….why isn’t the Home Office doing anything about Razorlight? Leave it to the Independent’s Ben Russell to ignore this burning question.
The Liberal Democrat MP Lembit Opik (above) faces fresh embarrassment over his relationship with the Cheeky Girl singer Gabriela Irimia after it emerged that he helped her campaign to avoid deportation.
The Liberal Democrat frontbencher spoke to the Immigration minister, Liam Byrne, and asked a Labour MP to help the 24-year-old avoid being returned to her native Romania.
His intervention is revealed just days after Mr Opik’s former fiancée, the ITV weather presenter Sian Lloyd, publicly broke off their six-year relationship citing his affair with the singer.
The Cheeky Girls, Gabriela Irimia and her twin sister Monica, have worked in Britain since 2001, but were reported to have been threatened with deportation in August. The duo have recorded a series of singles, including the hit “Cheeky Song (Touch My Bum)”; “Hooray Hooray (It’s a Cheeky Holiday)”; “Take Your Shoes Off” and “Have a Cheeky Christmas”.
Mr Opik, the party’s Northern Ireland spokesman, was a staunch supporter of the party’s former leader, Charles Kennedy, and was the only public backer of Mark Oaten’s abortive leadership campaign.
Senior Liberal Democrats confirmed yesterday that Mr Opik, 41, who met Gabriela at Channel Five’s All-Star Talent Show two months ago, had intervened in the case but said he had “acted with total propriety”. A party spokesman said: “He passed on information about their immigration status to the MP who covers their constituency, Michael J Foster.