Introducing the cheesesteak to former British prime minister Tony Blair.
"He loved them," said Nutter, who delivered cheesesteaks to Blair at the Four Seasons Hotel and ended up lunching with him. "He pretty well demolished his pretty quickly, thought it was a fantastic culinary delight."
To be fair, this praise came from a man whose country invented dishes with names like "toad in the hole" and "spotted dick."
Blair, who was in town to give a speech to a Catholic organization, ate a sandwich from Jim's Steaks. The mayor opted for a chicken cheesesteak from City View Pizza and Grill.
Nutter said that they talked about Blair's work as a United Nations envoy to the Middle East, as well as his decade serving as prime minister, which ended in 2007.
"We had a good little laugh about prime minister's questions," Nutter said, referring to the weekly session when members of Parliament directly question the PM.
Nutter press aide Luke Butler, a Brit who worked on one of Blair's campaigns, set up the cheesesteak meeting.
Like father, like son in court?
David Wilson wants everyone to know that his dad, Common Pleas Judge Willis Berry Jr., is a good guy. And by everyone, PhillyClout means the 3,420 e-mails Wilson sent this week, circulating a 658-word missive with 38 points of praise about the judge.
Berry this week objected to a June 25 ruling by the state Court of Judicial Discipline that he illegally used his office to run a real- estate business.
The e-mail, sent from Wilson's court account - he is paid $37,327 per year as his father's judicial secretary - went to every court employee and a bunch of public e-mail lists. That caught the eye of the First Judicial District Court's administrator, David Lawrence.
"I have IT people looking at it," said Lawrence, who considers it a violation of the district's e-mail policy. "It shouldn't happen."
So the judge's son used the court's resources to defend his dad, who is accused of abusing the court's resources?
"I'm sorry, I would really like to answer that," Wilson said when we called. "It's all in the letter. There's nothing more to say."
Wilson's e-mail calls Berry a loner who loves watching movies and working on buildings. Berry, his son notes, fashions his own prosthetics worn in a glove in place of fingers he cut off in construction.
"Funny . . . He always said working on the buildings kept him out of trouble," Wilson wrote. (See related story on Page 20.)
Council's summer recess
It's only week two of our summer-long CouncilWatch - an effort to find out how the 17 Council members are spending their three-month summer recess - and already we're feeling the heat.
Yesterday, U.S. Rep. Bob Brady stopped by PhillyClout world headquarters to check that we were working. (We were.)
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