DIARY

Wrong sort of trees

If the racing author Dick Francis is searching for a new plot, he need look no further than the letters page of yesterday's Sporting Life. On it there is the perfect tale of stableyard bitterness and revenge. Signing themselves "a group of Ex-Fred Winter lads", the complainants take to task Charlie Brooks, the Lambourn trainer who has recently become something of a cel-ebrity for two reasons. One is his friendship with Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber (he trains three of his horses); the other is his support of the anti-bypass group at nearby Newbury.

The EFWL mob point out that Brooks's support of the tree-climbers has meant that he has also gained considerable publicity for his newly modernised, expanding training establishment, Uplands. This, they hint, could be his real motive for joining the protest. He is, they claim, not normally renowned for his love of woodland. In fact, they write, "in order to make way for his new swimming-pool complex and stables, Charlie has destroyed a large area of beautiful pine trees.

"These were planted by his predecessor, Fred Winter, and for decades graced horses [sic] such as Crisp and Lanzarote. Isn't this hypocrisy of the highest order?"

Brooks, currently in hospital, is not best placed to defend himself. However Warren Miskin, the financial director of his yard, explains: "The trees we cut down were Christmas trees which were always intended to be consumables. Charlie has done a huge amount of work to regenerate local woodland for the benefit of both horses and people. Those who falsely accuse him of not caring are just jealous of his success."

Over to Dick Francis for the denouement. A photo finish in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, perhaps, with Mr Brooks, Sir Andrew and Lady Lloyd Webber cheering from the stands, and the EFWLs jeering from the public enclosure.

Best of British

My sympathies today are with Paul Burger, the shy, self-effacing chairman of Sony Music UK who also chaired the Brits organising committee. Mr Burger told me last year how much he wanted it to be a showcase for everything that's marvellous in the music industry. He persuaded Sony's best-known recording artist, Michael Jackson, to come over and sing - well, come over and mime. And what happens? Jackson's act is interrupted. That naughty Britpop star Jarvis Cocker ends up at the police station. Tony Blair's office says David Bowie requested that Blair present him with his award. Bowie denies it. Quelle debacle! Mr Burger also refused to provide an embargoed list of winners to the press before the event for the next day's first editions, claiming that newspapers would be sufficiently excited by the Brits to want still to write about the event two days later. On that count he was certainly correct.

Wrong sort of paper?

Gillian Shephard's guidance to her civil servants on how to write letters is clearly in need of updating. As I have reported before, she seems to have taught the mandarins such handy tips as "avoid writing to schools in the school holidays". But now she should turn her attention to religious education.

When you think of the Roman Catholic Church, the words "powder metallurgy" don't immediately spring to mind. Unless, that is, you're one of Mrs Shephard's lateral thinkers at the Department for Education and Employment. The department has sent the church's London media office a business information form to complete and return. Under "business description", the department's existing records showed the office to be engaged in "the forging, pressing, stamping and roll-forming of metal; powder metallurgy". Which seems an odd way to view the office's heavenly pursuits.

A department spokesman pronounced himself perplexed. "It could be any number of things," he told me. "The wrong piece of paper goes in the printer, computer glitch, that kind of thing."

An answer that would have graced the Scott inquiry.

Dogged by memories

The marathon hearings of the committee considering objections to the Channel Tunnel Rail Link Bill have come to an end after a year's work, with 71 sittings lasting a total of 320 hours. Enough, the chairman Sir Anthony Durant pointed out, to travel from London to Paris by Eurostar more than 90 times (or 80 if there's a shower of snow).

My favourite moment, which is not recorded in the official report, was when an objector of unusual resilience appeared before the committee saying the line would pass through the area where he walked his dog. Sir Irvine Patnick MP asked the objector if he lived in the area, and was told that he had moved away five years previously. "But you still walk your dog there?", the dog-loving MP sympathised. Only in spirit, it turned out. The dog had died a year before.

Eagle Eye

Cold comfort for Catholic actors

We are already indebted to him for his art, but it is also possible that we have the late Lord Frederick Leighton to thank for a cure for the common cold. The current exhibition at Leighton House in London (above) includes some burning frankincense, imported from Dubai to add atmosphere in the Arab Room, where it has apparently been working a treat on the actors employed to recreate 19th-century household scenes every 20 minutes for visitors. "It's very heady, very pungent and very cleansing," says the curator. "Two actors were cured immediately." For the Catholics among them, however, the smell is not quite so comforting. "I walked in and started to quake," one confides. "It's worryingly like church."