Two years after his death, JG Ballard may be honoured by his devoted readers. His modest semi-detached house in Shepperton, Surrey, in which he lived for 49 years, has just gone on the market for £320,000 and fans are looking at ways to club together to buy the house and turn it into a memorial to their literary hero. “Here is our chance to preserve the timeless, ageless, placeless wonder of this suburban shack,” writes the Ballardian website, based in Australia. “Not so much a house but a switching station for the Ballardian transmission that continues, even two years after the great man’s death, to bounce endlessly between Shanghai [where he was born] and Shepperton, creating a forcefield of such distortion that it warps the brains of anyone who stumbles into its path.”It was the house in which Ballard wrote Crash and Cocaine Nights. Ballard’s most acclaimed novel was Empire of the Sun, based on his childhood in a Japanese prison camp in China. The Ballardian wants to see the house turned into the Ballard House-Museum, a place of pilgrimage for his devotees, and is asking for donations from readers to kickstart the fundraising. While several followers of the website have offered to stump up some money for the collective projects, others are questioning whether there might be a better way to honour the dystopian novelist. “Clearly the house should be demolished to make room for a highway exit — y’know, as a tribute,” says one. 

Blogger Guido Fawkes seems to be trying to implicate Piers Morgan in the phone-hacking crisis by suggesting that it went on while he was editor of the Daily Mirror. It’s not the first time Morgan has been challenged. Alastair Campbell, former press secretary to Tony Blair and political editor of the Mirror in the early Nineties, raised the issue of   private investigators with Morgan in early June on Twitter. “Btw what exactly did Jonathan Rees give you for the thousands he got from Mirror re me, Peter [Mandelson] etc?” asked Campbell. Morgan went on to say that the work of investigator Jonathan Rees had been deemed legitimate by the BBC before returning a blow to Campbell: “I wish the NoW had been tapping your phone before Iraq war started. And Blair’s. Might have stopped it.”

* Novelist Hanif Kureishi’s latest complaint about David Cameron? That he’s no match for his bête noire Mrs Thatcher. “The ‘Big Society’ is a stupid, empty failure of an idea,” Kureishi tells website 3 Quarks Daily. “Cameron is a ridiculous politician, a sort of pale imitation and a parody of Thatcher. He doesn’t even have her grandiose integrity. As Marx said, history is repeated as farce.”

Ken Clarke may no longer be on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group, the shadowy invitation-only conference of political movers and shakers, but the Justice Secretary, right, hasn’t given up his membership. “He hasn’t quit,” says Lord Kerr, deputy chairman of Shell and one of the conveners. “He was held up in London [for the last conference] because that was the week of controversy over his comments on rape. But he’s still one of us.” Lord Kerr, speaking at the Prospect summer party in Bloomsbury, said the British contingent is about to add Marcus Agius from Barclays. As to the conspiracy theories around the Bilderberg meetings, he’s dumb-founded. “I don’t know what all the fuss is about — they can be very boring.” 

* Nightclub owner Robin Birley and his beloved whippet Arnie, left, were guests last night at his mother Lady Annabel Goldsmith’s summer party at her house near Ham Common. Top topic of conversation was telephone hacking and his half-brother Zac Goldsmith’s fearlessly independent role in Parliament calling for David Cameron to stop Rupert Murdoch buying BSkyB. High point of the evening was a spontaneous piano duet by Jools Holland and Neville Dickie. Other guests included Richard E Grant and his wife Joan Washington, top right, Sir Tim Rice and his daughter Eva, centre right, Jemima Khan, left, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, right, and Sir David Frost.

* The cause of BSkyB share price jitters? “British Sky Broadcasting closed at 715½p on July 11, not 515½p as wrongly stated in the London stock market report on July 12,” says the corrections column in the Financial Times, which yesterday also managed to spell Rupert Murdoch’s name Murdock. Not mistakes the Wall Street Journal would make. 

Westminster council seems to be on a collision course with David Cameron’s Big Society, the Archbishops of Canterbury and Westminster and the Salvation Army. It has just announced a new scheme for Sunday parking fees in the West End which, say representatives of 13 churches in Mayfair, would be expensive for anyone who has to use a car to take part in church activities.The Salvation Army’s Ray Brown, who addressed 250 people at St George’s Hanover Square on the subject, tells me:“We estimate it could cost £30-£40 for anyone coming to London to help with charitable causes. None of those who attended the meeting had any idea about Westminster’s plans for weekend parking fees. Surprise seems to be their strategy.” 

* Relief all round at last night’s launch of Janine di Giovanni’s memoir Ghosts by Daylight at Blakes Hotel  when The Lady editor Rachel Johnson reassured guests that she was not “a predatory lesbian”. This followed a revelation in this paper that she had been accused of sexual harassment by a former female employee. Still, one female guest did proposition her there and then. Di Giovanni thanked her agent David Godwin for sticking with her for 20 years. His patience will be rewarded as Julia Roberts plans to turn her story into a film. 

Lord Waldegrave and his wife Caroline were at Daunt Books in Holland Park last night, as Victoria Gray launched “Give a Book” in memory of her late playwright husband Simon Gray, who died in 2008.The organisation has drawn up a list of books and asks for donations of £5 per book, a copy of which is given to charities such as Age Concern, cancer charity Maggie’s Centres and First Story, which sets up reading groups in schools and was founded by Katie, Lord Waldegrave’s daughter.A new book is added every month, the most recent being William Trevor’s Love and Summer, selected by Dame Antonia Fraser. A Time of Gifts, by Patrick Leigh Fermor, was chosen by Dominic West. “Simon loved to read and to share his reading,” Victoria said. “In his last diary he wrote ‘I could escape for as long as I was reading.’”

