Pandora

WHO SAID "The harder I work, the luckier I get?" Not the couturier- turned-novelist Bella Pollen (pictured). In her latest, B-Movies, Blue Love, out next month, a frustrated screenwriter has her script rejected by 487 producers before finally accepting that success isn't everything. Life doesn't always imitate art, though. While dining with friends in New York, Pollen found herself sitting beside a Hollywood producer. During dinner she mentioned the phrase "urban myth". He asked what it meant. She told a tale of freak accidents and dead pets. "And he got obsessed," Pollen says. "He rang up and hassled me so much that I wrote half a page with my sister one afternoon and faxed it as a joke. Five minutes later we had a deal. He's commissioned me to write a screenplay." What's the money? "I'm not going to tell you, but it's an extremely nice figure." More than the advance for your novel, Arabella? "Oooh yes," she giggles. Kids, it can be done. Go to more dinner parties.

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ASTROLOGY AFICIONADOS already know that this week Saturn moves into Taurus, Tony Blair's birth sign, indicating that our Number One Guy is entering a seven-year cycle emphasising discipline, denial, patience and persistence. No change there, then. One group grabbing this Taurean bull by the horns is Mace Supermarkets. Later this week it will announce its plans to "reinvent the corner shop for the 21st century". Mace is targeting "food deserts" - the most brutal sink estates and deprived rural areas - to launch a bold regeneration programme reinvesting a percentage of the stores' take into local self-help projects. A shedload of blue chips is on board. Is this naive? Is this the third wave? Is it going to work? The project's prime mover, Toby Peters, has a sense of humour: the first store opens on April Fools' Day.

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THE TOBACCO industry and social responsibility go together like Nana Mouskouri and concrete-mixers. Yet lobbyists continue their charm offensive: Imperial Tobacco recently sponsored a Lords vs Commons go-kart race at West London's Daytona racetrack. But why doesn't the industry cater to its real constituency? Airline workers' most hellacious problem now is nicotine-deprived passengers' air rage. Instead of this creepy, pseudo- surreptitious sucking up to legislators, shouldn't the transnational nicotine pushers recycle some of their stonking profits into supplying consumers with flights on which they can smoke? The tobacco industry is always fuming about the right to choose, so why doesn't it walk its talk and offer smokers a no-kids carrier? Air B&H, you are cleared for take-off.

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THE CLOSEST that Pandora can get to wishing you all a very happy St David's Day in Welsh is Hapus Dydd Dewi Sant. Especially the euphonically named Dafydd Wigley. The Welsh Nationalist leader faces a dilemma today: should he show up at the St David's Hotel at lunch time, when the Cardiff waterfront property will officially become Wales's first five-star hotel? Embarrassingly, it's owned by Sir Rocco Forte - a staunch Tory.

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TALKING OF leaks, there'll be red faces on the red benches this morning. Oxfordshire county councillors have been severely ticked off by the education secretary, David Blunkett: in a letter to the council's leader, Blunkett raps naughty councillors over the knuckles for not spending its entire Standard Spending Assessment (SSA) on education investment, as "recommended" by the Government, and urges them to make the "tough decision" to follow the guidelines. But the budget that would have delivered the "recommended" spend was in fact voted down by Labour councillors. Must try harder with your homework in future, Minister.

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AS THE glossy posse leaves London for Milan, Kate Moss has had a spat with Versace. Moss wanted her new best friend, the rap diva Foxy Brown - they met on a shoot in the Florida Everglades - to hold her hand during the show on Versace's Milanese runway. But Donatella's people said no. More proof that even on Planet Fashion, millionaire models no longer call the shots.

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