure to protest at Colonel Gaddafi's behaviour.

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The 300,000 people who attended the "Restoring Honor" rally in Washington were told not to bring political placards, and the speakers – even the former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin – did not cite President Barack Obama once. But the Tea Party cheerleader Glenn Beck, who organised the event, was yesterday adamant that its success signified something of political importance for the US: voters are deeply unhappy with the direction in which the country is headed.

The Fox News commentator had taken to the steps of the capital's Lincoln Memorial, 47 years to the day after Martin Luther King delivered his "I have a dream" speech from the spot, to deliver a call for a return to traditional values. His critics accused him of stirring racial tensions, and the media took a stand-offish approach to the large conservative crowds that thronged around the famous reflecting pool beneath the Washington Monument. Meanwhile, leaders of both parties were watching to see if the event might energise conservative voters ahead of November's elections that could result in the Democratic party losing control of one or both houses of Congress.

Mr Beck declared yesterday that the event showed there was a yearning for something better from politics. "You don't get that many people to come to Washington to stand there and have that kind of moment for no reason," he told Fox News Sunday. "A good number of people are not happy with the direction we are going."

The rally, ostensibly a fundraiser designed to honour American troops and to call for restoring God to the centre of American life, seems certain to keep Mr Beck's peculiar brand of demagoguery at the centre of the pre-election debate.

The Republican establishment hardly knows how to handle the broadcaster, whose emotional warnings about impending socialism and moral degradation in the US have often landed him in trouble, but have turned him into one of the most-watched hosts on Fox News.

The anti-tax Tea Party movement has swept aside numerous mainstream Republicans in favour of more right-wing candidates, with uncertain consequences for the party's fortunes in November. Political officeholders were not invited to the rally, but Ms Palin continued her campaign for the presidency in 2012 by making an appearance.

Mr Beck was criticised for playing with racial symbolism by holding his event on the anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in 1963. He has been accused of playing on racial prejudices by painting Mr Obama as alien to the values of mainstream America. "They represent hate-mongering and angry white people," said Jaime Contreras of the Service Employees International Union, speaking at the smaller "Reclaim the Dream" rally.

The rallies were covered with an even hand on most news channels. Fox News was not among the organisations, however, that summarised the racial make-up of the crowds. Most others pointed out that the attendees at the Beck rally were "predominantly white".

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At least 18 Italians have died in the past 10 days in the shadow of the Alps and Apennines – not because of rock falls or mountaineering accidents, but for the love of mushrooms.

Recent weather conditions have brought about an explosion in the number of edible fungi clinging to tree stumps and undergrowths in northern Italy. Coming after weeks of dearth, the sudden abundance has caused a correspondingly abrupt surge in the number of pickers or "fungaioli" – many of whom seem willing to take extraordinary risks in pursuit of elusive delicacies like porcini, chanterelles and Caesar's mushrooms.

The latest to die was Angelo Bertoni from a town near Milan whose body was found this morning. He, his brother and a cousin were fungi hunting in the Valgerola area, east of Lake Como.

According to Alpine rescuers, the 58 year-old factory worker had seen a particularly fine porcini mushroom. Leaving the path he had been following with his companions, he slipped from a precipice and fell about 100 metres to his death.

On Friday, another mushroom gatherer was found dead in Valgerola after his family raised the alarm. He too had entered a wooded area on a steep mountainside. A 65-year-old woman died on Saturday, just a few miles away. In addition to the confirmed deaths, another fungaiolo has been missing for more than a week in the Apennine mountains near Pistoia in Tuscany.

Mushroom tragedies sometimes occur when pickers unwittingly gather and cook poisonous toadstools. But this year most of the deaths have been caused by falls. In many cases, the victims had been trying to outwit rival gatherers by going into remote and steeply inclined woods before dawn.

"It's a problem of mentality, unfortunately," said Gino Cornelli, head of alpine rescue in the Fassa valley in the Dolomites. "Many arrive in the dark. They set off with lights on their heads, even though it is banned. They dress in grey or brown to disguise themselves from the others."

He told La Repubblica newspaper: "They do the opposite of what they should. Too many cock a snook at the rules, and unfortunately this is the result."

Marco Biasoni, an Alpine rescuer based in the predominantly German-speaking Bolzano area, said another problem was that many mushroom-pickers did not have the correct dress and equipment. "You need the right shoes, of the sort for trekking , and not boots with which you can slip. Then take along a mobile phone. And go with someone else. Always."

Mushrooms flourish after periods of alternating heat and damp. Many parts of northern and central Italy have experienced a hot summer punctuated by storms.

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Oh dear – MPs are in the firing line again over their dealings with the new expenses police, the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa).

Up to 10 are accused of using bad language, shouting and even making veiled threats, so the newspapers report this morning. You can read Nick Watt's lively account here.

No, I don't expect you to feel sorry for politicians over their expenses problems.

Many were caught misbehaving – and worse – last year, though many others were unfairly traduced, victims of arbitrary and inconsistent treatment by officials, both active and retired, who should have known better, and hounded by a media which doesn't.

