WASHED AND READY TO EAT

The Evening Standard yesterday ran a feature on people who commute outlandish distances to London for work and pay through the nose for the privilege. Julie and Jonathan Shepherd pass through six counties on their way to the UK capital from Nottinghamshire and shell out about twenty grand between them. On principle, Julie refuses to buy a coffee on the train as she thinks she's been fleeced enough already for the ticket by East Coast Main Line. Quite how features hack Jonathan Prynn kept a straight face while he penned the following line though, I really don't know. "The couple have noticed a slow deterioration in the buffet service - they now stock Walkers rather than Tyrrells crisps." It's hard for us to imagine the suffering that is being inflicted on these poor souls, isn't it? Only one step away from hitching a ride on an open-top freight wagon.

Flicking through the London Evening Standard the other day, I read about the arrest of Neil Wallis in the News of the World phone-hacking saga. The former deputy editor of the now-defunct Sunday tabloid was known in press circles as 'The Wolfman' - a moniker which grew out of his bushy beard or, alternatively, his lycanthropic theories about the behaviour of a criminal he was pursuing, depending on which source one turns to. A few pages later, there's a story about a court case involving friends of renegade rockstar Peter Doherty. One of the people mentioned is Peter 'Wolfman' Wolfe, whose nickname is perhaps easier to fathom than that of Neil Wallis. Two legal cases in one paper involving Wolfmen? This suggests to me that perhaps it's not the most auspicious of labels. I wonder if the Bullingdon had a Wolfman? If so, he could be right at the heart of government as I blog.