Her Majesty's a pretty nice girl....
As a Republican and an avowed hater of men who go anywhere near a bottle of hair dye, I suppose I could have been nasty and written a title like "McCartney the Royal Toady". But that would have been uncalled for. Paul McCartney, when all's said and dyed, has, it seems, retained a wide-eyed innocence from his childhood. A laudatory essay on the Queen which he wrote when he was 10 years old has been unearthed.It has interesting echoes with a tiny track on Abbey Road. Abbey Road has got a few interesting, very shor

EXCLUSIVE: David Cameron is off gorgonzola and Rioja - ergo he is unfit for office
Well if you track back to the original story about Brown's health it seems to be based on a "long list of foods" which he is supposedly not meant to be served. Strangely, this "long list of foods" is so far, in the public domain, a short list of foods. In fact it is just two foods. "Cheese and chianti".(The story also demands to know where Brown "runs daily" as if to suggest that such an assertion by his spokesperson is made up. Would suggesting that he runs in a private gym be terribly earth-shattering? A treadmill in the Number 11 flat? He doesn't need to go out in Hyde Park to actually run, stupid.)

Is this a scam?
Yesterday I was walking along the street and a rather dodgy looking man walked up to some teenagers and, holding out his mobile phone, said, in tones of some desperation, "Lasses and lad, could you phone this number please?" One of the teenagers duly rang the number he gave them.My first thought was that it would be insane for anyone to respond to the man's request because he would then have your number on his phone and could phone you whenever he likes.But quite frankly, I was baffled by the incident. What bona fide reason would the man have for asking someone to phone his mobile? It is utterly perplexing. Any ideas from my rea

Leopard changes spots: Mail venerates an alleged illegal immigrant
Wonders never cease.I hesitate to say Baroness Scotland should resign. What do they think in Scotland? - I wonder. I have enormous admiration for the lady.However. The Mail says that she allegedly did not ask her Tongan employee to show her passport during a ten minute employment interview. As Attorney-General, you would have thought Baroness Scotland would have more sense.However, reading the Mail story (someone has to, I suppose) one wonders whether the housekeeper is the villain of the piece. She'd been alle

Could Brown snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?
No, actually. But seeing his determined face and his "I do not roll over" statement on the Beeb, one wonders if he might just do a John Major "soapbox" trick and get people's admiration for staying power. You never know, he could just snatch twenty seats for Labour at the next election.At least, from his Beeb photo, he seems to have finally realised that it is a mistake for him to try to "smile". For that we can all be grateful, whatever our political persuasion.