No provocation excuses bad manners to young people, though one miscreant, Labour's Denis MacShane, admitted it was he who dashed out and bought a box of chocolates for an Ipsa volunteer he had upset (she had upset him, too).

Volunteer? Yes, apparently Ipsa has been using volunteers from a civil service department to front MPs' enquiries.

More senior staff also appear to have been keeping what the MPs call "secret files" on their behaviour, a version of which was leaked to the Mail on Sunday two weeks before its official release yesterday.

Leaks happen, but this one should serve as a reminder that not even parliamentary watchdogs chaired by eminent people such as Professor Sir Ian Kennedy are perfect. After all, mild-mannered Vince Cable and genteel Teresa May were among the allegedly abusive MPs exposed.

I realise I'm probably not making much progress defending the political class in front of the usual hanging jury of bloggers. So let me try another tack.

The Tory ex-minister Peter Bottomley (his wife, Virgina, got into John Major's cabinet), the veteran MP for Worthing West, is another vocal critic of Ipsa, which has cost £6m to set up and has had to pay out a reported £1m on tick since election day to tide MPs over for staff wages and office costs.

What makes Bottomley's assessment interesting is that he is a very independent backbencher, a champion of unpopular causes, quixotic and occasionally even eccentric in his views.

What follows is a slightly edited version of a letter he sent to Kennedy in July and copied to me.

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On the calendar of anniversary events in New Orleans five years after Hurricane Katrina, one stands out: a party tonight at the Eiffel Society, a new restaurant and lounge on St Charles Avenue, where guests will be asked to celebrate something good the storm left behind: a burgeoning and highly boisterous arts scene.

It's an eruption that has provoked – and is sustained by – an influx of mostly young and creative people from across the US, all with the common hope of finding inspiration and purpose in the battered urban landscape of the city, including painters, film-makers, dancers, designers, musicians and architects.

Some will be at the party on St Charles, like the American painter Elliott Coon. This spring, she and friends with the Life is Art Foundation here in New Orleans, spent 30 days barricaded inside the octagon structure of glass and steel (it was once part of the tower in Paris), sleeping, eating, working and playing without leaving it once, though they were occasionally joined in their experiment by other artists.

The result will be on view for all the party's guests, set to include the city's new mayor and enthusiast for the arts, Mitch Landrieu, and the economist Jeffrey Sachs. Never mind what's for dinner; look at the art they have installed, whether it's the pagan-like labyrinth painted in grey and gold leaf across most of its floor by Coon or the mesmerisingly delicate embroideries of naked figures suspended like cobwebs in the central skylight by the British artist, Louise Riley. (Riley was there for much of the live-in too.)

Other pieces – there are 20 – include a book table from wood salvaged from Katrina-stricken homes by Robert Tennan, a legendary figure among New Orleans art-goers, and, hanging over the kitchen door, a slate-grey photograph of a tug surrounded by oil from the BP spill taken by Edward Burtynsky.

What may not still be there this evening is a very large igloo sculpture by Daphane Park that diners are invited to step into. Wild and woolly and made of stockings and other soft materials on a wire frame, it is called the Semi-Conductor, and has a vaginal quality that is making the restaurant's owners queasy.

Giving a reporter a sneak tour, Coon speaks of her own experience visiting New Orleans two-and-a-half years ago from Virginia where she was living at that time. She expected to be here for a month.

"It was like there this rebirth going on in the city. I just stayed," she explains with a broad smile, aware that in staying she was becoming part of a club of people in New Orleans that is hardly exclusive.

Michael Martin, 24, who is doing a masters degree on the role of cultural activity in recovering economies, did the same, arriving here from New York at the beginning of last year. Today, he has no plans to leave. "Most my friends are either artists or designers or architects," he says. "We are all here doing creative things, because New Orleans is just this amazing palate that gives you space to do what you like."

Kristian Hansen, 31, arrived a few months before Katrina from his native California and bought a house. The storm destroyed it and today he rents in the grandly eccentric (and art-stuffed) home of Tennan and his wife, Jeanne Nathan, on Esplanade Avenue. Renting is fine, he says, but best of all is the growth of a film production company he co-founded here with a friend. Called Tungsten Monkey, its newest project is a nearly completed documentary feature about a young New Orleanian from a well-to-do-family who travels to the jungles of Peru in search of salvation from drug addiction.

