Royally blessed with thickness of skin and intellect

PRINCE Andra, one hears through the grapevine, has usurped his big sister, Princess Annie, as the royal we most love to hate. On a trip to the US to persuade the Yanks to buy British tat, Andra said that Bushy and his chums should have listened to him and Bony Prince Charlie before invading Iraq. Not surprisingly, this went down like a burger served sans fries, leaving Andra to comment: "You have to take the bashes with the good bits, and I've got a thick skin." And, one may add, a lot of other thickness besides. Quite why a tube such as him should be representing Britain at all is a question I will leave to greater minds.

One commentator, Alexander Chancellor, says Prince Andra is a "halfwit". Which reminds me irrationally of the occasion when Harold Ross, editor of the New Yorker, was approached by a cartoonist aggrieved because his doodles were spurned while James Thurber's were not. "Why," he whined, "do you reject drawings of mine, and print stuff by that fifth-rate artist Thurber?" "Third-rate," corrected Ross, ever loyal to his favourites.

The highlights of her leadership

TEUCHTER Labour had a pow-wow on Friday, the upshot being that Sister Wendy must remain indefinitely in the convent. Ach weel. Last weekend she gave an interview to What a Hoot on Sunday! because, unlike this throbbing organ, it never spoils her breakfast. "As she talks," we learned, "her words paint deft little cameos." Oh, I say: is that a deft little cameo I see before me? She is, moreover, "a woman, a leader and a mother". Jings! Whaur's yer Shirley Conran noo?

There was much more in a similar varicose vein and an awful lot of sisterly twittering about rearing weans. "I have a husband who has gone part-time to bring up my children," babbled Sister Wendy. "I pay for a nanny for 40 hours a week." Why, one wonders, need she do that when she's got a part-time husband? "I have help to get my house cleaned and now I have to get help at the weekend so I can deal with the Saturday papers." Tell me about it, dear.

"And you have to look the part as well, goddammit! I never had my hair highlighted in my life before." Eneuch! Eneuch goddammit! The buzz down Holyrude way is that she has lost the confidence of Irn Broon. On top of which a nonentity Labour EmPee called David Cairns says the Sister Wendy Commission set up to consider giving the peedie parliament additional powers is a no-go. What Sister Wendy should say to Mr No-go is unrepeatable in a national paper that prides itself on being nice to whoever. The truth is that no matter who runs Labour in Scotland, she or he has an impossible job as long as Mr Broon keeps sticking his oar in. If Sister Wendy and her chums want to make any progress, they must tell him to shut up or put a towel over their heids.

The shrine of Miss Jean Brodie

TO the Old Edinburgh Club, which is 100 this year. The subject of my talk was Muriel Spark, my much-lamented friend. A member of the audience mentioned that, on discovering that he lived in the same tenement which had once housed Christina Kay, on whom Mrs Spark modelled Miss Jean Brodie, he tried to find out if the association would enhance the value of his abode. How very Edinburgh! I said he'd probably be better advised to install a new kitchen.

I wonder what Mrs Spark would make of the latest ejaculation from Fay Weldon, formerly of St Andrews University, whose greatest claim to fame is the slogan: Go to work on an egg! Ms Weldon thinks it might not be a bad idea to "effectively" sterilise girls between the ages of 12 and 17 by what's known as "long-term contraception". Her fear is that "we are now in a time when sex is mere recreational pleasure to thousands of young women". This wouldn't perchance be the same Fay Weldon who, while at St Andrews, was renowned for enjoying more than her fair share of "mere recreational pleasure"?

But I digress. When Mrs Spark edited the Poetry Review in the late 1940s she fell foul of Dr Marie Stopes, famed for her expertise in birth control if not her taste in poetry. "I used to think it a pity," wrote Mrs Spark, "that her mother rather than she had not thought of birth control."

Your turn again, Livingstone?

WHEN I despair of the numpties running things hereabouts I console myself by remembering how much worse they are in the Deep South. Take London, for example, where there is to be an election for mayor in May. The present incumbent is Ken Livingstone, about whom one finds it difficult to be civil.

In a recent television documentary, it was suggested that he employs political cronies paid for out of the public purse who, whenever they clock off, go into campaigning mode. Until then, says Ken, they toil objectively on behalf of the citizens of the metropolis. And Ringo could drum. Mr Ken's main opponent is Boris Johnson, EmPee for Henley, who has a brain but no sense. Though a clown, Mr Boris is said to be neck-and-neck in the polls with Mr Livingstone. Recently, he named his top five political heroes, including John Wilkes, a serial libeller, obscene essayist, member of the Sublime Society of the Beef-Steaks, attender of orgies and, albeit briefly, mayor of London. Remind you of anyone?

Then there is Brian Paddick, the happily gay former policeman who is the LibDumbs' hope. Mr Paddick has proposed "women-friendly" carriages on the underground, just like they do in India and Japan, where women can smother their faces in make-up and discuss the latest selections by Richard and Judy without fear of being groped by naked civil servants. Not a word of this has been made up.

Sepp closes door on Scudamore

MY dear friend Richard Scudamore, chief exec of the Premier League, who was a big cheese at the Hootsmon when I was a mere sliver of Dairylea, has caused a ruckus by suggesting that English clubs could play an extra game every season abroad. "Standing still," he says, inaccurately, "is not an option".

Rarely has one seen so much shit hit the fan over so little. Mr Scudamore, whose job is to make as much money as possible for the owners of Man U, Chelsea and the like, has been attacked from every side, not least by Sepp Blatter, president of Fifa, who doesn't like anyone muckin' about in his byre. Mr Blatter senses that Mr Scudamore's suggestion is all to do with making money and nothing to do with expanding the audience for the beautiful game. And, of course, he's right. But making money is what football is all about now, from the clubs down to the players, some of whom are so useless they couldn't give you a good game of Subbuteo.

What I find alarming is that while Mr Scudamore's plan includes those parts of the planet which used to be called The Third World, it seems not to include Up Here. What, my old chum, have we done to deserve this?

How to succeed at cookery publishing

TRY to contain your excitement: Delia Humble-Pie has a new cookbook about to come out the oven. The Daily Torygraph told me so on its front page - a brilliant coup for Ms Humble-Pie's publisher's PR department. Her new book is called How To Cheat At Cooking, in which she tells you, for just £20, (£8 at SADA) how to take a tin of beans, empty them into a pot, heat them till, ahem, they're hot, and pour them over two slices of buttered toast, thus keeping scabies at bay. Despite the best efforts of Ms Humble-Pie, Jamie Pizza-Topping and Nigella Jellied-Eels, we still eat worse than your average caveman. Cooks, meanwhile, are celebrated incontinently, despite the fact that the last two restaurants in which I ate served food that would have been a disgrace to Greggs. Only the other night on TV I watched as a woman of a certain age and some intelligence said that reaching the quarter-finals of Masterchef was the best thing that had ever happened to her. She cannot be a Hearts sympathiser.

And finally ...

LINDA Fabydoo, meenister for almost everything, is going to New Lanark this week to unveil a plaque to commemorate the opening of a leisure club at the village's Mill Hotel. Ah, the perks of high office! To mark this great event, my dear and mischievous friend, Arthur Bell, erstwhile chairman of the Tory Reform Group - ho hum! - and a New Lanark mover and shaker wrote a speech in Scots, a language Ms Fabydoo is committed to protect, and sent it by email to Hysterical Scotland for vetting. Alas, it bounced back because it contained "inappropriate language".

Michty me!