✒Eyebrows were raised at News International's Wapping HQ when a chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, with personalised numberplate, pulled up to the main gates. Staff were even more surprised when the Express Newspapers owner, Richard Desmond, stepped out for a lunchtime meeting with News Corp's Europe and Asia chief executive, James Murdoch. His visit comes shortly after News International's chief executive, Rebekah Brooks, was spotted at Desmond's Thameside offices. Paywalls all round?
✒When some long-standing friends turn their back on you, it's important that you make the most of the ones you've still got. In a week when Lord Mandelson ratcheted up his war of words with Rupert Murdoch, he was spotted in Soho House having dinner with Trinity Mirror's chief executive, Sly Bailey; the Daily Mirror's editor, Richard Wallace; the Sunday Mirror's editor, Tina Weaver, and Lloyd Embley, the editor of the People. Two days later, the Mirror splashed with "Choccy Horror", its exclusive revelation that the Tory leader, David Cameron, was claiming for 40p chocolate bars on his expenses. Mandelson, we assume, paid for his own After Eights.
✒Coming soon to a Heart radio station near you: Jedward, the X Factor twins cruelly ejected from the ITV1 talent show, who are managed by Louis Walsh's Walsh Global Management, a joint venture with Global Talent & Publishing, part of the group that owns ... Heart.
✒To the London Evening Standard's Christmas charity auction, where the various celebrity lots up for grabs include dinner with the paper's editor, Geordie Greig, at his favourite restaurant, E&O. The minimum bid is £100, a fraction of the £5,000 one lucky reader is expected to bid for "a pint with Guy Ritchie". Monkey can't help but feel Greig is doing himself down. Alas, there is no trip to Moscow with the paper's owner, Alexander Lebedev, on offer. Not even a second-hand KGB spy kit. But readers can bid for the privilege of a week working at the Standard, London's only, sorry, "greatest newspaper". But don't expect an easy ride. "Daily hours will be varied and will average eight hours a day, Monday to Friday," says a note. Sounds like a laugh riot.
✒"Mail on Sunday readers trust us to keep them informed," the paper tells its advertisers. "They like our straightforward approach: 'To me, you seem to tell it how it is'... We pride ourselves on our journalistic scope and integrity: our investigations team, led by Dennis Rice, are at the forefront of probing journalism ...' Unrelated note: Dennis Rice left the Mail on Sunday in September 2008 to go freelance.
✒The lads' mag Loaded has achieved the impossible with its latest relaunch – it's gone downmarket. "The world's meatiest men's mag: it's not all about the baps!" says a press release from its publisher, IPC. Not entirely about the baps, no, answering important questions such as: "How good is a £500 blow job?" Meaty indeed.
✒Harold Evans may give a glimpse into his relationship with Tina Brown in the new issue of Tatler, published this Thursday. Asked how his family deals with him, the former Sunday Times editor replies: "Mockery disguised as tolerance". And on his favourite character in a novel: "Mr Bennet in Austen's Pride and Prejudice for the way he copes with Mrs Bennet." Mrs E as Mrs B? Who'd have thought it!
✒The end of an era – and a sign of the times – at the BBC's west London HQ, where the Club White City bar has been shut. To add insult to alcohol-related injury, it is being converted into an extra studio – not of the television variety, but for the BBC gym.
✒The Daily Telegraph was fortunate enough to unearth a "BBC source" to discuss BBC4's new DH Lawrence adaptation, Women In Love. Except next time, possibly, they should find a better-informed one. "BBC4 has attracted some great casts in the past – everyone from Martin Sheen to Helena Bonham Carter – so I wouldn't be surprised if the Keira Knightley's [sic] of the world are queuing up to be in it." Alas, Apocalypse Now star Martin Sheen has never graced a BBC4 drama. Unlike Michael Sheen, who played Kenneth Williams in Fantabulosa!.
