Poor woman.Other under-used politicians drifted past – Duncan Smith, Norman Lamont, Wm Hague – all bearing that super-confident look which politicians wear instead of a sell-by date, until I saw my first non-politician: David Attenborough.”Tell me your impressions of this line-up, Sir David…” I said.He looked out over the milling throng.”Today we are privileged,” he intoned softly, “to be present at a rare gathering of the elders of the herd as they come together to select one of their number as a leader. It was hard to tell the difference.”Oh my God, that person…” said Mandelson, and he faded away. But it would be fatal to put Birt in charge of anything again.”"Oh? I thought you Blairites were all one happy family…” I said.There was a shout near me It was Alastair Campbell, crowing about something Or maybe losing his temper. Of course, it may equally well have been at the sight of Clare Short, who I now found myself next to.”Miss Short…” I said.”Just get your books out, sit down at your desk and keep quiet till we start,” she said, then burst into tears.

Mandelson? A future BBC chairman?”I can’t imagine you wanting to run anything,” I said. “Eminence grise is more your style, surely.”"I’m just here to make sure John Birt doesn’t get it,” he replied “He thinks Tony has promised it to him. What could have brought him here? I got out my notebook.”Excuse me, Jeffrey…”Before I could finish, he had taken my notebook, asked who to dedicate it to, signed it and moved on.”Strange fellow, Archer,” said a voice at my elbow It was Peter Mandelson. “When the next election comes, I’d like to be a player in it, and being head of the BBC would give me more power than as head of the Tories And more pleasure Don’t quote me.”Next, I came across Jeffrey Archer.

Michael Portillo, for instance.”Head of the BBC, Michael?” I inquired “What’s in it for you?”His smile never faltered. (Have you noticed that nobody in the public eye ever ceases to smile these days?)”The BBC is the most effective opposition to Labour today,” he smiled. At our preliminary meeting, I recognised several of the hundred or more candidates who had turned up for a glass of wine, a nibble and a briefing. When I heard that the post of chairman of the BBC governors was up for grabs, I knew it was the job for me and I applied as soon as the lists opened. Inevitably you will be subject to a very hard sell from a very skilful and sometimes unscrupulous salesperson who will point to the batteries as they roll under the settee and say: “Do you really want to live like this?” They are highly motivated by their commission, and verbal promises from them will be worth nothing if things go wrong later and the Sellotape doesn’t hold, as it never does.And last: take care with any kind of magnet therapy, as it can reely effect yor spelin and mayk yoo lok stoopid.d.ross independent.co.uk.

I’m off clubbing.”Third: you are asking for trouble if you make a deal over the doorstep or in your living room. “Yes, talk about Rip-Off Britain!” he repeated, because that’s just the way this scary little man is.So how can you avoid the lifestyle cowboys? Apparently, the first thing you should look for in a guru is a BTech from the famed LSG (London School of Guru-ing) where, apparently, students can major in wearing white floaty nightie things while doing their dissertations, for example, on what underpants best suit a prime minister whose wife is otherwise engaged in chanting silly things in tents. I do not know, frankly, if Ms Caplin has this particular qualification – but suspect so, as her choice in PM underpants is said to be faultless, the Looney Tunes boxers experiment aside – but having searched the web I do know that she has given a testimonial for Ms Lilias Curtin, one of the country’s foremost magnet therapists. It was a wind chime, which no one needs, or even wants, unless they actually have a desire to be driven bonkers by mad tinkling, even on days when only the faintest of breezes is discernible. “Talk about Rip-Off Britain!” as that scary little man Nicky Campbell so rightly put it.