Hugh Robertson's in line for the top job as Culture Secretary

By Black Dog

PUBLISHED: 20:07 EST, 4 August 2012 | UPDATED: 20:08 EST, 4 August 2012

Hugh Robertson could be in line for Culture Minister

Dapper Sports Minister Hugh Robertson is the new dark horse to replace Sayeeda Warsi as Tory chairman in a post-Olympics Cabinet reshuffle by David Cameron.

Despite his ‘don’t you know who I am?’ gaffe when security guards failed to recognise him, No 10 rates the pint-sized ex-Army officer as being more sure-footed than his boss, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. ‘The trouble with Jeremy is everyone knows who he is, but no one rates him,’ said an insider.

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Friends of Tony Blair say the resignation of former UN boss Kofi Annan as Syrian peace envoy could provide the former PM with the new global role  he craves.

They say his good relationship with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, the main stumbling block to firm action by the UN, make him the ideal candidate. But the Foreign Office is less certain. ‘His record  in the Middle East is not one of unqualified success,’ said one diplomat, with masterly understatement.

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It was four years ago at the Beijing Olympics that this column forced Boris Johnson into admitting for the first time that he was after David Cameron’s job.

Asked six times if he wanted to be Tory leader, Bozza finally said: ‘If, like Cincinnatus, I were called from my plough, it would be wrong not to help out.’ As every scholar knows, Cincinnatus was a maverick Roman Consul recalled from exile on his farm to save Rome from invasion. You heard it here first.

Cherie Blair is reading Fifty Shades of Grey

A new chapter in the Blairs’ love life?

Pillow talk during the Blairs’ summer break will be intriguing. Cherie, right, is taking a copy of racy bestseller Fifty Shades Of Grey with her on holiday.

She confessed last week: ‘A friend told me it was actually a feminist book so I’m going to have a go. I’ve got it for our holiday reading.’ Our? Does that mean Tony has to leaf through  the ‘mummy porn’  as well?

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Overseas Aid Minister Andrew Mitchell worships at the feet of  Maggie Thatcher. ‘To me, she was a goddess. When she walked down the corridors, I used to stand stiffly to attention and hope she would pass by.

She had a habit of asking difficult questions which was a frightening experience.’ If she  passed Mitch in the corridor now, she would ask: ‘Why are you doling out record sums to other countries when our own  is bankrupt?’

Tebbit's box of tricks

Tory grandee Lord Waddington, in his memoirs out this week, recalls running  into Norman Tebbit just before Christmas in 1981.

He noticed that Tebbit was about to go home with not one but two Ministerial red boxes and he commiserated with him for having to face so much work over the holiday. He need not have fretted.  ‘Norman looked rather sheepish and opened up the boxes, one of which contained a melon and the other smoked salmon,’ writes the peer.