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Vietnam: beef noodle soup (pho bo), by Tracey Lister and Andreas Pohl
Ingredients to make 6 bowls
2kg beef bones
2 brown onions, cut in half
1 knob of ginger, cut into chunks
1 pig's trotter (ask your butcher to saw it in half)
1 teaspoon of salt
500g beef brisket1 star anise
4cm piece of cassia bark or 1 cinnamon stick
To serve:
200g scotch fillet, thinly sliced
1tbsp fish sauce
600g fresh pho noodles (Vietnamese pantry)
4 red Asian shallots, finely sliced
4 spring onions, half sliced in long strips and half sliced into rings
Accompaniments:
1 lemon, cut in half or wedges
1 long red chilli, sliced
1 handful coriander leaves
1 handful Thai basil leaves
Fish sauce
Method
Preheat the oven to 200C. Place the beef bones on a baking tray and roast for 20 minutes. Turn the bones over and roast for a further 20 minutes.
Heat a grill or barbecue to medium-high heat. Grill the onion and ginger on all sides until charred lines appear.
Remove the bones from the oven and place in a large stockpot. Add the pig's trotter and the salt and cover with cold water. Slowly bring to simmering point, removing scum as it comes to the surface. Add the onion, ginger, brisket, star anise and cassia bark (or cinnamon stick) and simmer gently for 30 minutes. Remove the brisket and set aside. Continue to simmer the stock for a further 4 hours. Strain the stock and discard the bones, vegetables and spices.
Marinate the scotch fillet in the fish sauce and set aside for 30 minutes. Thinly slice the brisket across the grain. bring the broth back to simmering point.
Bring a saucepan of water to the oil. Drop the noodles into the boiling water for about 20 seconds, stirring with a chopstick to separate them. Drain throughly and divide evenly between 6 bowls.
Place the brisket sliced fillet, shallots and spring onions on top of the noodles. Ladle in the hot broth and encourage diners to generously add lemon juice, chilli, herbs and fish sauce.

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Defending world champion Sebastien Loeb won the German Rally for a record eighth consecutive time yesterday to extend his lead in the standings to 58 points.

The six-time world title winner led the event from start to finish to win by 51.3 seconds from Citroen C4 WRC team-mate Dani Sordo.

Citroen Junior team driver Sebastien Ogier made it a clean sweep for the French manufacturer after finishing one minute and 22sec behind Sordo.

Ford works team driver Jari-Matti Latvala was fourth, with privateer Citroen entrant Petter Solberg claiming fifth.

The win, Loeb's fifth of the season, made it 59 at world championship level for him and his co-driver, Daniel Elena, and took his points tally for the season to 191 compared to 133 for Ogier.

With four rounds of the series to go Loeb could clinch the world title in Japan next month ahead of races in France, Spain and Wales.

Loeb was delighted to have continued his dominance of the German race. He said: "This was a very good victory for me again, the eighth one in a row. It's incredible, I really have a good feeling on this rally. I wouldn't like to be beaten here and this time it's all OK again."

Sordo, on his first outing in the event in a factory Citroen, managed to keep Loeb in sight until his team-mate pulled clear on Saturday morning.

It was a positive result for Sordo as it was the first time he had competed with his new co-driver Diego Vallejo.

Ogier made up for a low-key start by passing Mikko Hirvonen for fourth and then claiming third from Latvala when the Finn spun.

Tyre damage on Friday meant that Solberg had to be content with fifth when a place on the podium had been possible, with the main battle of the weekend going on over sixth place.

Stobart Ford's Matthew Wilson eventually won that fight from former Formula One world champion Kimi Raikkonen despite the Citroen Junior driver winning the final superspecial stage after making some small mistakes on Sunday morning.

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England's world turned upside down in an hour after tea at The Oval on Friday.

There had been a couple of collapses earlier in the summer, but after two easy wins against Pakistan, England had begun to think that they only had to turn up here to wrap up the series. A broad sample of commentators and spectators had decided that Pakistan were rubbish. Some rubbish!

The rubbish was England batsmen, all of them, at one time or another. These failures are becoming ende-mic, and questions are already being asked, about the role of Graham Gooch, the batting coach, for instance.

Since the England and Wales Cricket Board have never worried about the size of England's support staff, perhaps they ought to hire a professional expectations manager. Without expert help, England appear to have ignored the fact that their opponents dismissed Australia for 88 at Headingley in July, and drew a two-match series. But after back-to-back wins, England blithely boasted that more of the same at The Oval and Lord's next week would create a record-breaking eight-game winning streak.

Moreover, confident noises were to be heard about England winning the Ashes in Australia this winter. This was the moment at which an expectations manager would have issued a formal caution and moved his gauge from "cocky" at the top of the range to "vulnerable" towards the bottom. It was as if everyone had forgotten the pitiable optimism in England before football's World Cup.

Expectations were already falling sharply at The Oval on Thursday evening when Andrew Strauss fell to a neat outswinger from Mohammad Aamer. Alastair Cook's appalling run of form acted as a brake on optimism, though he was the cause of expectations rising briefly between the start and tea on Friday when Cook (right) rode his luck and rediscovered his form. After tea, the high, grey cloud ceiling and the floodlights helped Aamer's reverse swing. With Saeed Ajmal bowling an unpickable doosra at the other end, the pair administered a sharp dose of realism.

With the loss of six wickets for 27 runs in 15 overs, a dreadful truth was exposed. England's batting is dangerously brittle. The truth has been masked, partly by the fact that of nine Tests played so far this year, four were against Bangladesh. Dropped catches had let them off the hook against Pakistan when they collapsed at Old Trafford and Edgbaston. On Friday the mask was ripped away.

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