This week saw the birth of a new folk anti-hero — in the North Yorkshire town of Hawes. He is Steve Bloom, 63, the wonderfully grumpy, deliberately obstreperous second-hand bookseller who hit the headlines for charging a 50p entry fee (deductible from any purchase) to all visitors to his tiny, cluttered shop and consequently falling out with a good number of them. He called one customer — a doctor from Shropshire, who was browsing with two friends — a ‘pain in the a***’. And he has chivvied other browsers, page-flickers, badly behaved children and, well, pretty much anyone else who simply irritated him, to leave his premises. ...read

Hotel boss David Morgan-Hewitt (left), who escorted the Queen to safety when an intruder disturbed her lunch at the Goring in London (right), astonishingly good at his job, writes JANE FRYER. Morgan-Hewitt, known fondly as ‘Big Dave’, ‘Camp David’ (on account of his flamboyant manner) and, less fondly to some, as ‘Morgan Huge-Git’, is the Durham-educated history graduate who is the Goring Hotel’s world-famous, award-winning, awesomely dedicated managing director. The late Baroness Thatcher (inset with Mr Morgan-Hewitt), John Major and Tony Blair are all fans, along with showbiz royalty and, of course, real royals. ...read