BBC battles with PM

Who could have predicted when it was announced that a New Labour donor and staunch Tony Blair supporter was to head up the BBC that this same man, less than two years on, would deal such a massive blow to the Prime Minister's integrity?

The Tories were outraged when Greg Dyke became director-general of the BBC. I know because I was there as the head of media.

I was also there at the meeting where Dyke was supposed to prostrate himself before the Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition and vow undying impartiality. He swaggered in like a professional boxer and walked out nearly an hour later with his face and his dignity unmarked.

Dyke expected no quarter and he gave none.

Then and since, I suspected that, donor or no donor, Tony Blair had bitten off more than he could chew up and spit out when he took on Dyke. If this was a poodle, then it was the kind Napoleon used to lead him into battle.

In television, he had a reputation for ruthlessness. Toughened by a world as fierce as politics, he was always going to be a match for Blair and the bully boys, Alastair Campbell and Peter Mandelson.

And so he has proved with his ferocious defence of the BBC's reporting of the war in general and Andrew Gilligan in particular.

No quarter, no apology. The BBC was always forensic in its attention to any and every complaint the Tories made, sometimes painfully so. Nor is it my experience that the BBC is unable to say sorry, as Blair is now demanding.

At conference one year I crashed a dinner Dyke was hosting for his executives and various Tory MPs and launched into an attack on the BBC.

The previous week the New Labour luvvie Mandelson commentated on Blair's conference speech. The BBC had booked Michael Heseltine to do the same for William Hague's. Everyone knew there was no love lost between these two men. Dyke immediately conceded that the decision was wrong and dropped Heseltine.

In the current row about over-sexed dossiers, Number 10 claims parts of the BBC were anti-war.

Well, until our troops went in, most of the country was, too.

To have failed to give due prominence to the opposing arguments would have been a gross dereliction of the BBC's duty. Coverage-does not equal partiality. In politics you never ask a question unless you're sure of the answer.

When Campbell asked whom do you trust, the PM or the BBC, 66 per cent of the British people said the BBC.

After six years of broken promises, we trust the Government about as far as we trust the French to negotiate a fair deal over the Common Agricultural policy.

Tony Blair says he wants to renew his vows with the British people. What kind of nonsense is this?

He's our leader not our lover. And if this is a marriage, I want out.

We want revenge on you, Lord Archer

Jeffrey Archer leaves prison in a couple of weeks after serving half of his four-year sentence for perjury and perverting the course of justice. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord. Archer wants revenge on his enemies.

He appears unaware that they now include most of the Tory Party. This man was more damaging than 10 Neil Hamiltons, created more carnage than 20 Jonathan Aitkens. He did more to reinforce the image of arrogance, self-interest, sleaze and corruption than any other Tory. And now he wants revenge. Unbelievable.

I remember well the Friday night when the call came at Conservative Central Office that shattered any chance of recovery before the 2001 election.

"It's bad," my contact said.

"It's Archer."

"Sex or money?" I asked. "Both."

There ensued one of the most damaging chapters in William Hague's leadership.

People often ask why Hague backed Archer. With no hard evidence against him - apart from a putrid stink - there was no alternative. Archer had the full endorsement of both Baroness Thatcher and John Major. Through his tireless and very successful fundraising, he had also ingratiated himself with many party members.

Hague summed it up when asked on Breakfast with Frost, after stripping Archer of his party membership, how he could "kick a man when he was down".

"He kicked us when we were just getting up off our knees," came the typically frank Hague reply.

Nancy's dark secret

Nancy Dell'Olio has been ridiculed for wearing sunglasses while swimming in Italy recently - unfairly so.

Having just returned from a beach holiday on which I experimented with several expensive brands of "waterproof " mascara, I declare there is no such thing. One friend said I emerged from the water looking as though I had done three rounds with Mike Tyson. Her husband said five.

How is that we can create designer babies but we still can't design a mascara that stays where God intended it?

Judy lands a punch

On her book tour, Hillary Clinton has given one broadcast interview more than a dozen times. Her responses were so robotic, not even Peter Sissons, Jim Naughtie or Michael Parkinson could get anything out of her.

In the end it was Judy, of Richard and Judy fame, who pricked her bubble. Judy pointed out that she would have chucked Richard if he had done a Monica on her. Hillary's response was her now familiar eulogy on motherhood: she stayed for the family, what a privilege it was to be Chelsea's mum blah, blah.

"So how long has it been since you saw your daughter?" Judy asked bluntly. "Christmas," came the reluctant reply, which seems a very long time given that they hardly have to scrimp for the air fare. Hillary recovered the next day to prove to the world how close mother and daughter really are by appearing together at that most intimate of family occasions, the book-signing.

London - the new Barcelona

Mayor Ken Livingstone has a dream: to make London like Barcelona, full of boulevards and walkways lined with cafes serving happy families well into the night. Having recently been in Barcelona, I can testify that this is about as likely as the Blairs paying for their own holiday.

In the main cities of Spain, public transport works, the streets are clean, the weather is clement, small children are courteous and dogs don't defecate on the pavement.

Who in their right mind would want to sit out in London mid-week with their grizzly children on a drizzly summer night in a filthy city as famous now for its graffiti and garbage as it once was for its good manners and graceful architecture, and with levels of service and street crime such that you're more likely to have your handbag taken than your order?