<img src="https://sb.scorecardresearch.com/p?c1=2&amp;c2=6035250&amp;cv=2.0&amp;cj=1&amp;cs_ucfr=0&amp;comscorekw="> Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation

People

This article is more than 15 years old

On the day of the Turner shortlist an artist usually shunned by the art establishment has decided that if you can't join 'em, beat 'em, by launching his own website. Jack Vettriano - he of the beach-dancing couples - has launched his website as a showpiece and a virtual home, mounting previously unseen works and sale items. Although their subject matter may come as no surprise to connoisseur buyers such as Jack Nicholson or Robbie Williams, Vettriano is popular enough as an artist not to have to rely on selling his work through a gallery. "I've had some very flattering approaches but I've no plans to join another gallery just yet," says the artist whose Singing Butler painting fetched £744,800 four years ago.

Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, received what is fast becoming the standard welcome for world leaders from Venezuela's Hugo Chávez when she flew to South America, where she will be attending a meeting of EU and local leaders in Peru on Friday. During his weekly radio rant, Chávez - inaccurately - described Merkel's Christian Democratic party as "the same right wing that supported Hitler and fascism", before adding: "You can go to ... because you're a lady, I won't say." The cause of his ire was Merkel's tentative suggestion that he did not necessarily speak for the whole of Latin America. She probably got off lightly compared with what Chávez has said about Tony Blair and George "the devil" Bush

Boris Johnson's startlingly broad multi-faith connections have been disclosed by the Tablet. The Tory mayor's Turkish Muslim ancestry has been widely touted, not least by Johnson himself, but it turns out that he was born Catholic but converted to the Church of England while at Eton. Covering all bases, his stepmother, Jennifer Johnson, has Jewish connections, being the step-daughter of Sir Edward Sieff, chairman of Marks and Spencer. "It seems Boris will have a head start if he chooses to make interfaith dialogue a priority," comments the magazine.

You know how it is, you pop out to your local breakfast counter wearing your Obama '08 T-shirt, and who's the first person you meet but Hillary Clinton? That's what happened to Doris Smith at Tudor's Biscuit World in Charleston, West Virginia. "We've got to get the Republicans out," she told the candidate. "It's been too long," Clinton agreed, fingering the garment pensively.

stephen.bates@theguardian.com

Explore more on these topics

Most viewed

Most viewed