A novel route to Howard's end

John Mortimer must learn to be a little less Rumpole-ish. Creevey hears that on the Michael Parkinson show on Radio 2, he claimed to be president of the Penal League for Howard Reform. Yes, that's the right way round. It's a new society dedicated to the political downfall of the Home Secretary.

Richard Heller, the columnist and Mastermind runner-up, rings the column in high dudgeon to say that Mortimer may be president of the Howard League for Penal Reform, but not of its palindromic rival. "We haven't got a president," he snorts. "We haven't even made up the rules, but I can assure you that when we do there will be maximum opportunity for bribery and corruption."

That sounds about right for a Home Secretary who has a record as long as your arm for being turned over in the courts. Adherents to the Howard's End Society, as it is also known, include Auberon Waugh, Alexei Sayle and Alex Carlile MP QC, who has presumably given up hope of becoming a judge. Jack Straw is not allowed to join - just in case, you understand.

When not lounging about in fashionable Soho eateries, they seem to be jolly good haters, describing Howard as "Mr Pecksniff on Ecstasy". Heller splutters: "Willie Whitelaw offered to resign when an intruder broke into the Queen's bedroom. If the same thing happened today, Michael Howard would sack the Queen." Steady on.

n THAT black eye, first revealed here last week. When they stopped denying that Tony Blair had a shiner (the left one, of course) his spin doctors explained that the Leader had hit himself with a tennis racket. Oh yes? Maybe he was playing singles with his excitable cash-cow friend, Michael Levy, and got in the way of money being thrown at the problem.

BORIS "the Enforcer" Johnson, the brilliant, but faintly barmy political commentator for the Daily Telegraph, is learning Welsh. What's this? The Torygraph is going Plaid Cymru?

No such luck, I'm afraid. Boris is contesting Clwyd South in the Conservative interest at the general election, and has evidently learned the lesson of John Redwood, the former Welsh Secretary who was filmed struck-dumb when the principality's national anthem was played.

Nothing dumb about Bozza. Eton, Balliol and President of the Oxford Union, don't you know. But he must realise that even if he learns Welsh in five months, he will never understand the playback on the doorstep. Imagine the scene: our blond, blue-eyed charmer addresses the voter. "Fi ydy'r ymgeisydd Ceidwadol i'r etholaeth yma - gai ddibynu ar eich pleidlais? (I am the Con- servative candidate for this constituency, can I count on your vote?) She will doubtless reply: "Cer o'm golwg, dyn bach diflas!" Find that in your phrase book, Boris. Should you not be able, Creevey will enlighten you next week.

n CREEVEY is now able to help Lord Denis Healey over the stile of his failing memory. As you will no doubt recall, the Grand Old Duke of Yorkshire could only remember the first two lines of the Independent Labour Party anthem of his youth.

Magy Higgs of Moseley kindly writes to say that her socialist father used to sing the song in his bath, and it goes like this :

"The Grand old ILP

A most anaemic party

To keep alive you see

We turn from all things arty

Divide and rule's our game

But we reverse the habits

Each year reform our name

And reproduce like rabbits..."

Well, that should clear up the mystery. Except that Baron Riddlesden's version reads "amoebic" for "anaemic", and that would fit in with the sense better - the theme being that the Left is endlessly fissiparous. Just something to get the brain cells working after the Christmas party.

AND now to this week's nominations for the Malvolio Medal for The Most Self-Important MP. There have been suggestions that Dr Jack Cunningham (Philistine, East), Shadow Minister for Fun, must qualify on the grounds that he pretends to like opera.

Interesting, but not quite what the column has in mind. We all know that oour Jackie would sooner be out flyfishing or bird-watching, though his insistence on being called Doctor, when he is a PhD in some obscure chemical science, might make him eligible.

But a better candidate has emerged. Step forward Jeremy Ashdown, aka Paddy, leader of the Liberal Democrats. Two weeks ago, he got away with accusing the Tories of "lying" in the Commons. Last week, he went unpunished for calling the Government "crap". Not for nothing does a low groan creep round the House when he draws his military frame to attention during Prime Minister's Questions.

The clincher is a remark he made to Michael English, a man who once bored for Nottingham West, and now treats the whole world as his constituency. Over a drink in their local in Kennington, sarf London, the former member of the SBS (the Special Bonking Squadron, one assumes) confided: "I hate the House of Commons."

Oh dear. Doesn't he want to be Prime Minister? What he really means is that he prefers to be out and about, pounding the pavements, meeting the voters. Unlike Parliament, they might take him seriously. So, this week's crossed garters go to Paddy Ashdown. Wear them with pride!

n STEPHEN Byers, shadow Employment minister, he of the Blackpool fish restaurant leak, now claims he can run faster than Sebastian Coe. That is the only way his comment about the Hon Member for Falmouth and Camborne can be understood. Byers (Wallsend, Bash the Unions Party) says that Coe is grumbling that eight minutes is not long enough to get from his third- floor office at 7 Millbank to the division lobby - a matter of a few hundred yards. Byers can manage the distance in time, and he is on the sixth floor.

It is perfectly possible that Byers, who is so ambitious that he has shaved off his moustache, can outpace Coe. What Creevey wants to know is: who's chasing him?