Writes and wrongs of Jordan's books

Yesterday, Jordan admitted that she doesn't write her own books. I thought everyone knew that - look at the copyright page of them and it mentions the name of Rebecca Farnsworth, the ghost.

A few weeks ago, I was on a train to Fenchurch Street and sitting near me were four middle-class girls. One of them said that she had read Jordan's latest and was surprised it was good. I wondered then why she was surprised - the book was written by a professional author after all... as indeed are the majority of celebrity books.

Mrs O takes umbrage...again

The ghastly Sharon Osbourne has exchanged a series of emails with comedian Jim Jeffries who called her daughter Kelly fat.

Perhaps it hit home harder than normal because recent pictures of Kelly without make-up show that she looks - unsurprisingly - just like her mum before all the plastic surgery.

Celebrity Spotting 3

Who should I share a lift with this morning at the Elephant and Castle tube station - completely unrecognised by everyone except me - but Lord Lawson, Mrs Thatcher's former chancellor.

One of the most powerful and influential men in Britain not that long ago... now reduced to sharing a lift with me.

Pull on the plimsolls, Vicky

Yesterday the Sunday Mirror ran a feature about celebrities who hate various bits of their bodies: Cameron Diaz's bum, Jessica Simpson's height, etc, etc.

Vicky Beckham was among the throng with an indirect quote that she wears stunning shoes to detract from her "horrid" feet.

Doesn't she realise that the stunning shoes call attention to her horrid feet? People look at the shoes and then think "Oh my God, what disgusting feet! With her money you'd think she'd do something about them."

If vacuous Vicky doesn't want people to look at her horrid feet, junk the shoes and may I suggest plimsolls?

Eccentrics in the heat

It is good to see that even with the rise of homogeneity that the good old British eccentric is still alive and well.

Yesterday was the hottest day of the year and at London Bridge I saw some chap clad in a suit carrying an umbrella. There's a man who doesn't trust the weather forecasters.

TV wasn't so bad in the old days...

A BBC director has said that there are too many coloured faces on television.

Samir Shah, a former BBC head of current affairs who now runs an independent production company, said this had led to a "world of deracinated coloured people flickering across our screens - to the irritation of many viewers and the embarrassment of the very people such actions are meant to appease".

Shah spoke at the Royal Television Society: "The difficult truth I want you to accept is this: the equal opportunity policies we have followed over the last 30 years simply have not worked.

"Despite 30 years of trying, the upper reaches of our industry, the positions of real creative power in British broadcasting, are still controlled by a metropolitan, largely liberal, white, middle-class, cultural elite - and, until recently, largely male and largely Oxbridge."

Hmm, some might say that that "elite" didn't do too bad a job and actually made programmes that people wanted to watch - unlike much of the rubbish churned out today by sundry Tamsins and Justins.

An audience with comedians is what ITV needs - failing that... an audience

Last weekend in the gap between the end of Britain's Got Talent final and the results, ITV screened An Audience with Neil Diamond.

Neil Diamond is, without doubt, a songwriting genius but sharing scripted quips with an audience full of people he doesn't know does not for television genius make.

When will the people who run ITV realise that An Audience with... only works with comedians. Bob Monkhouse, Dame Edna Everage, Jackie Mason - brilliant. Take That, Spice Girls, The Osmonds - no thanks.