Oh, Miss Moneypenny! Spies massage their figures
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Your support makes all the difference.Life at the top of the Civil Service can be tough. So it's reassuring to hear that the Cabinet Office is taking all the necessary measures to ensure its staff feel tip-top, ready to enforce Gordon's grand plans, and generally a little bit cuddled.
Pandora hears that Ed Miliband's Whitehall magnus held a "People Week" at the beginning of November, during which the nation's top pencil-counting mandarins were treated to cakes, self defence classes and massage tutorials from professional masseurs.
Members of the Intelligence and Security Secretariat – Whitehall's top spies – are said to have been particularly enthusiastic about the massage sessions. They were shown how to knead a colleague's shoulders and neck to relieve tension, and have been seen practising on one another. Jolly good!
"It was about building departmental spirit and healthy working," says a source. "There were gourmet cakes from French artisan patisseries and 'saboteur' team building exercises, where people in suits had to build a house and bridges inside the office."
Security personnel looked on unimpressed as the most demure and delicate secretaries fought one another in self defence classes outside Admiralty Arch.
"Then there was a special head massages session. The spooks liked that. There were a few sniggers about Miss Moneypenny and how it wouldn't happen to 007."
The earthy Cabinet Secretary Sir Augustine "Gus" O'Donnell – known to employees as "GOD", – declined a rub-down.
An amazing comeback for diva Grace?
I'm unsure where to start with this one, other than to say that the 80s oddball Grace Jones may be plotting a comeback.
A music industry source claims that Jones, 59, hopes dramatically to resurrect her career and has worked on material for an album, with the help of her 39-year-old on/off fella' Ivor Guest, the music-producing 4th Viscount Wimborne.
"It has been touted to at least one label," the source says, "and is meant to be a remarkable record, although I haven't heard it." We shall have to wait.
There are further rumours that the eccentric, Jamaican-born pop contralto will chronicle her life by writing her autobiography. From slapping Russell Harty and sleeping with Bond to being banned from Disney resorts for baring her breasts – such a tome would be some tale.
Her publicists were unavailable to comment.
A clear-cut snub for Collins
Time was when many a high-end jeweller would have bent over to see their stones adorn the porcelain skin of the actress Joan Collins.
On Wednesday evening, Pandora brushed shoulder pads with the former Dynasty star at a Stevie Wonder performance in Selfridge's, for the opening of the store's new Wonder Room.
We both stood admiring the Chanel No 5 necklace, as worn by Nicole Kidman in Baz Luhrmann's 2004 advert. A snip at just £416,000.
"Why don't you buy it discounted?" Joan suggested, before proceeding to try to haggle down the price on my behalf. Sadly, Chanel's British representative had other ideas. "It's £416,000 for you and it's £416,000 for Joan Collins," he scythed. "And that's that."
Jiggery pokery
After a life-threatening illness, Irish jigster Michael Flatley has skipped from his sick bed and is back on stage to appear on the US television show Dancing With The Stars. Flatley, 49, says he's worth £550m – so he will donate his fee to a 9/11 charity. He took 16 dancers, a chauffeur and his butler with him to LA. What does the butler do? "Prepares his costume, takes calls, does toothpaste – that sort of stuff."
* At Tuesday's "cabinet" meeting of frontbench Lib Dems, one obsequious MP congratulated stand-in leader Vince Cable on his performance over the House of Saud and Northern Rock, and rued his imminent departure from the crease. Cable replied: "I'm considering the Musharraf option."
The ring of truth
Congratulations to the impish Evan Davis, who yesterday resigned as BBC economics editor to become a presenter on Radio 4's Today. The appointment is an unnerving development for his new radio colleagues at BBC 6 Music, who at the weekend broke the corporation's omerta on Davis's exotic taste in jewellery. Punch-ups in the studio corridors?
The station aired an animated discussion of Davis's reported "Prince Albert" genital piercing (for the pure of heart and mind, it is a bolt or ring through the manhood) and the DJ also called Davis, 45, "Tripod". Pourquoi?
Davis has refused to confirm or deny the claims, commenting only that "Short of... pulling me to the ground and unzipping and undressing me, you are going to have to think of me as a man of mystery."
Would it be cruel to suggest ending this rumpus with a public denuding?
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