Neutral" charity gives Liberal Democrat MP £36,000 Mandrake hears that the supposedly politically neutral charity founded by the Rowntree's confectioner has given Julian Huppert, the Lib Dem MP, a staggering £36,000 in cash. Dangerous liaison Christopher Hampton, the Oscar-winning screenwriter of Dangerous Liaisons and Atonement, was among the guests at a party at the Rib Room restaurant at the Jumeirah Carlton Tower hotel in Knightsbridge. "I remember having lunch with Andrew Lloyd Webber here once," Hampton tells me. He asked me to write The Phantom of the Opera with him. To my eternal cost, I said 'no."" The musical is still running in the West End after 28 years and is estimated to have made more than £3.57billion around the world.