Pandora

MADONNA'S NEW best friend? Rupert Everett. The duo (pictured) tipped up together on the ferry to Tina Brown's launch party for Talk magazine at Liberty Island this week. Demi Moore, Lauren Bacall, Paul Newman, Quentin Tarantino, Natasha Richardson and Liam Neeson were among faces in the crowd commenting that it took a British-born media babe to get America's triple-A heavy-hitting celebs up-close-and-personal access to the Statue of Liberty. During the high-voltage bash Madonna rested her sprained ankle in Everett's lap. "I twisted it at Sting and Trudie's house in Tuscany," she said, "I wasn't looking when I was walking down the steps." The material one and the gay Brit are working together on Everett's forthcoming film The Next Best Thing.

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LADMAG BUYERS stink - official. A survey in September's Maxim reveals that 58 per cent of its readers wash every day. You do the maths.

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PANDORA'S PLAYBOOK says good grooming's a must for smart fillies who want to go places and win races. But the wrapper copy on Safeway's razors for der laydeez is pretty hair-raising: "5 disposable razors for women with swivel head". It's enough to make a girl's head spin...

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HEAR THESE words - and you'll know you've been had. Dipper: pickpocket. Countess: attractive girl. Forty-some-odd: gun. Mark: victim. Mudkicker: prostitute. Roper: conman responsible for luring the mark into a set-up. (Source: The Big Con by David W Maurer.)

YOU WANT to be smarter - and sexier? Drink more coffee.

Not only does it reduce the risk of a heart attack, according to new research, but also, according to the latest issue of Good Housekeeping, reduces gallstones. Another frappuccino, anyone? Oh, and by the way, the magazine has also teamed up with Whiskas to promote Whiskas Senior, a new cat food for felines more than eight years old. What next - Saga, the restaurant?

HOT MAIL - a Dutch postman from Ermelo in central Holland was suspended from work for wearing a miniskirt. It's a torrid issue, because the mercury hit 86F this week, and the Dutch meteorological institute officially declared that Holland's having a heat-wave. Dutch postwomen are allowed to wear culottes; but their male counterparts brought a sex discrimination suit against their employers. This week the court ruled that it could insist that mailmen must cover their knees. Return to sender?

WHODATHUNKIT? Panda cubs are born entirely white .TEXT: AMNESIA + DEJA VU = repeatedly forgetting yourself. Which is what may happen to sufferers of transient global amnesia. This rare phenom happens during sexual arousal, according to Charing Cross's neuroscience centre. "Sufferers" forget everything about a sexual encounter - even as it takes place. Attacks are sudden. Oh, and the phenom 's very rare...

WINNER OF Pandora's increasingly coveted saucer of milk this week is ...Madonna! Rupert Everett was talking up his gay James Bond script (Pandora, 21 May), when someone asked whom he'd cast as the first Bond girl. In a reference to the sexually transgressive millionaire hoops player, who is also one of Madonna's old flames, Everett replied: "Dennis Rodman." Madonna: "Perfection! His name will be Denise." Miaow!

Contact Pandora by e-mail: pandora@ independent. co.uk