Diary

IS THAT A PISTOL IN YOUR MP'S POCKET?

WILL your MP soon be looking rather more pleased to see you than is customary? A number of them have asked for permission to use the Westminster rifle range (a little-known chamber in the bowels of the palace, close to the spot where Guy Fawkes and friends placed their gunpowder kegs) to practise, Dirty Harry-style, with lethal handguns. The suggestion to the rifle club has come from a group of MPs, including some Ulster Unionists. For years MPs, peers and House of Commons staff have been using the range for regular practice with innocuous .22 target rifles. Edwina Currie is one of those who see shooting at cardboard targets as the best way to overcome the frustrations of life on the back benches. (Some MPs, on the other hand, would rather replace the shooting gallery with the long-awaited Westminster creche). But the reason for the House authorities' delay is trepidation about the wisdom of allowing pistols into the Palace of Westminster. After all, Spencer Perceval, the only British prime minister to have suffered assassination, was shot in the Members' Lobby in 1812 with a handgun.

IF YOU live around Heysham power station on Morecambe Bay in Lancashire, your new year got off to a cheery start with Nuclear Electric's free 1993 calendar, featuring 'emergency information for local residents'. Like? Like: 'In the event of a major emergency . . . do not harvest your fruit or vegetables.'

SOBER OPENINGS

Everyone knows how you launch a breakfast television station. You gather all your presenters and famous founders round a settee, fill their glasses with champagne and get them to say 'more please' for the camera. That was in 1983 and not long afterwards the Famous Five - Jay, Frost, Rippon, Ford and Kee - were wiping the breakfast egg from their faces when the company had to be rescued by Roland Rat. The picture has been reproduced endlessly as a classic example of the media at their most hubristic. Sadly, for those with a sense of history, there was no replay at yesterday morning's launch party for GMTV, TV-am's successor and clone. Champers for the guests, but no hint of it for the presenters, who made do with mineral water and orange juice. Why no jubilant picture? 'We're not that daft,' explained Lis Howell, the blunt director of programmes.

IF YOU thought the season of goodwill was mercifully over for another year, you haven't been in touch with your local branch of Currie Motors recently. Phone calls are answered by an unbearably cheerful receptionist warbling: 'Good morning. Thank you for calling Currie Motors, nice people to do business with. Dave speaking - how can I help you? . . .' More examples of nauseating niceness, please.

OUCH. THAT'S AWFUL

Returning relatively unscarred by the excesses of the past 10 days, we were horrified to find the office bursting with envelopes containing your least-favoured Christmas cracker jokes. Yesterday was one long groan. Jane Taylor submitted: 'Why did the hedgehog cross the road? To see his flat mate,' from a Body Shop cracker, no less. John Duff sent a particularly bad one: 'What's purple and 4,000 miles long? The grape wall of China.' Aaargh. But undeniably the worst of the worst was James Grant's 'Name a crustacean. King's crustacean', which we couldn't get until after lunch. Still, the three of you win bottles of Lanson champagne for your trouble. Astonishingly, one company, Tom Smith of Norfolk, was responsible for by far the greater part of those submitted. James Elliott, sales and marketing director, was 'delighted' at his factory's showing. Asked why his jokes were so bad, he told us: 'They must be non-sexist, non-racist, non-religious and non-topical - what have you got left?' Quite a lot, probably, but he insists: 'People would be disappointed if they weren't bad. But there are some pretty subtle ones, like my favourite: 'What do you call a man who ties ribbons round sheep? Rambo]' ' Mr Elliott seemed disappointed to be told that several of you had nominated that very joke.

A DAY LIKE THIS

5 January 1906 Raymond Asquith writes from Cairo to Katherine Horner: 'I am reading Shirley now. I like the book all the more because I have been taking a course of Jane Austen which bores, irritates and depresses me beyond words. Everything is so prim and tepid and formal. One can't feel any interest in the respectful feelings which a governess entertains towards a curate, and you don't often get anything more unrestrained than that in these novels. Her idea of a good character is a person whose 'sentiments are just', whose 'language is well chosen' and whose 'information is correct and varied'; and a bad one is merely a young man who writes to a young woman without being engaged to her. Bronte is like Aeschylus after this - a day-spring of passion and poetry and mystery after a bowl of goldfish in a rectory parlour.'