Giggling at Gordon? Surely that’s the last Straw

It’s tough enough being Gordon Brown without Cabinet colleagues sniggering behind their hands. Vince Cable, who brought the House down observing the Prime Minister’s “remarkable transformation from Stalin to Mr Bean”, has revealed that “several members of the Cabinet came up afterwards and said they’d rather enjoyed the joke”.

Was Jack Straw, perhaps, among this disloyal group? “It was a, you know, a good moment for er, Vince Cable,” ventures a halting Straw, with an expression that you will have to watch next Monday’s Dispatches on Channel 4 on the fall of Brown to decipher fully. Try again, Jack: “It was a, it was a very good line, um.”

Come now, let’s have some truth and honesty from the Justice Secretary. Did he crease up behind the PM and beg his colleagues not to send him corpsing with laughter ? “Er no, I’ve got used to, to er being um er not, not showing my emotions at Prime Minister’s Questions.”

So they gallantly waited until Gordon’s ordeal was over before swopping high-fives in the tearoom. Well, this really isn’t going to do the Prime Minister’s paranoia any good.

Not every woman is delighted to see José Mourinho back in the dugout. “I find him too arrogant,” Nancy Dell’Olio, who knows all about difficult football managers, tells us at a party for the leading literary agent Ali Gunn. Sven-Göran Eriksson’s former squeeze, a hot contender to be People’s first footie analyst, is outraged at the sacking of her fellow Italian Roberto Mancini by Inter Milan. Dell’Olio is working to bring peace to the Middle East with her Truce International campaign. Mourinho also visited Israel as a special peace envoy. Let’s hope that they can settle their differences on the pitch.

Another job for Boris Johnson, who has been appointed Steward and Bailiff of the Manor of Northstead, the office of profit under the Crown which prevents the holder remaining an MP. The Mayor of London succeeds Peter Mandelson and can enjoy the post’s privileges - free train rides and trips to the manor’s boating lake - courtesy of Scarborough Borough Council. No booze allowed though, Boris.

Sir Michael Parkinson, with his wife Mary, received his knighthood regalia from the Queen. “It’ll be on eBay tonight”, Sir Parky joked. We’ll be checking . . .

Postscript

— Were Jude Law and Sir Ian McKellen squirming with embarrassment at a recent Children & the Arts dinner at Buckingham Palace as the foundation president , the Prince of Wales, gave his speech? “I thank Mama for giving me the run of the place. When the cat’s away, the mice will play,” said HRH, clearly forgetting he wasn’t still 12 and at boarding school.

— Uma Thurman tells Vogue of her recent fasting ritual. “You know, the old cayenne-pepper, lemon-and-maple-syrup flush-the-pipes-out thing.” Ah yes, that old chestnut.

— “I don't listen to music,” says The Stranglers ex-frontman Hugh Cornwell to The Record Collector. Blasphemy, surely?

Got a story to tell? people@thetimes.co.uk

Times recommends

• Are eldest children really a cut above?
• Peaches Geldof: censored
• Top 10 style-setting films of all time