Simon Heffer's champagne moment

Hot news from the other side of the channel. Simon Heffer, the Daily Telegraph's associate editor and resident pedant, has agreed to write a regular column for The Connexion, France's leading English-language newspaper. Heffer's musings will begin in the November issue of the 68-page tabloid. They should make for fascinating reading given his uncompromising views on everything from immigration to punctuation – the Heff's frequent emails chastising Telegraph journalists for their poor grammar are available in all their glory in the style notes section on the paper's website. "There was a great deal of haggling over his honorarium, but we eventually agreed that he would be paid in champagne," says the paper's editor Mark Stanway (formerly of the Observer), "...specifically Pol Roger." That's capital "P", "o", "l".