Carrying a torch for Essex

Jamie Oliver carried the Olympic torch in the rain from Newport to Saffron Walden yesterday. The sodden chef confessed, quite rightly, that he'd rather be in his parents' pub at Clavering. He went to school in Newport, though perhaps a more fitting place for him to take the flame might be the end of Southend pier— which on Jamie's Britain is where he claimed to have been conceived. Though strangely there's no blue plaque, as yet.