Dark – or just unlikely?

HILLARY Clinton says she wants to see a woman in the White House in her lifetime. Wasn't it a woman in the White House who caused all that trouble for Bill?

MEANWHILE, the woman in question, Monica Lewinsky, pops up at a party in London and one Fleet Street diarist reports how a certain TV celeb gushed: "I've been looking for her everywhere and I want to meet her." No, you don't, pal. I met Miss Lewinsky some years ago. She was large and shiny and didn't strike me as overblessed with brains. My abiding impression, as she scrawled a huge "Monica" in my copy of her book was, is this plump lass all it takes to bring the most powerful man in the world crashing down? What an idiot Clinton must have been .

TV bosses assure us that next year's drama series Sherlock will take our heroes (Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman) into "deeper and darker water than ever before." Dark is a buzzword of our age, one of those all-purpose adjectives than can mean almost anything. In the context of Sherlock, I fear "dark" may mean "even more unlikely plots than we've foisted on you so far." Sherlock is wonderful. But it's all about the acting and the special effects. The storylines vary from bizarre to plain bonkers. They insult our intelligence (remember the roof-leap stunt?) and torture our credibility. Darkly.

ROWAN Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, reveals that he starts every day by reciting: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner." Does Williams seriously believe he is a sinner? Does anyone who knows him think he is a sinner? What is the nature of Williams's sins? We need to know for if the kindly, saintly, self-sacrificing Rowan Williams is a sinner, the rest of us are heading straight for the fiery furnace.

IF Tony Blair did not exist, Frederick Forsyth would have to invent him. Blair is frankly unbelievable. He unleashed the biggest property bubble of all time, started a war in the Middle East, walked away from Parliament, got a job as peace envoy to the Middle East and then amassed a vast fortune - in property. And now we learn he is advising the military dictatorship in Egypt on economic reform. "Actually, Mr President, it's dead easy. You just let everyone borrow eight times their annual earnings, with no proof of any income. My friend Gordon can help with the details. Did I mention I'm a pretty straight sort of guy . . ?"

LATER this month (assuming she behaves herself) Mrs Rhodes and I will celebrate our 40th wedding anniversary. Sorting out the guest list, one thing struck me. Over the past half-century or so we have accumulated all sorts of friends in all sorts of groups: academics, journalists, neighbours, the extended family and so on. Most of those groupings have seen their share of divorce or separation. Yet one group is very different. Among my pals in the Territorial Army, marriages of 30-plus years are the norm. I can only assume that nothing makes you appreciate wedlock and the joys of home life quite like spending your weekends neck-deep in a trench on Salisbury Plain.

IS there no escaping the dreaded H-word? Commodore Jerry Kyd , captain of Britain's new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth, says she will be crewed by "hardworking navy personnel." Whatever happened to jolly Jack Tars?