Shadow home secretary Chris Philp was recording a BBC television interview on a boat two miles off the French coast near Cap Grinez when a French naval officer test-fired a sidearm. Seventeen shots were clearly audible.
Philp said he took it as a deliberate attempt to intimidate him. A French naval spokesman dismissed the claim, saying all test firing protocols and warnings had been followed to the letter.
Channel crossings continue
What should worry Philp is not the pop of a distant pistol but the putt-putt of another rubber boat loaded with asylum seekers. More than 700 migrants are thought to have crossed the Channel the day after the naval incident.
That came within 24 hours of Andy Burnham claiming the plan to stop the small boats "is working". Yet one of the boats this week was the largest yet, with hundreds of men, women and children crammed on board – not small by any stretch.
Zendaya and Tom Holland
Zendaya impressed at the London premiere of Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Her Tamara Ralph dress had parallel silvery lines that were a sequin cobweb design, and she wore a golden spider brooch. Tom Holland, the film's lead, wore a tailored dark suit with a spider web tie.
Kemi Badenoch's latest convert
Dame Maureen Lipman, a Labour supporter for five decades until she became disenchanted during Ed Miliband's leadership, could vote Conservative for the first time because of Kemi Badenoch. "She speaks beautifully," she says. "She's attractive, she's thoughtful, she's intelligent... I like her. I'd have to think carefully with my pencil hovering over a blue thing. But I really like her."
