Bennett entranced by Andy Burnham

Has Alan Bennett (left), the award-winning playwright and diarist, got a crush on Andy Burnham (right), Labour's handsome Culture Minister? The question arises because of an article Bennett has penned for the January issue of the London Review of Books, in which he records a meeting with the politician at a reception thrown by Gordon Brown at Number Ten.

Apparently entranced, Bennett marvels at the lustre of Burnham's "heavy, dark hair" which he says make him look like he has "strayed out of an early Pasolini movie". Given his ministerial brief, it is safe to assume that 38-year-old Burnham, whose appearance more unkind commentators have likened to a Thunderbirds puppet, is acquainted with Pier Paolo Pasolini, a bisexual who died in 1975 when he was brutally murdered by being run over several times with his own car on an Italian beach.

Pasolini’s films focused on the seedier side of life. His final work Salo, released shortly before his death, and based on the Marquis de Sade’s 120 days of Sodom, was so explicit in its depiction of sadistic violence that it was named by the Time Out film guide “the most controversial film of all time”.

One can only speculate on what Burnham, a Cambridge graduate who was a special advisor to Labour's first openly declared gay MP Chris Smith, made of Bennett’s article. Says a Westminster source: "Andy, who it should be pointed out is a married man with a young son, has always attracted admiration for his looks. He takes it in his stride. You could say he disproves that old saying that 'politics is just rock and roll for ugly people'."