To be a star you need star quality

Janet Street Porter bent a few ears with a rant about the freak show that the X-Factor has become, slagging off judges who spend fortunes on facelifts and hours in make-up before humiliating poor, talentless and massively overweight contestants.

She’s dead right. The conveyer belt that allowed poor Emma Chawner to get through four off-screen auditions before being put in the stocks that is prime time entertainment was designed to feed our insatiable (check the ratings) appetite for seeing lesser mortals treated with ridicule and contempt.

And there was mileage in this story. The Sun got to say 'Fat's yer lot', TV-am had the entire family on the couch (a feat in itself) and Street Porter got to atone for all her involvement in reality shows.

But while all this was going on, one of the best talents ever to have emerged from such TV auditions was treating a few thousand of us to a concert at the Albert Hall in aid, not vanity, but of people close to her heart whose plight deserves far more attention than any wannabe pop star.

Patti Boulaye won the 70s equivalent, New Faces, scoring the highest marks in the history of the series and went on to enjoy a fabulous career doing everything from Carmen Jones to having her own Channel Four show.

But in the two years I’ve known her, she’s hardly sung a note. The voice I’ve heard recently has often been one of near-exhaustion as she takes five minutes away from her relentless toil, raising money for her Aids charity Support for Africa from her Buckinghamshire home. She’s called in favours from showbiz mates, spent hours on the phone, on the road and at her computer doing what most high-profile benefactors would hire legions of staff to do – and built health centres in her native Nigeria and surrounding countries that have saved countless lives.

And all the time her career has been on hold. In fact, when she is asked to sing, she invariably waives the fee in return for a donation. When John Major rang and asked her to appear at an event he was organising, she agreed to sing for free in return for his name as patron; something of little benefit to her but massive benefit to the charity.

Rarely have I met such a driven individual. I’ve often wondered how she found time to sleep, let alone rehearse, but on Sunday she took a break from the office, slipped into something snazzy, lined up alongside the likes of Boney M, the New Seekers and Peter Sarstedt – and blew them off the stage.

Her voice was as powerful and pure as the time in the nineties when she became, in producer Simon Callow’s words, the best Carmen Jones ever. Now, she assures me, she plans to take a break from fundraising and get back in front of a microphone.

I hope so but I’ll believe it when I see (or should I say hear) it. In the meantime, if we really have to endure more TV auditions to find the likes of the next Patti, or Lennie Henry or Les Dennis, may I suggest we spare the no-hopers the heartbreak and cut to a shortlist of one: her daughter, Aret.

I didn’t even know she was a singer until this week, but having taken one of the country’s most prestigious venues by storm, I do now.

Judges take note.

Where there's a Will, there's a way

Glad for the chance to help out my old pal, Will Lewis, yesterday.

The energetic Telegraph editor-in-chief was due to speak at the end of Tuesday's Independent Publisher's Forum conference when he got the wrong train and found himself in Peterborough - instead of Grantham 30-odd miles away where delegates were awaiting his keynote address.

As the final business session ended, organisers made a frantic series of calls, to be assured that, as far as Victoria Plaza was concerned, he had boarded the train from London.

But as it came and went and the hapless driver laid on to collect him reported no sign of him or his sidekick, they decided to wind up the conference and let delegates dash for trains of their own.

Faced with the prospect of the great man arriving to an empty room, I discreetly got a message to Victoria that the audience were being told of the mishap and urged to make their way home. Some did, slipping out of side doors as votes of thanks were taken.

Quick as a flash, his wide-awake PA rang my mobile with the news that he was "literally minutes away", having just dived into a cab and Yours Truly had to break the news that the event was "literally breaking up". Anyway, (just for old times. Call me nostalgic)I poked my head back into the room like some apologetic Best Man and caught the eye of the podium.

Seconds later, most of the room sat itself down again, tactfully spreading out this time, and I returned to my seat eagerly waiting to find out what had happenned behind the scenes at the Telegraph since I cleared my desk.

And Will was back where he's most comfortable (in the hub) - and, er, spoke.

