Wednesday, 6pm
Either the saddest thing, or the noblest, I've heard all day is that Nick Clegg, the Lib Dem MP most likely to succeed Ming Campbell as party leader, is as dismayed as anyone that his boss threw in the towel.
Sir John Major with his bust in the House of Commons. Photograph: PA
Actually, it may be only the second saddest. A politician who admires Gordon Brown, but fears he may not recover his early dominance, told me: "You know, he wants to be another Gladstone" - earnest reformer, the people's champion.
Clegg realises he's likely to win the coming tussle with the older, more experienced Chris Huhne. But he is also smart enough to realise that the top job in any party is different. The pressures on him and his young family will be awful.
Friends say he will be judged in comparison with David Cameron, who has that little sliver of ice in his make-up necessary to political success. Clegg looks and sounds like an English public schoolboy - after all, he went to Westminster school - but he's also part-Dutch and Russian. "He doesn't have Dave's public school swagger."
Details are emerging of the private ceremony at Speaker's House last night to unveil John Major's bust. It was cast by Mrs Curry, French sculptor wife of Tory MP, David Curry.
"No Curry/Currie jokes please," was the word among the ex-PM's 50 friends present, all looking older than when they last met. Sir John now wears rimless glasses (they suit him), so a thick-framed pair like those he wore in the '90s had to be found for the bust.
It will therefore be installed in the members' lobby, alongside other ex-PMs, wearing a bronze version of Mr Curry's glasses.
Speaker Martin, a Class of '79 MP like Mr Major, recalled the ex-banker and the ex-shop steward wondering if they had made the right career move. They did. Mr Major looked cheerful, more than he usually did as PM.
Lady Thatcher, who is already in the members' lobby, slightly more than life size, looked content but distracted, by all accounts, giving rise to speculation that she may not have made so calculated a gesture towards Gordon Brown in that No 10 visit last month as some said. (It was the pink suit that clinched it for me.)
At a session with crossbench peers - those who don't belong to parties - this morning, discussing how best to explain the work of the House of Lords, I shared a platform with two multimedia troupers, Lords Melvyn Bragg and David Puttnam, with Lord David Williams, a retired Whitehall official, in the chair.
I told them the last time I shared a table with three peers I had been invited to join them for dinner at a party conference hotel. When the bill came my host, himself a media type, tried to palm it off on the Guardian. "You're richer than us," I said.
The crossbench peers feel their work, examining policies and amending legislation, is underappreciated. I told them it isn't, but they shouldn't expect to be loved. Meanwhile, they should try more active briefing and use the internet better.
One elderly lady peer said that things would not improve until they dropped the title Lord or Lady. Lord Puttnam said that news of his elevation has yet to reach the small towns of West Cork, where he lives - and would make life impossible if it did. Lord Bragg later said he never uses his title in his professional life - but other people are always trying to.
Lord Puttnam then tries to take us for a cuppa - in the peers-only cafe.
