Prepare for the dole

ALTHOUGH a Swedish woman with a transplanted uterus has had a healthy baby, doctors stress that the procedure is in its early stages and needs much more research and development. Womb for improvement.

DAVID Steel famously ended the 1981 Liberal Conference with the stirring exhortation: "Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government." This year, the Lib-Dem MPs know that they can go back to their constituencies and prepare for their P45s.

AND why should they expect any better fate? The moment the Lib-Dems threw in their lot with the Tories, they lost thousands of supporters. And having been handed real political power by the Tories, they now slag off their Coalition partners. No principles, no gratitude.

THERE is a huge, unbridgeable gap between London's politico-media bubble and the real world. So a sub-editor in London creates what he thinks is an irresistible headline: "Murdoch daughter in £250 million divorce from Blair PR guru," and the rest of us simply turn the page because there is not a single word in that headline that interests us in the slightest.

THE most compulsive television over the past few days was surely Fanny Cradock (1909-94) whose 1970s programmes on preparing for Christmas were shown in quick succession on the same night. (Food Network). What a bizarre old thing she was, with her weird, Japanese-style eyebrows pencilled at random places on her forehead. Apronless, she flounced around in organza and chiffon, her diaphanous folds wafting perilously close to the gas rings. It was like watching a kitchen-fire safety film, as performed by the leading lady in a drag-queen production of The Mikado.

AND the food, my darlings, the food! Gallons of double cream in icing bags, acres of choux paste and lashings of mincemeat, all dusted with icing sugar and baked until shiny. As far as Fanny was concerned, this was the last word in sophistication. Her menus were her gracious gifts to the lower orders, delivered with patronising little homilies on how we must all watch the pennies in these terribly hard times. It was 1975 and we'd had a few power cuts but Fanny talked to us as though we were plucky survivors of a Blitz, shivering in our hovels and huddled for warmth around a steaming carrot. Fanny, you were wonderful / appalling / enchanting / bossy / adorable / unbearable. Above all, you were perfectly at ease multi-tasking for a TV audience, stuffing a pastry with custard while telling the tale of the lady who ruined her petit-fours by using rose-water face cream. What a pro.

TODAY, Fanny's Xmas treats look unbearably sweet and stodgy. Yet the curious thing is that in the days when we ate such stuff, we were all a lot thinner.

THERE are a number of sound reasons for stoning Jeremy Clarkson in public. He is an unrepentant smoker. He commits crimes against denim jeans. He is an armchair general. He habitually sneers and sniggers at foreigners. Sending someone like Clarkson to the proudest, most patriotic part of southern Argentina is like sending a Luftwaffe flypast over Coventry. Clarkson is one of the best-known Englishmen on this planet and the Argies would have been fully aware that his programme from their beloved country would be one long sneer about funny bean-eating Gauchos and Galtieri's finest getting stuffed at Goose Green, all delivered with that irritating Clarkson half-grin. I'm not sure the allegedly-offensive number plate was even an issue. Clarkson was cruising for a bruising simply by being Clarkson. He escaped from the mob unharmed, unpunished and covered in free publicity. Again.