Pandora

WILL HUTTON as DG of the BBC? Pandora thinks not. Hutton's 1995 book The State We're In advocated adopting Germany's model to create a wirtschaftswunder (Ger: economic miracle) on these shores. The German economy promptly cratered. His stewardship of The Observer was an equal success: circulation plunged, talent evaporated and he was kicked upstairs as editor-in-chief (on a stipend of pounds 145,000 pa, last time we looked) leaving Roger Alton to clear up the mess. Reality check: the guy White City wants to stop at all costs is Greg Dyke because the BBC board would prefer a cosy inside appointment. The word is that Hutton (and sometime Punch editor-in-chief Andrew Neil) have been set up as decoys to draw fire from the machiavellian machinations of insiders like Tony Hall and Alan Yentob.

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SMASH HIT or trash it? Enquiring minds wonder: if we could save just 10 items from the 20th century, what should they be?

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HIGH SOCIETY? Glossy magazine Harpers & Queen contends in its new issue that a "Noika" is supposedly Poshopolis lingo for a line of coke: "short and fat not long and thin," as its Barometer page helpfully explains. This indicates a wider point. First Master Straw, then Tara PT (pictured) and now Tom Parker Bowles - significant because of his close relationship to a future heir to the throne. Exposure of celebrities' illicit drug use is becoming so frequent that surely the public will soon begin to find it tiresome. Given that Parker Bowles was educated at Slough Comp (Eton) and comes from a troubled family background, surely it can't surprise anyone that he dabbles with Class-A narcotics?

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ANOTHER STUPID American import without which we can all well do is The Bulge. It's a large polypropylene penis-shaped lump that guys with good reason to be shy stuff down their pants, presumably to drive others concupiscent. Pandora's girlpals say: "But what happens when you unveil the real thing?" Big Hat, No Cattle.

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"TATTOOS ARE the ultimate compliment for a cartoonist. However, I have mixed feelings when the people showing me their tattoos have the characters' names misspelt" - Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, on the intelligence level of his illustrated fans.

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EURO CLUBS 1 Yanks 0. That's the only conclusion to be drawn from the current state of New York's night world. "The nightclub scene is really not very happening in New York right now," admits Frederick Lesort, owner of Vandam, the newest, and supposedly smartest boite in Manhattan. So the city that never sleeps is now officially the city that goes to bed early.

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TONY KAYE, the maverick director of American History X, continues his wild and wonderful ways. He recently spent more than pounds 5,000 on ads in Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, the film industry's trade books, to try and rebuild his bridges with the distribution company New Line. "Please come to London immediately," the ads, addressed to Michael DuLuca, New Line's president, read, "I want to discuss a big idea with you." Pandora can reveal what the big idea is - a drama based on a Busta Rhymes' rap about the entertainment industry's glorification of violence. Coincidentally, feuding LA street-gangs the Bloods and the Crips have both gone on the web. One curious omission from both sites: a current body count.

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SO THE UK Independence Party claim that leaving Europe will save "pounds 600 for every family in Britain". And at the bottom of their flyer is the obligatory begging box urging us to donate the sum of our choice to the party's fighting fund. pounds 600 perhaps? Don't all rush at once. Oh and as, if and when the UK adopts the single European currency will we have to replace the phrase "spending a penny" with "euronating"?

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MONEY TALKS (continues). Eagle-eyed reader Andy Linehan recalls that during the late Seventies South London scenesters called a fiver a "Harold" or a "Melvin". As in Bluenotes.

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