Who's World Cup is it anyway?

The lunatics are attempting another coup on the asylum as a sporting body once again gets too far up itself and tries to tell newspapers what they can and can't print.

A few years ago it was FIFA who made a half-arsed attempt to put time constraints on when pictures could be published on websites and limits on the number that could be used.

Then the football leagues insisted they'd only let newspapers into games if they signed up to licensing rules, which included a two-hour delay on pictures being published and a cut of the lolly from fantasy competitions.

Now the rubgy world cup organisers have joined them in cuckoo land with their own accreditation rules. They've produced 18 pages of Ts and Cs insisting, among a host of other things, that "only five images can be used per half", none can be transmitted via mobile phones. And that Rugby World Cup Ltd can use for free any images taken by any accredited photographers.

The Newspaper Publlishers Association are making all the right noises and could hit back by blocking out sponsors names on hoardings and shirts. But it's tit for tat.

The only real response would be to bin all the forms, ignore all official routes, cover games from the stands, cranes or low-flying baloons as necessary and impose the entirely refreshing and justifiable anarchy of the most vitriolic fanzine.

Then we'd have a game.

They need to be told, in the words of the people on the terraces who pay for every Porsche in the car park and every designer shirt on their backs: you're havin' an effin' larf mate.

Racist? Not in the US


Pete Symes has left an interesting comment on my Big Brother race row post below - Emily's out, but it's not black and white. Would I have still been concilliatory had she made am antisemitic comment?

Depends what she said I suppose but he's right to hint at possible double-standards. In the US version, cocktail waitress Amber Siyavus Tomcavage did more than let slip a single word. She let rip with what can only be described as a rant against everything and anything Jewish.

It hacked off the Anti Defamation League when it was shown live in the USBB website and prompted an assurance from CBS that they don't condone such behaviour.

But the tirade was not picked for the edited version of the show that night - and, unlike dippy Emily, motormouth Amber stayed in the show.

Snappy memories

I met a few long-time pals for a pub crawl in EC4 on Friday. We started out in the Harrow off Fleet Street and ended up in the Press Club somewhere down Memory Lane.

Of the group, I was the only one who'd gone 'indoors' to sub, fattened my arse in an editor's chair and joined the suits upstairs, which to traditional ragged-notebook hacks like these, must seriously have nudged me towards the tossersphere.

I was also the last to show; they hadn't exactly been on fruit juice, and proceeded to roll back 30-odd years and take the piss mercilessly.

Now, I'm sure we all put the intro in the last par when we were 19,
stayed for one more over lunchtime and came back to find the jury had delivered and gone but I had to put my hands up when Peter Rose (ex-NoW crime staffer) reminded everyone of the time I tried my hand as a paparazzo.

We were all young bucks on the Herts Headline News Agency, making a name for ourselves among the murders, poisonings and arsons that played out five days a week at St Albans Crown Court.

I'd been covering a rape. It was a trial due to end before the weekend and the Sundays were looking for a picture. Easy peasy. The accused was on bail and always left the building for lunch. All I had to do was snap him as he left.

On this particular day, I'd left a 35mm Practica with the copper on the front desk and run down the stairs at 12.59, a tactical minute before the judge would sniff the decanter and clear the room.

Until then, my photographic training had consisted of scuttling around village streets trying to snap colleagues as they dipped in an out of alleys. I couldn't tell an f-stop from a bus stop but I knew I had to keep the camera steady to shoot a target on the move.

The other thing about shooting thugs is that they rarely pose. Small-time hoods who think they're the Kray twins do. But most of them either take a poke at the lense or leg it.

So I had my chunky-monkey pal Ross Francis stand outside in wait. I then stood behind him, rested the telephoto on his shoulder and held down the shutter, hoping to nab a few frames before the Beast of Borehamwood sussed he was destined for a 25-double on page five and ran for cover.

