Diary

SOWING THE SEEDS OF SUCCESS AT POLLS

Perhaps Manchester - keen to stage grand international events - should take a look at the Spanish way of doing these things. After the revelation that a company which won a pounds 10m building contract for last summer's Expo 92 in Seville had promised to pay around pounds 1m to Spain's ruling socialist party, we learn that the organising committee of last year's Olympics in Barcelona, COOB, has just announced that it will compensate the city for all the trees allegedly felled to provide the paper for 800 tons of leaflets, posters, press releases and sundry Olympic bumf dished out during the games. COOB has not said where the original pulp for the paper came from, and, curiously, residents do not recall seeing any trees disappear from along the city's Ramblas in the run-up to the games. Nevertheless, the committee has said it will give 30m pesetas (around pounds 180,000) to the city's parks department to buy 3,000 young trees for planting. It would be remiss of us not to point out that the head of the organising committee, Pasqual Maragall, is also the city's mayor. And may the young trees blossom fully in time for the next municipal elections, two years from now.

PAGE 27 of Thomson's 1992-3 central London phone directory is, we thought you should know, headed 'Bankrupt - Barclays'.

CLOCK IN FOR CRICKET

Say what you like about British Coal, but at least they've got some bright ideas for enabling miners to find themselves new work after they've all been thrown on the slag-heap. Like? Well, what sort of skilled worker does Britain really need at the moment? Cricketers, of course, and so at one of the mothballed pits, Cotgrave near Nottingham, instead of just having miners clock on in the morning and push off home, they have them play cricket. 'The lads are doing it because, if they don't, they're worried they won't get paid. They'd rather be cutting coal,' says the NUM's branch president, Alan Chewings. But Stewart Dickson, spokesman for British Coal, says the cricket matches are just an attempt to lighten days spent on safety courses: 'We're not forcing them to play cricket]'

NORMAN LAMONT was in a funny mood yesterday: posing in a sort of no-need-to-panic way for a pre-Budget photo call, he placed his hands on the famous battered briefcase and said: 'My father always used to say pudgy fingers are very artistic.' And what sort of artist might Lamont have been? (Answers to the Treasury, please, not here.)

UNKIND TO ANTONIA

The recording last Saturday night of BBC 2's Bore of the Year, or Bofty, Awards (which will be broadcast on 20 March, the night, quite coincidentally, before the Bafta awards) was marred by Antonia de Sancha's last-minute refusal to take part. She was to have picked up an award on behalf of a famous ex-friend of hers, a politician, but decided at the dinner before the show that Paul Merton, the presenter, was unlikely to be kind to her. So it was left to her agent, Max ('The man who made David Mellor famous') Clifford to do the job. Clifford bravely defended his client yesterday - 'Merton was hoping to turn her into Prat of the Year' - so we can hardly believe this report of a conversation at the after-show party. De Sancha: 'I'm just not a stand-up comedian]' Clifford: 'No. You're a silly cow.'

FOUND driving in a somewhat dazed state round London yesterday was the BBC driver who had picked up the American author Shere Hite after her appearance on Start The Week. He'd had the temerity to address her as 'my dear'. Ms Hite spent some time raising his consciousness.

WE FIND a picture of the Prime Minister looking less animated than usual in last week's Gulf News, the English-language daily of that region. Closer inspection reveals that the colour head-shot is in fact of a waxwork. A regular reader of the paper explains: 'A few months ago Gulf News featured a photograph of John Major with his Madame Tussaud's likeness. Since then they have used the photograph of the dummy.' Nicholas Coats, chief librarian, admits that that is a sensible explanation - but not any indication of the current temperature of Anglo-Arab relations.

A DAY LIKE THIS

9 March 1943 Harold Nicolson writes in his diary: 'I came up to the House of Commons for the election of the new Speaker. It was clear that the only possible candidate was Clifton Brown. His name was proposed and seconded, and when the proposer and seconder advanced towards him, he made defensive gestures, indicative of reluctance. Firmly they grasped him by the arm and propelled him, resisting slightly, to the Chair. He stood there, looking very small and thin, and said a few more words of thanks. For all these years I have been accustomed to see that wig, that throne framing the Carolean features of Fitzroy; saturnine as he was, and sallow, and tall. Clifton Brown is pink and gay and white. The effect is strange, it is like seeing the fireman's nephew, on holiday from Wolverhampton, putting on his uncle's helmet.'