The Xtra Diary - Rapper Baba Brinkman at the Prince Charles Cinema on May 25

Published: 20 May, 2011

TRY finding something that rhymes with Australopithecus afarensis and you may struggle, but is that so wrong? 

Not if you’re a “science rapper” and must regularly contend with complex Latin names. 

Canadian performer Baba Brinkman was commissioned by Dr Mark Pallen, a professor of microbial genomics at the University of Birmingham, to create a rap about Darwinism. He will perform the ditty this week in the West End, and will be introduced by none other than Randal Keynes, Charles Darwin’s great-great-grandson. His rap contains the following lyric: “So check the massive evidence of Homo erectus and Australopithecus afarensis in the fossil record. And then try to tell me that we’re not all connected. The fossil record has gaps but no contradictions.”

In case you were wondering, Australopithecus afarensis was an ancient ancestor of humans. Diary senses Baba’s rap will not go down well with creationists.

• Baba will perform the Darwin rap for the first time as part of his show at the Prince Charles Cinema, 7 Leicester Place, off Leicester Square at 8.30pm on Wednesday, May 25. For tickets (£8/£10) call 020 7494 3654. 

Us second place? Parish thought...

AS reported in West End Extra, Westminster could soon make history as the home of London’s first parish council if City   Hall gives the go-ahead to an eyecatching proposal to devolve powers to Queen’s Park.

But no wonder campaign chairwoman Angela Singhate (pictured with council leader Colin Barrow) is anxious that “the bureaucratic process doesn’t get in the way”.

For if council chiefs drag their feet, first prize may have already been claimed.

Diary has learned that London Fields and Wapping (in the respective East End boroughs of Hackney and Tower Hamlets) have also launched bids – along with flashy websites – in the hope of creating a grassroots form of local government grounded in the statute book.

But residents – in their new “autonomous” village state, you might call them “The Queensparkarati” – can breathe a sigh of relief. 

It was their project that gained national coverage in a Guardian editorial on Monday. 

The paper’s wise words called for a renaissance of parish councils, which should “flex more muscle and spread”.

Alas, our nearest eastern neighbours in the City of London are ineligible. Doesn’t the Square Mile have too many debates about whether ancient institutions can work in the modern world as it is?

Collar of money: pug dog box on its way to auction 

ALL manner of items go under the hammer at Bonhams, but what to make of a rare pug dog snuff box expected to fetch £12,000-18,000? 

The porcelain object, which will shortly go up for sale at the New Bond Street auction house, was a symbol of the secret “order of the pugs”, a masonic-style lodge for Roman Catholics in the 1740s. 

Many such pugs were created by Johann Joachim Kaendler, master model maker of the Meissen porcelain factory in Germany, but the one for sale at Bonhams is a much rarer example from the Schrezheim factory. 

It is believed that the Order of the Pugs was created as a fraternal group for Roman Catholics who had been forbidden to join the Masons by Pope Clement XII. 

Members were required to wear dog collars and had to scratch the door of the lodge to gain entrance. 

Initiates were said to have been blindfolded and led around a symbol-filled carpet nine times while the assembled “Pugs” barked loudly and yelled “Memento mori” (“remember you shall die”).