There was a minor scuffle, and a few snarls, threats and obscenities later, the said perv was, as Mr Rose would have put it, bang to rights. Mr Francis took the camera back to the office, I went back into court and the film was developed. Clear as crystal, I was later told. A result. All we needed was a guilty verdict, a judge prepared to chuck away the key and it'd be money in the bank.

But it wasn’t to be. I rang the office later to plaudits. The pictures were as sharp as the boss's tongue and in the overnight post. I couldn't believe it, I reckoned I'd have been lucky to get one off before his mate in the white suit squared up and blocked my view.

His mate? White suit? You mean, that’s not him? F*** me, it's on its way to the Screws picture desk...

Luckily, Jim Last, the chief reporter had the nous to chase the GPO van from post box to post box all the way back to the sorting office where he begged for it back. They refused, quoting all sorts of rules, but finally agreed to tear it up instead.

And there it lay. On the floor. In shreds.

Just like my pap career.

Blind dates? Don't be daft, we're all watching . . .

My long-term relationship with the Telegraph ended with an amicable parting a year ago as I took my GSOH off in search of a new soulmate.

But anyone looking for a similarly meaningful attachment may well be mightily p****d off if they've used the paper's website to play cupid.

From memory, what greets users of their dating channel is a neat piece of functionality that allows even the most luddite lonely heart to post their details safe in the knowledge that they'll engaging with other Telegraph types.

What they actually risk is their picture being plastered over large parts of the site for all to see.

They're auto-generated and designed to pop up in the right-hand navigation on stories in sections with a leisurely tone. It's a clever device to drive up page visits but sadly typical of some of the more madcap ones I would, in a previous life, have strangled at birth.

They will undoubtedly increase awareness of an area of the site many core readers will not know about but it shows a worrying lack of insight. This type of service, in the wider context, is all about discretion. This is a world of cosy nicknames, box numbers, neutral venues and discreet introductions. Not one in which singletons stand on tables in crowded bars and shout "I'm free."

And certainly, I can't imagine anyone being too chuffed at posting a photo to an area I'd envisaged to be members only and found it appearing next to the headline Scary Monster.

I'm sure that, if the participants wanted their pictures flyposted on billboards or stuck to telephone boxes,they'd have saved their joining fee and done just that.

I'll give it 48 hours before the penny drops and someone chaperones them away from the public gaze.

Trinity, trains its sights on the future

Trinity Mirror has become the latest publisher to send its journalists back into the classroom to learn how multimedia works.

Spending a week learning how to shoot video certainly has practical merit and the fact that they’re doing it in conjunction with the University of Teesside will benefit a lot of them.

But I was most impressed that Editorial director Neil Benson and head of multimedia Michael Hill are doing the rounds of the papers, giving tips on how to optimise their searching.

So many print journalists still know nothing of CAR or the wonders of what we used to call Deep Web, and many think if Google can’t find it, it doesn’t exist.

Over at Reed Business, meanwhile, I gather staff are being taught the benefits of SEO and encouraged to write for “findability”.

Good stuff, but word reaches me that the company plans to put all new recruits through psychometric tests designed to assess their ability to write online.

Search terms fail me.

TV gives us the press we deserve

Bill Hagerty let his nostalgia run wild with his Inside Story spread in the Independent, recalling six of the best TV media dramas, from Compact (which my mum watched) to Ugly Betty (which my kids watch).

I'd have been peeved if he hadn't included Lou Grant, the news editor I wanted to work for when I was a junior reporter covering Bodmin magistrates and dreaming of covering LA City Hall.

Actually, I secretly modelled myself on Joe Rossi, the Tribune's own Carl Bernstein who drank gallons of coffee, had more snouts than a bacon factory and exposed the crap out of mobsters and politicians on a golfball typewriter.

Hagerty also mentions Drop the Dead Donkey, Hot Metal, and State of Play. But he's left the best ones out, so for the record, there's:

1. Mitch, a grizzled Fleet Street hack played by a post-Sweeney John Thaw in the early eighties. He wore a raincoat, moaned about the world, looked divorced and was convinced life was a cover-up.

