SPRIGHTLY Sir Joseph Rotblat, aged 96, arrived on time for a party at the City Hall last week – but his host, the much younger London mayor Ken Livingstone, failed to turn up because he was suffering from flu.
I hear Sir Joseph, accompanied by his secretary Sally Milne, kept the conversation going at the reception which drew mayors from across Britain keen on supporting Ken’s project to launch a Peace Wall.
Guests, who included CND campaigner Bruce Kent, were asked to sign bricks which will form a wall to be set up for display at the United Nations in New York.
Sir Joseph, who has clearly recovered from a minor stroke suffered last year, made his way to City Hall in a friend’s car – and returned to his Asmara Road, West Hampstead, in a mini-cab.
One of Britain’s eminent physicists, Sir Joseph famously walked away from the Manhattan atomic bomb project in the US at the end of the war when he realised that Nazi Germany was not a nuclear threat.
From then on, he has campaigned against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. He travelled to Italy two months ago for a scientific conference.
Constantly contacted by academics and writers anxious to hear his views on nuclear weapons, he has agreed to be interviewed this week by scientists from Korea and Portugal. When I rang him last night (Wednesday) he was concerned about the latest measures from home secretary Charles Clarke to put known terrorists under ‘house arrest’ Britain.
“People should be worried about terrorists,” he told me “but we don’t want to lose our freedoms in the process.”

My chance to say thanks to a great surgeon

WHILE the famous plastic surgeon Dr Michael Brough will deservedly be remembered for his sterling work following the 1987 King’s Cross disaster, he will also be fondly remembered by his patients.
Reading of his death, Ms Lillian Ruff, contacted this newspaper this week.
When I spoke to Ms Ruff, 76, (pictured) who lives in Burton Street, Bloomsbury, she had one regret – she never wrote to Dr Brough after he had successfully removed a cancerous growth on an eyelid.
“He was so kind and supportive,” she told me. “It was a very fiddly operation and he prepared me for the worst. But, thank God, it went well. Afterwards, doctors from other wards at Middlesex Hospital came to have a look at me because it was so successful.
“It’s ironic that the doctor who saved me from cancer has died at the age of 62. He kept me alive.”

Things can only get wetter...

IT came as no surprise to see the Sunday Telegraph’s City Editor Robert Peston write of the squalid state of his mother-in-law’s council flat in Swiss Cottage.
The writer, who also pens a column for the New Statesman, was visiting her over Christmas and was shocked to discover a sitting room which was rendered virtually uninhabitable by a damp and whose plaster was falling off in chunks.
She lives in Bray, the 1960s tower block on Adelaide Road’s Chalcot estate, that has been riddled with problems for years.
Currently tenants are waiting for the council to get private cash to in able them to be done up – which, after Mr Peston’s visit, he agrees is long over due.
He told me he was shocked at the state of her home: “She is house proud and one wall is completely sodden, from top to bottom. It’s not a pretty sight.”
And Mr Peston is told the damage runs through out the block because the cladding of the tower is in such a bad state of disrepair the elements have found their way in.
“Local authorities should not be allowed their tenants to live like this. It’s wrong, it’s immoral and something should be done – immediately.”
But as readers of the New Journal will know, the proposed private finance initiative scheme, which aims to bring a £100m refit to the blocks, has been on the cards for over five years and looks no closer to becoming reality.

Clarke cackles over Haw’s Law

HE looks more genial. He sounds as if he listens to critics But is the new home secretary Charles Clarke a more benign force at the Home Office than his predecessor David Blunkett?
Judging by the way a Commons’ committee is trundling towards a decision to evict peace protester Brian Haw from Parliament Square, it seems as if Mr Clarke is as obdurate as the authoritarian Blunkett.
Last week Labour MPs on the Serious Crime and Police Bill voted unanimously for a clause that will allow any police constable to ban anyone they deem to ‘spoil the visual aspect or enjoyment’ of Parliament Square from a 1km radius of the square for three months.
The clause was designed specifically by the obsessive Blunkett to remove Mr Haw (pictured) who has staged a live-in protest outside parliament against the government’s policy in Iraq for more than three years.
Previous attempts by police and Westminster council to remove Mr Haw under existing legislation have all failed.
Both Hampstead MP Glenda Jackson and Islington MP Jeremy Corbyn have championed Mr Haw’s cause – backed up by several Lib-Dem and Tory MPs – but nothing appears to be budging Mr Clarke.
Referring to Mr Haw’s encampment in Parliament Square, Home Office minister Caroline Flint, expressed her fears at the committee that a “world heritage site” was being taken over by ‘this sort of display.”

Agatha’s glade?

I HEAR those hardy volunteers who look after the urban oasis Belsize Wood are considering calling a patch of the haven after Agatha Christie.
The crime author lived in the Isokon flats on Lawn Road that overlook the woods – and would wander through them to get her inspiration.
But it was during the Blitz that the trees offered her an escape from the horrors of a war-torn London.
Volunteer Ken Ellis wrote to me to let me know the Wood is looking for volunteers to help out, and to flag up the idea of a glade named after the author.
He wrote: “The grim wire fence is an entrance that reminds me of the cage-lift down into a coal mine.
“The lock-up wood is no pit – its paradise.”

It’s Ed Blogs

LIB-DEM supporters in Hampstead will probably be keeping their fingers crossed in the hope their new parliamentary candidate Ed Fordham will be more careful if he masterminds a web blog during the election campaign.
His last job as spin doctor for the Lib-Dem contest in Hartlepool last year ended in tears when his candidate Jody Dunn let slip a stream of consciousness that brought howls from the constituents.
After knocking at doors in Hartlepool, Dunn returned to campaign offices to write in her blog: “We began to realise that everyone we met was either drunk, flanked by an angry dog or undressed.”