Pandora

STEVE LEWIS-HAMILTON, the subject of a Carlton World documentary next month, is Pandora's kinda dude. Winners focuses on the former meat- market porter's current gig as a professional gambler. He has racked up pounds 60,000 a year in the last decade - and being a sporting guy, generously agreed to share his top tips. Lewis-Hamilton's nap is Deano's Beano (currently 4-1 for Cheltenham's Stayers' Hurdle on 18 March) "and the nag will take some beating". French Holly, in the Champion Hurdle two days before, is a good each-way shot at 7-4, he says, even at

7-1 to win, "especially if anything happens to the favourite, Istabraq". For the Grand National, Lewis-Hamilton likes Double Thriller: "It's got a big chance at 8-1; it's well handicapped." The man also suggests Arsenal as good value for the premiership at 7-2; Man Utd have two tough games coming up and Chelsea "don't have the staying distance. Arsenal's run- in doesn't look too tough and Man Utd have Euro commitments." Of course, investment values may go down as well as up...

u

... AS NO ONE knows better than the curiously tattooed newspaper heir Lachlan Murdoch. According to Maggie Alderson's piece in next month's Tatler, the thrustingly good-looking millionaire Aussie media scion proposed to the lingerie model Sarah O'Hare (below) the night before the Melbourne Cup. She accepted, and as the love-struck couple posed at the racecourse for the paparazzi, they noticed that a horse called Tie the Knot was among the big-race runners. Did it win? As if. Pandora trusts this is not an omen.

u

NOW THAT Stanley Kubrick has rolled his final credits, it seems timely to mention that his masterpiece, A Clockwork Orange, a film he personally quashed after its initial release, is legally available on video. Kubrickies should Eurostar it over to Paris and, unless you're lucky enough to have a Secam converter, watch it in black and white - but without dubbing or irritating subtitles. Well worth buying popcorn for.

u

THE US government has urged research labs to pioneer "more sophisticated systems" to protect Salt Lake City's 2002 Winter Olympics from rogue chemical and biological agents. Detectors currently fill a laboratory-sized room; the aim is to miniaturise them into hand-held units for cops and fire- fighters. Very laudable, but shouldn't the technology be used to detect rogue chemical and biological agents in some of the competitors?

u

MARTIN BELL may have faced snipers in Bosnia and Christine Hamilton on Knutsford Heath, but the white-suited one's sternest test has materialised from an unexpected quarter. The graphologist Alan Conway amazed listeners to Spectrum, a battling radio station in the South-east, with his candid character analysis of Parliament's only Independent MP. Conway says Bell's writing suggests he's arrogant, dogmatic and prone to low self-esteem. Bell diplomatically agreed with most of the analysis, but took exception to "arrogant". "I don't think I'm arrogant. I don't go round attacking other parties." Strike arrogant, insert naive?

u

CARS SLOWED to a crawl on Chelsea's Royal Avenue this week as drivers rubber-necked a palatial white house whose windows were filled with glitterati as the walls shook from rock'n'roll. It was Richard and Ruth Rogers' incendiary thrash to celebrate the 10-year rapture of Nigella Lawson (media goddess and best-selling cookery author) and the broadcaster and writer John Diamond. Their friends, an eclectic bunch that includes Alastair Campbell, Ruby Wax, Ian Hislop, Harold Pinter and both Mrs Martin Amises watched spellbound as Diamond, who's had throat surgery, used an overhead projector to write his speech on Lord Rogers' vast living-room wall - the shadow of his hand moving biblically across the plaster. At Diamond's request, dancing erupted: the highlight of the evening was Home Secretary Jack "Have-A-Go" Straw cutting a rug with Lady Rogers (of River Cafe fame) to the strains of The Cars' "My Best Friend's Girl". Jack the Biscuit - he can frisk it.

Contact Pandora by e-mail on pandora@ independent.co.uk