Best moment: risking his life to bag a world exclusive and retiring to the Pen and Wallet to be told: 'the printers have walked out again.'

2. Lytton's Diary with sitcom smoothie Peter Bowles; all g and t and cravats and set in the world of the gossip columnist.

Best moment; when it was revealed that behind all the schmoozing was his desire to write a book and that no-one would touch it.

3. Hold The Back Page, which followed sport's Poet laureat, Ken Wordsworth as he left a posh broadsheet to slug it out on a tabloid, pitting himself against a gobshite upstart called Steve Stevens waving a big chequebook and a bigger ego.

It was all about excess. Everyone earned buckets, filed copy from El Vinos and stitched each other up. The opening scene even saw Wordsworth take a 20-yard taxi ride to cross the road to his new job.

It was on during the red top heyday when Kelvin McKenzie's Sun was still rising and no-one questioned expenses.

Best moment; when his paper wanted to sponsor a teenage tennis star they hoped would become Britain's first black 1imbledon winner. They asked their best headline writer to come up with a name that evoked British and winning. He came up with Winston Bingo. When it wasn't erhnic enough, he said Winston Umbingo.

Such big ambitions

I always scan the student journalism awards to see if I can lay claim to any successes and big up my credentials on the back of someone else's hard work.

I'll occasionally see a name from somewhere such as Sheffield, where I've been twice, or Kingston, where I've been once, and convince myself that a 30-minute seminar on 'sharpening style' set some snapper on the road to greatness and they'll see the potential for a column I can write on the beach in 20 years' time.

But today I had to look no further than the student team awards section to find suchsmallportions.com, the product of a group from City University and one I described as the best student site I'd ever been involved with.

Judge for yourself. I have my fingers crossed.

Emily's out, but it's not black and white

Boy, the knives are out for Emily Parr, the loose-lipped BB blonde who blurted out a word Mark Twain couldn’t have completed a novel without.

The Sun have managed to drag up a former student pal who gleefully recalled how she used to make racist remarks at college and the Mirror doorstepped an uncle long enough to confirm he was “sickened, disgraced, shocked and appalled” before even got to the second par.

I admit I was one of the first to condemn the baying mob that victimised Shilpa Shetty earlier this year but had that furore been avoided would we really have had to endure the ritual public execution of a 19-year-old dragged out of bed, bleary-eyed and still in a nightdress?

OK, it was great television. And she didn’t do herself any favours by admitting she uses the word “at home”, something bound to get family and friends running for cover.

But, come on, whatever she has or hasn’t done in the past, what she did yesterday was no more than an attempt at rappin’ with her mates?

And wasn’t the real architect of her demise, fellow housemates Charley (a better Little Britain character than anything Matt Lucas could devise) and the scheming Shabnam, who stoked a spat into a full-blown incident.

As a result, the eviction vote was cancelled and Shabnam was spared the indignity of being voted out.

With not one but two Jews in the house (health worker Carole Vincent may not have come out like former model Zach Lichman, but she is) I can’t wait for the first anti-semite to reveal themselves.

Then we'll have a real reality show.

Choking on my Cornflakes

GMTV are really plumbing the depths. Their story on the family hounded out of a series of council estates because they have ginger hair was misguided and plain naïve.

I squirmed as the reporter listened intently to their stories of graffiti and abuse and how their young rascals can’t play outside safely. For two reasons.

Only one of them was a real ginger, even after I adjusted my set – and the neighbours were united in their view - that they were the family from hell.

Not the first time the newsroom has learnt to its cost that they may have got the angle slightly wrong. I was once bollocked when a news editor read my council-blamed-for-damp-house story and found a quote from the town hall claiming that they had a paraffin heater in every room and had blocked the air bricks to stop the draft.

It never made page 29, let alone national TV. Odd. That I could find it the Sky News site on but not on GMTV’s. Or maybe it’s not.

Anyway, I'm not alone in thinking a little old fashioned news judgement wouldn't have gone amiss.

Great Britons - or great expectations?

