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.)

"I got no complaints because the two City Hall snoopers are here," Brady said.

Glad that's cleared up.

We visited all the Council offices again yesterday, both to see who was in the office and to provide members with an opportunity to tell us what they're working on. Despite the looming holiday weekend, PhillyClout found many Council members plugging away in City Hall.

Curtis Jones Jr., Jannie Blackwell, Jim Kenney, Anna Verna, Bill Green, Bill Greenlee and Brian O'Neill were all in the building.

"I don't begrudge anybody who takes vacation, but I don't," said Blackwell, who was meeting with a staffer from the Netter Center for Community Partnerships at the University of Pennsylvania when we stopped by.

Council members W. Wilson Goode, Marian Tasco and Frank Rizzo checked in by e-mail or phone to tell us what they were up to. Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown was away on a staff retreat. And a big PhillyClout thank-you goes to Councilwoman Donna Reed Miller, who managed to call us even though she was laid up yesterday with a broken toe.

Jack Kelley, Maria Quinones-Sanchez, Joan Krajewski, Darrell Clarke and Frank DiCicco were not in when we stopped by.

For details on what the members are working on, check www.phillyclout.com.

Resignation watch

The latest staffer to depart Nutter's administration is Wadell Ridley Jr., executive director of the Mayors Office for Community Service. Ridley, who previously worked as an aide for Nutter in Council, left his $91,361-per-year post last week after 18 months on the job.

Labor drama at Del Frisco's

A political fundraiser for D.A. candidate Seth Williams was moved from Del Frisco's Steakhouse to the nearby Union League last week because of picketing by construction workers and subcontractors, angry over hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid construction bills.

The subcontractors, supported by the Building and Construction Trades Council, say they had crews working around the clock last year to get the Chestnut Street restaurant done in time for the Christmas season, and it should have been obvious to the high-end chain that overtime would push the project way over its $8 million budget.

"Once the doors opened, the payments stopped," complained Kevin Gillespie, of Delaware Valley Remediation. "A lot of people have maxed out on their credit lines. This could put as many as 15 [subcontractors] out of business."

But Shang Skipper, the restaurant's general manager, told PhillyClout that its construction manager, Lorient Construction, of suburban Chicago, claimed that the project was essentially on budget - right up to the moment that Lorient went out of business, still owing huge amounts to local contractors.

"It's an ugly mess for everyone involved," Skipper said yesterday. "I feel bad for the subs, I really do. But we're all victims in this."

Quotable

"We're not expecting people to walk around with rolls of quarters in their pockets."- Deputy Mayor for Transportation and Utilities Rina Cutler on why the city is putting off a $3 per hour charge at parking meters. *

Staff writer Bob Warner contributed to this report.

Have tips or suggestions? Call Chris Brennan at 215-854-5973 or Catherine Lucey at 215-854-4712. Or e-mail

phillyclout@phillynews.com.

Check out the Clout blog at:

www.phillyclout.com.