Everyone's talking about a film called The Artist. I believe that wasn't its original title. It was formerly known as Prince.
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Louise Mensch says the reason she's unlikely to get into the cabinet is because she's got young children. In the past she thought it may because she was too attractive.
Following the same logic, I never became a centre forward for Spurs because my hair was too curly, I never married Ann-Margret because I was left handed and the reason I'm not Prime Minister is because I don't like peas. Well, it makes as much sense.
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Last week John Humphrys asked David Cameron who he would have playing him in a film about his life. Legitimate question in the light of the Thatcher film. Today he asked Ed Miliband, indirectly perhaps, if he was too ugly to be Prime Minister. Those bloody left wing BBC types, eh?
And would he have asked a woman the same question?
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Good old Kelvin. My former boss illuminated the Leveson inquiry not just with a general attitude of 'so what' about ethics, getting it right and so on, but with a very funny impression of John Major.
Just for the record. If you got it wrong under Kelvin he bollocked you. If you didn't try in the first place he bollocked you more.
But about the Major incident when the then-PM rang Kelvin after pulling out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism.
I remember this story well. I edited The Sun's City page that day while the drama unfolded in the Square Mile. It was both exciting and terrifying and knackering. I wasn't even the regular City editor, I was just covering. Bloody typical.
Every five minutes the editor or the news editor or some bearded twat from features would come in and ask what was going on and I'd have to tap dance my way out of it, waffling about George Soros and betting against the pound and so on. Then they'd leave the room and I'd ring a mate in the City and ask him to explain to me what was going on so I could explain it to the boss.
The worse aspect was the constant changing of interest rates. I remember them going up from 10 to 12 then 15 (though I think that was a promise never kept) and back down to 12.
Trouble was, every time they changed, the paper wanted a table on what this meant for people's mortgages.
So when they went from, say, eight to 10 per cent, I'd have to ring the Halifax and ask them to do me up a table of repayments on £30,000, £50,000, £80,000, £100,000 mortgages and what they'd gone from and to.
There was no email in those days. All the tables had to be faxed to me and I had to type them on to the screen in between monitoring the collapse of the pound, the share prices and phone calls from various readers and reporters, including the political editor, Trevor Kavanagh who - out of everyone - was the most relaxed and gentlemanly of all I dealt with that day. He helped calm me down too, I recall. The guy's a mensch, and not in the Louise sense.
Anyway, no sooner had I finished one mortgage table, the interest rate changed and I'd have to go through the whole process again. It was one of the most exhausting days of my working life. And I didn't even have Twitter, Google or, in fact, the internet at all, to help me out. Blimey.
It was incredibly hectic but looking back, it was at a time when mass market tabloids would clear the desks for a decent political story. Some serious issues may have been simplified but they were dealt with. Even celebrity stories in those pre-Big Brother days would take second place to topics that really affected the kind of aspirational working class readership of a red top tabloid.
At the end of this tumultous day, those of use who had been involved were gathered by the newsdesk when Kelvin came out of his office to say that John Major had rang. Doing the impression again, he told how Major had asked what the paper's view on the day was.
My recollection differs slightly from Kelvin at the Leveson hearing in that he told us: "I told him 'John, I've got two buckets of shit on my desk and I'm going to pour both of them all over you."
We laughed, a bit nervously, and asked Kelvin 'what did Major say?'
Kelvin impersonated him again and said: "Oh, er, ho ho, very, er good Kelvin, I'll look out for that."
It was around this period that I think I really got to see what The Sun was about. Having been slavishly Tory under Thatch, it was now doing a better job of being anti-Conservative than the Labour-supporting Mirror.
It wasn't altruistic, it was commercial.
And being The Sun, it was probably more effective.
The logic was that while Sun readers were losing their jobs and having their homes repossessed, the paper they read could not simply gloss over it because they were, in general, a Tory paper.
They had to support their readers more than they could support a useless government who continued to shoot itself in the foot.
The Sun had supported Major in 1992 but Kinnock was in opposition so, for them, it was a no brainer. Of course, come the next election in 1997, The Sun had switched to Blair.
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I wasn't entirely sure who or what Georgia Salpa is when I noticed her appearance in the Celebrity Big Brother house. I'm indebted to the Daily Mail online, who seem obsessed with this Richard Desmond show for explaining.
Apparently she is a 'body confident Kim Kardashian doppelganger' they say.
Now, if they could just tell me, again, who Kim Kardashian is, we'll all be a lot better informed.
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Poor old Anthony Worrall Thompson. He was caught stealing onions and bread from Tesco. And that was just for starters. The wine and cheese was for dessert.
Heard an interesting tale about AWT and New Covent Garden where he bought food for his restaurants, and came across some crates of bananas that he accidentally thought belonged to him.
I'm sure it was an innocent mistake. Night all...Solly
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