Couldn’t get over the shortlist for ITVs Greatest Living Briton 2007. The Queen v Robbie Williams?

Anyway, it struck a chord, especially when Gordon Brown was rolled out to say a few words. Gordon was at the Guildhall a couple of years ago when, as editor of Telegraph New Media, we helped to launch what was to be an annual Great Britons competition with Morgan Stanley.

I was actually very enthusiastic about this. I don’t know why we are so obsessed with defining our identity but I know we are, and thought it was bang-on what our readers would go for.

Anyway, I did throw myself into it somewhat, often trying every marketing trick I could muster to tease more votes out of readers and give it a good show. The highlight was the star-studded dinner at which the great and the swigged champagne and the winner was announced to a fanfare.

So good were those bashes that, when I left last year mid-campaign on what would have been Great Britons 2006, I reminded the organisers that I was still expecting an invitation, for old times.

Absolutely, I was told. No problem old boy. Wouldn’t be the same without you. Then, when it came to putting names on the seats, they blew me out with a . . . hmm, places are a little tight. We’ll see what we can do.

They didn't.

A British trait? Saying one thing and doing another? Now, that's just too cynical.

Plane confused

A friend of a friend was on a plane, so I’m told, when a chap offered her a paper to read to pass the time. As you do.

When they touched down, he was amazed to learn she was not keen to go for a drink with him. Amazed? Because he’s given her a paper, not once, but two or three times. Surely, he insisted, she understood the ‘code’.

The code?

Sure, the paper represents a pass, a subtle chat-up. Having accepted it, she was “giving off all the right signals”.

She was baffled. And so was I. And so was the fashion editor, the music critic, the nose-to-the-ground columnist and the Rolex-wearing trendy f****er in Paul Smith suits I know in media buying.

Any ideas? I'd love to know.

Mind you, assuming this wasn’t a wind-up, I really should have asked what paper she was offered. It may have given a clue to Mr Mile-High’s intentions?

The Scotsman: Fancy a dram? I’ll pay you back.

The Catholic Herald: I have protection. But it’s under the seat.

The Mail: Education is crap, the health service is third-world and crime is out of control. Let's do it. We’ll be dead soon anyway.

The Independent: Let me bore you rigid.

The Metro: Come on, it’ll only take a minute.

The Big Issue: Sorry, but it’ll have to be your place. Oh, and any chance of breakfast in the morning?

Just a thought.

Take note (or should i say notes)

Have I missed something or are we really, seriously,
debating the merits of the email interview?.


The spat between Wired and the internet entrepreneur Jason Calcanis seems to have sparked some interesting exchanges in which the likes of Dan Gilmour appear to suggest they are a valid tool for newsgathering.

Surely not.

Any media students reading this take note. Email interviews reduce our craft to that of the market researcher. That's it: form-filling.

Why? Because there's no exchange, no prompting, no interaction between those with something to say and those who will persuade them to say it.

I'm not talking about the quicky Q and A; Metro's 60-second interview, official statements and advertorials. In fact, a written exchange with a reclusive celeb could even be more revealing - I'm talking about the worrying trend to assume that everything can be done from behind a keyboard.

It can't.

Merely publishing email responses would be like asking interviewees to send in footage of themselves for a video slot or a tape for a podcast. Good reporting is all about context. All this seems a step too close to allowing people to check over your notes.

As for the argument that it cuts down on the chance of getting anything wrong. There's a simple answer to that: Try harder at getting it right.

Union hijack

Just when some of you may have thought it was safe to go back into the dear old NUJ . . .

Words fail me. They do. They really do.

Happy birthday NUJ



One hundred and still going strong. I haven't been to a party since your daft letter of condolence to Colonel Gadaffi for bombing his country.

But fun memories nonetheless. Here are my best bits:

1973: As a cub reporter showing my face at the payroll-style window in Acorn House every Tuesday morning to pick up the list of jobs they compiled for those of us on the move.

. . . then disappearing across the road to the Lucas Arms and ringing everyone on the list with my Morris Minor van parked with a full tank outside. Got my first senior job that way.

