Flat Earth: Strangely familiar? Well, strange . . .

THE chubby jowls. The shock of grey hair. The little eyes glistening with misanthropy. When Newt Gingrich, the next Speaker of the House of Representatives, came loping into view recently we couldn't at first think who he reminded us of. Then suddenly we saw it: of course - Slobodan Milosevich!

Admittedly they have different haircuts, one the brutalist Brezhnevite brush-back, the other a Bobbsey-Twin mop. But the similarities! Both are xenophobic nationalists with an urge to attack the weak and anyone who is ''other''. Slobodan fanned the flames of war in the Balkans. Newt promises hand-to-hand fighting in Congress. What, one wonders, will happen when these two turn their attention to each other?

(Photographs omitted)