Word on the Street: Keeping it in the family, borrowing Bedlam, terse commands at the Telegraph, Boulton's 'no-comment'

It must have been space restrictions that prevented Janice Turner from filling in a few names in her entertaining feature in The Guardian last week about living next to her mother-in-law. In fact, the cast list would have made the feature even more entertaining. Hubby is Ben Preston, deputy editor of The Times. That means that "mother-in-law Jean"/"Granny" is Ben's mum and "Grandpa" is Peter Preston, Ben's dad and the former editor of The Guardian. So it's nice to know that Grandpa now has the time to attend his grandson's nursery assembly – "something he never had time for with his own children".

¿ Simon Hoggart used a familiar metaphor for Big Brother in his column in The Guardian on Saturday. The house, he wrote, was a modern day version of Bedlam, where tourists watched the freaks in the 18th century. Perhaps it was familiar because, days earlier, Felipe Fernandez-Armesto in the Evening Standard had written that the house (including Alex, below) was a modern day version of Bedlam. You know...Bedlam, the frantic place where wild-eyed Fleet Street journalists run around chaotically, taking words from each other's mouths.

¿ Are they having space problems at The Daily Telegraph? Or is the readership's command of English declining? The general reporters have been instructed not to use long words where short ones will do. Purchase instead of buy is henceforth forbidden. The reporters are also told to approach the back bench whenever they feel that a story they have submitted could be told in a briefer way. Presumably, only masochistic reporters eager to be asked "Then why on earth didn't you write it properly in the first place?" will do so.

¿ It was notable in the Sunday Times story about the alleged liaison between the former Blair aide Anji Hunter and Sky's political editor Adam Boulton that Boulton sent the paper his "no comment" in a text message. That may mark a new trend in journalism; but it is not one to be encouraged. The limited capacity of text messages means comments will never fill more than a paragraph.