1979: As a senior reporter attending my first branch meeting in St Albans, a city with (then) a massive weekly, a huge evening, two freesheets and a couple of agencies.

. . . then wondering why only three people turned up and arguing with Ms Millitant over why I wasn't going to join a lineage pool. Left in a huff, got up early and flogged the page three lead to the Daily Star.

1983: As an editor hiring my best mate to run a district office in Biggleswade and persuading him to come over for a chapel meeting "to meet the gang".

. . . then having him emerge a few hours later as FOC and taking me to task for allegedly capping expenses. W***er

1985: As a downtable sub joining Eddy Shah's non-union Today and, a year on and under new management, trudging a mile through Pimlico's back streets to a recruitment-drive chapel meeting.

. . . then joining the steady flow of colleagues back out again, calling it to an early close and complaining they'd left the Mail/Express/Mirror "to get away from all this". Felt ill. First time I'd heard of RSI.

1992: As a chief sub, working through night with a handful of execs during the Montgomery Mirror dispute while all the casuals picketed the front door.

. . . then telling a rookie shipped in from a local paper to f*** off when he tried to book future shifts "if your mates don't get back in". Came out of it unscathed but was attacked for handing out first editions to Monty's security guards at 2am. Blimey. Wasn't their fault.

2000: As a publisher, popping up to Acorn House for the first time in 27 years to discuss the fate of the staff I'd reluctantly had to send home when the company closed.

. . . then, over a brew and a biscuit, sitting down with sensible grown-up people for a grown-up chat knowing we were pulling together for the sake of our pals/staff/members. Briefly, thought of rejoining.

Conclusion 1: As a reporter/sub, I wasn't keen on being part of the collective bargaining system and soon tired of local paper chapel meetings. In the 70s, they were always in the back rooms of pubs serving real ale and the ringleaders wore beards and held whip-rounds for "colleagues" I'd never heard of in countries I couldn't pronounce.

Conclusion 2: As an editor/manager I, oddly, found myself favouring collectivism as a way of knocking company-wide issues on the head. The few dealings I had with head office were even-handed and generally supportive of both views.

Happy birthday. Pint of Old Grumbler next time we meet?

Going overboard?


Never mind whether it was right or wrong for the Iran sailors to sell their stories, I can't help feeling a pang of sympathy for their claims of over-zealous reporting of their release.

I don't suppose I'd be too chuffed if I’d survived a harrowing ordeal only to be depicted as grovelling before a dictator I'd deliberately greeted with nonchalence.

I do know we rarely favour the weaker verbs when it comes to painting a picture for readers though.

Frank Lampard must’ve felt hard done by when he read in the Mirror that he “cowered” when a fan ran on to the pitch and took a swing. I saw the incident. He ducked rather neatly and was back on his toes in a snap like a boxer.

I’ve been around red tops long enough to know what it's like to hand stories to subs with the instruction: ‘It’s all there. Just work up a bit’. I’ve also seen stories undersold because we haven’t been incisive enough in our description.

One moment springs to mind though. A story about a runaway car “careering” into a shopping arcade would have been dramatic enough without the sub’s intro which began “Terrified shoppers fled as . . .” It wouldn’t have been so bad but for the last par from the witness who said “It was a miracle no-one was in the way.”

The story may have been otherwise well written but the intro and payoff matched like roast beef and custard, which is a point the “witness” made when he rang to ask who, other than him, had failed to spot a single fleeing shopper, let alone a terrified one.

He was as right as the “Irate councillor” who rang me to tell me that, yes, he did insist on getting an answer from the chairman of planning but had barely raised his voice, let alone “raged” or “angrily retorted” when he failed to get one.

And there wasn’t a miracle either. I just didn’t want to point it out at the time.

A funny thing happened on the way to graduation

Heard the one about the students who shut themselves away in a basement for two months without food or water or sleep, just so they could build the best comedy website they'd ever seen?

They almost died laughing.

Boom boom.

