Diary

I rarely fall out with my friends, but recent events have brought about a free and frank exchange of views with two of the closest. The first rift occurred last Tuesday, when I finally got through to Krystel. I had been having a tough time on the Princess Diana front, for in my west London village only Kuku, my newsagent, and Carol, my assistant, had shared my view of the Panorama experience. "Did you see the Princess Di interview?" I inquired eagerly. "Of course, wouldn't have missed it." I settled down in readiness for a feast of character assassination, at which Krystel is unrivalled. "I thought she was terrific," she added. I emitted a long, low wail. "You couldn't have been taken in. Not you, of all people. And by a manipulative peerer-from-under-her-eyelashes who wants to be the Queen of Hearts." "Sorry," said Krystel. "But she was marvellous. And it serves Charles right."

So I called Darren and he provided balm, for he is a Carlist, too, and we dissected the performance so viciously that even Nicholas Soames might have thought we were being a little unfair. Darren shook his head over Krystel but we agreed that she had to be forgiven one major error of judgement. And then we proceeded to chat on other matters until he said apologetically, apropos the referendum that was about to be held in Ireland, that he had decided to vote "No" to divorce. So after the ensuing altercation, I had to ring Krystel to complain about Darren. I have changed the names to protect the guilty, but it gave me a lot of satisfaction to award them such undignified aliases.

Here is Tony Walton's narrative verse on the present state of the saga.

A very nice try

By Princess Di

Took the wind from the sails

Of the Prince of Wales.

When the programme was seen

Her Majesty the Queen

Said: "If she wants to make a crisis out of a drama

She'll have to do better than 'Panorama' "

(And although it always makes me sick

I think Charles should appear with Anne and Nick).

In Dublin at the end of the week, I was delighted by my friend James's reaction to Panorama. It reminded him, he explained, of the true story of the earnest young reporter from the Morning Post who in 1920 was dispatched from London to find out what the devil the Irish were at and why they were rebelling all over the place. Finally, he tracked down a senior Sinn Fein figure in Dublin. "What are you seeking?" he asked anxiously, pencil poised over notebook. His interlocutor paused, reflected and pronounced: "Revenge, Bejasus!"

The lamp-posts in Dublin are festooned with a wide variety of placards urging "Yes" or "No" votes on the citizenry. In response to various strong anti-divorce interventions by Catholic bishops and their blood-curdling warnings about the collapse of family life, the Socialist Workers' Party contribution features a large photograph of Eamonn Casey, sometime Bishop of Galway, who fled the country when it was revealed that he had a son of 18 and had used diocesan funds to pay hush money. Beside him is the legend: "Let the bishops look after their own families. Vote for change!"

Having been brought up in Dublin in the heyday of aggressive and authoritarian Catholicism (I was once denounced from a rural altar for demonstrating urban immodesty by wearing trousers), I never cease to be amazed and delighted by the sheer politeness of Church of England clergy. So I particularly loved the graciously worded question from Stuart Samuel, who is not only Rector of Hathern, Long Whatton & Diseworth with Belton and Osgathorpe, but also Rural Dean of Akeley East:

Dear Ms Edwards, can you state

Why you call your chosen Mate

the "tenant" of your affections?

Do you stress the transience,

Short-list, take up reference

and lease your predilections?

Michael Leapman, as befits a journalist rather than a man of the cloth, merely observes that the phrase makes him nauseous. And John Hawgood says if I don't want to use simple words like "lover" or "mate", I should launch a competition to find "a better circumlocution". I can't satisfy Michael or John, for my gentleman friend and I are creatures of habit and we're used to the term, but I can reassure Stuart that although initially the phrase indicated a certain caution, I long ago offered to change "tenant" to "freeholder". The tenant, however, says that there is no need to introduce such complications: he has a lease of 999 years and he reckons that'll see him out.

I had lunch last week with Andrew Boyd, friend as well as elf of this column, in the Lee Ho Fook in Gerrard Street, from which emerged three questions. Why did they serve dry sherry in a tumbler with ice and lemon? And why, when they told us they didn't have any coffee, did they offer ice-cream as an alternative? The third is for PG Wodehouse buffs. Is Andrew right in his suspicion that the restaurant is on the site of the Pelican Club, which flourished in the 1880s and 1890s and is much mentioned by Lord Emsworth's brother, the great Galahad Threepwood? And what's more, Andrew wants to know if anyone has ever reconstructed Gally's story about Sir Gregory Parsloe and the prawns, of which we know nothing except that it reduced Beach, the Blandings Castle butler, to hysterical laughter.

Musing about Wodehousery has just given me an inspiration. Princess Diana is Madeline ("The stars are God's daisy chain") Bassett .

Mike Bradshaw is in a harsh mood

Brian Mawhinney ain't

Convincing wearing paint,

Trying to put a gloss

On Tory dross.

And finally, Diana Wood, who was greatly impressed by your success in sorting out the Odgerses' little difficulty with a riddle, begs for help in discovering the first four lines of a limerick published in the Spectator some time in the Fifties. The last line was "And I bet you 'e 'as 'er by Jan!". Of course, if you don't know the answer, you might make it up.