DIARY

The greatest show on earth seems a harmless enough phrase, the sort one expects to see quoted out of context outside a theatre somewhere. But, it emerges, the phrase is strictly copyright and belongs to the Barnum & Bailey circus of America. This, the British circus impresario Jim Rose has discovered to his potential cost. He is being sued by Barnum's for describing his own big top extravaganza as "the greatest show on earth" in his advertising material.

With this in mind, I am hereby describing this diary as "a pretty good column". I should warn all other scribblers that the phrase is now in copyright and sub judice; and anyone who describes their own musings as "a pretty good column" will be hearing from my legal advisers.

Grave news for all those Christmas chefs seeking, at the last minute, a slab of Edam to adorn the dining-room table on Christmas Eve. Top London fromagerie Paxton & Whitfield in Jermyn Street, the proverbial big cheeses, don't sell it over the counter any more. They say this is because it is now deemed to be in the bracket of what cheese snobs deem "plasticy" brands.

The cheese world hierarchy is evidently a complex one, demanding far more than simple texture or taste as a criterion for inclusion. I asked the man at Paxton's to elucidate.

"We only sell farmhouse cheeses over the counter," he proffered stiffly. "A farmhouse cheese is one which has been milked from only one herd of cows." So that explains it, I replied with a cheesy (lower grade) grin.

My award for the most lyrical Early Day Motion of the week goes to Plaid Cymru MP Cynog Dafis for his proposed debate on aerial advertising. Mr Dafis's schoolteachers did not, perhaps, instil in him the need for the occasional full stop, but they certainly showed him how to use language.

His motion reads: "That this House rejects the outrageous extension in the scope of advertising in the sky provided for by the Civil Aviation (Aerial Advertising) Regulations 1995, believing that the large-scale proliferation of advertising by means of aircraft and signs attached to balloons and helicopters would be a possible source of danger to birds and aircraft, a source of light pollution, a waste of resources, a source of carbon dioxide emissions from aircraft and helicopter fuel, a force promoting irrational consumerism, contrary to the policies underlying the designation of some areas as national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty and conservation areas and an unwarranted intrusion into the freedom to see the sky, which has been enjoyed as a source of tranquillity and beauty by human beings for millennia."

Let's see if a Department of the Environment civil servant can match that prose.

Radio 3's Year of British Music and Culture ends next week after broadcasting the works of 650 British composers, 300 of them living. A "remarkable and unique" achievement, said the Radio 3 controller, Nicholas Kenyon, yesterday. Perhaps so, though two names in the 650 catch my eye. The first is Bach, not generally known as an English gent (but he did stay here for some time, says a Radio 3 spokeswoman).

The second is John Lennon, very much an Englishman, very much a great composer. But he was credited in the season for writing such songs as 'Yesterday' and 'Michelle', both very much Paul McCartney songs. The reason here, according to Radio 3, is that Lennon-McCartney compositions are entered in the Radio 3 database as joint compositions, but it seems a clerk just entered these songs under John Lennon's name "to save time and space". So now Paul McCartney knows how Trotsky must have felt when he was written out of history.

Most would-be actors do part-time menial work, such as waiting in restaurants, selling in shops or even loo-cleaning, to pay the rent while their real career is still proverbially waiting in the wings. More innovative than these, however, are Adam Meggido, Phil Pickard and Simon Lenagan - all in their mid twenties - who have set up a Soho-based telesales company in conjunction with their own theatre company, Counterpoint.

"The idea," explains Meggido, 25, is that the money we make from the telesales is used to fund Counterpoint, which does four productions a year."

When in production, as they are now with Dion Boucicault's The Streets of Dublin at the Brixton Shaw Theatre, the company of 12 splits into those who will act, and those who will sell. They swap every production. "The system works very well," says Meggido. "We are virtually the only self- funding theatre company in Britain. And, of course, let's not forget the business side. Because we're all actors, we are all pretty good at telesales."

It's the time of year when the words "Moss Bros" are muttered rather a lot; and nobody is more aware of this than one Monty Moss, the company's president. I hear duty has caused him to abandon his preferred routine of kitchen supper in front of the telly, in favour of partygoing, much to the surprise of his friends.

"He hates these kinds of things," they whispered to each other sotto voce until at one recent black-tie dinner the sight of Moss circulating the room caused a business acquaintance to go up and ask him why he was there.

If he was expecting a line about "getting more social in my seventies," he should have known better.

Moss smiled coyly: "Just doing a pre-Christmas stock check."

Eagle Eye