Okay, I won't make it on the comedy circuit. But the students just might. Suchsmallportions.com was the brainchild of Josh Widdicombe and fellow MA students at City University in London. What began as an online magazine project with Yours Truly the guiding light quickly gathered pace and became one of the most professional and commercially promising sites I've seen in seven years of teaching.

It's certainly the first one I've puffed and, if you follow this link, you'll see why. It's packed with news, reviews, quirky podcasts and clips from smokey clubs. There are even some adverts starting to appear. When I joined them to swig champagne from the bottle a few days before the launch, they were already 43p in profit.

Most pleasing for me was the way in which, from the day we met to brainstorm ideas in a classroom, they were thinking commercially. No hobbies, no indulgences, no 'how can I get the guy with glasses to upload my 3,000-word travel essay (think I'm joking?), just a fresh approach to a subject that's ripe for the web.

OK, so they did most of their thinking in the pub, but some - such as design guru Aaron Davis (guy with glasses) did spend up to 14 hours a day underground and PR mastro Anna Winston (girl with a smile) did get get out there and spread the word on the club scene. One promoter even compared their style to early NME which chuffed them to bits.

One of the best features is the Showcase section which allows comedians to submit clips of their act with a promise that they'll appear live if they're funny enough. The ones there so far a worth a chuckle and it deserves to gather pace.

All in all, it's quite endearing to see the surprise on young faces when they present a really quite good idea and get a really positive response. I just hope they stick with it all the way.

Who knows, they could be laughing all the way to the bank.

Just what is it with Kate Moss?

Alexandra Shulman went into some detail when telling the Independent why she has just used Kate Moss on the cover of Vogue for the 24th time in 24 years.

A year ago she was being pilloried by the Mirror in a cocaine expose. There were some who suggested her career was on the wane. But it wasn’t. If anything, her profile rose on the back of some high-profile TV ad spin-offs.

So why does nothing stick to her? Because while she may break a few rules in private, she doesn’t try to bend them in public – and attack our sensibilities in the process.

What I mean by that is, she does what she does and that’s all. She poses, she walks the catwalk, she appears in ads and takes up acres of space in magazines. But that’s it. She isn’t a model-turned-pop-star or a pop-star turned actress or a footballer’s wife-turned-fashion designer-turned UN ambassador.

She does one thing well and doesn’t bore us with trite opinions or reality TV appearances.

Grazia and Heat need her like OK! and Hello used to need Liz Hurley. She’s a story when she wears Ugg boots and when she carries a Dior bag, when her weight drops and when she doesn’t do what most columnists want, and drop her boyfriend.

Cleverly, or very cleverly advised, she just keeps her mouth shut and looks good. And that’ll never go out of fashion.

I've seen the future - and it's a lesson for us all

Students at the University of Westminster took a step closer to the the real world on Friday when their new multi-media newsroom was opened by the BBC's director of news Helen Boaden.

It cost £120,000, several years to get off the ground, is possibly the first of its kind and mirrors the sort of newsrooms major publishers are begining to create.
Boaden was clearly impressed as she joined a large group of invited guests to watch a 30-minute broadcast before being asked to perform the only low-tech function of the day - cut a ribbon.

It's an advance of which the university is rightly proud but also one that will massively benefit students. The best part of the event was watching the students doing their stuff on screen, rough-edges and all. Hundreds of hours in lecture theatres and poring over books can never match the sheer doing of the job.

As a visting lecturer at Westminster I'll be watching development closeley, not least to see what we 'experts' can learn and take back to industry. After all, what better guinea pigs that the bright young people we'll all probably end up working for in a few years.

During wine, nibbles and schmoozing afterwards, several people asked me how that prepared to the Telegraph newsroom but I couldn't oblige as I'd left on the eve of the move to Victoria.

The only insights I could offer were that it's a lot noisier than Victoria (I'm told even those breaking in new shoes do so publicly) and the students buy their own coffees on site. From what I hear the cost of a cuppa is considered so dear, there's a constant stream of people in and out of Starbucks at Victoria station.