Newspaper columnist and Radio 4 mainstay Matthew Parris is in a spot of non-literal hot water after attempting to swim across the Thames. The 60-year-old journalist took to the river at Rotherhithe and paddled off towards Limehouse. But the normally level-headed correspondent mixed up his tide tables and, slipping into the water before high-tide, ended up three-quarters of a mile upriver. A spokesman for the Port of London Authority dubbed the stunt 'ignorant and selfish', pointing out that his presence might have caused fast boats to swerve dangerously. Parris has since acknowledged that his wanton bathing could have 'ended in disaster'. Incidentally and irrelevantly, the oldest known depiction of the River Thames was penned by the columnist's 13th Century near-namesake Matthew Paris, a monk and scholar of St Albans.