Eccentric globetrotting conjuror Drummond Money-Coutts knows a thing or two about £50 notes. His ancestors founded the Queen’s bank, Coutts & Co, and he has done all sorts of tricks involving cash disappearing and reappearing. Now, for his latest stunt, the former banker with Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch has literally started giving money away.“There is no magic in this,” explains Drummond, grandson of the late Lord Deedes and son of Lord Latymer. “I have left five envelopes containing £50 notes at the Natural History Museum  so that people can go and find them. On Wednesday there will be five more and on Saturday I’ll be leaving an envelope containing £1,000.“All details will be in a video on my Facebook page — search for ‘Drummond Money-Coutts’. The money will be in little golden envelopes. What’s in it for me? It’s very simple. It’s the very reason I do what I do — simply to create a little buzz.“In the event that any of the envelopes are still undiscovered in a year’s time, I will go around myself and reveal each location, giving any remaining envelopes to a homeless charity in London. Obviously, the hardest to find will be the one with the £1,000 in it. “It’s simply to spark a little excitement in a venue I adore, and have loved since a little boy”.Let’s hope it all goes smoothly. When Money-Coutts went the US Embassy to perform some tricks for the former ambassador Robert Tuttle, he was stopped by security men because he had 17 knives in his bag.

Julian Assange doesn’t miss a trick. The WikiLeaks founder has put his identity card from his stay in Wandsworth Prison up for auction to help his legal fighting fund.The prison card was one of several lots offered to guests at his 40th birthday party at Ellingham Hall in Norfolk on Sunday, a last hurrah before his day in court today, appealing extradition to Sweden on sex charges. Also on offer were original paper copies of the US diplomatic cables, which WikiLeaks passed on to the Guardian and international newspapers last year. Despite high hopes for an A-list party with invitations sent out to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, the stardust didn’t materialise. The party was comprised largely of British friends and supporters including Dame Vivienne Westwood and Jemima Khan.  “It was quite enjoyable,” says Craig Murray, former ambassador to Uzbekistan. “There were several hundred people there, a very eclectic group.” The conversation also turned to News International’s crises. “There was a fair amount of gloating, as you can imagine,” adds Murray.  

Sophie Anderton (aged 34) is clearly enjoying being an older model. “There was a time when models couldn’t find work past their twenties,” she says. “But it’s thanks to models such as Linda Evangelista, Elle Macpherson and Twiggy that you can have a modelling career in your thirties, forties and fifties if you want to. I’m not saying that is what I want because part of me likes the idea of 2.4 kids and a white picket fence — but the option is there. “It’s true that between about 28-32 it gets very quiet. It did for me because brands don’t know where to place you — you’re too old to be doing the stuff you started out doing but too young to move on to anti-ageing campaigns or the more mature lines. “I’m loving working again now — the anti-ageing stuff is great and I’m loving that I get to wear such glamorous clothes.”

Dame Judi Dench was entertained at a reception at Buckingham Palace last night in honour of her being named Praemium Imperiale Laureate, along with sculptor Anish Kapoor. The Japanese award, worth £115,000, will not be presented until October in Tokyo but the first round of honours was an audience with the Queen. After more than 50 years of hard work, Dame Judi, pictured meeting Her Majesty with Kapoor, centre, and conservationist David Mills, right, admitted she was finally relaxing. “I’ve been bumming around,” she said. “I haven’t worked since February, so this is very nice.”

The lively relationship between Rachel Johnson, editor of The Lady, and her proprietor Julia Budworth waxes and wanes. Julia once said Rachel was obsessed with penises and she wanted to kill her. Later, after Julia’s son Ben was hurt in a motorcycle accident, Rachel said her boss had become a pussycat.Now Julia has written to The Lady to complain about an article by Sandi Toksvig about one of the mag’s distinguished writers, Stella Gibbons. She writes: “No doubt it was written in good faith but unfortunately this is how history becomes distorted and the truth goes to the wall.”Mrs Budworth explains that the then editor Nora Heald did not banish Ms Gibbons to a broom cupboard but provided her with a quiet room where she could write undisturbed.“In those days, The Lady was a bastion of civilisation, thanks to my father, who was in charge then. He chose its exemplary editor. She was no dragon.” How times change, eh? 

* EyespyMP reports a rare sighting of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown in the House of Commons. “Gordon Brown with Sarah and the boys lunching in PCH [Portcullis House]. Will he pay the chamber a visit for once?” Good question. Brown MP has spoken just once in the Commons since the last election. 

* Evan Davis tried hard to be on message when presenting Today from Salford. “The studio here is much nicer than what we have in London,” he announced bravely. We believe you, Evan, we really do.

The Earl of Onslow, who died in May, was a hereditary peer who, because he fearlessly spoke his mind, was re-elected to the Lords at a time when many of his colleagues lost their seats. So how will his son Rupert, 44, who today presents his own credentials in Parliament for taking his father’s seat in the Upper House, live up to the Earl’s reputation? Michael Onslow was hugely popular on both sides of the house. He was the only hereditary peer to appear on Have I Got News For You (twice) and, as a DJ on Radio 3, he introduced hip hop and acid house to his listeners. He once said the Church of England was opposed to buggery and in favour of foxhunting 100 years ago, but by the 21st century had reversed its position. If Rupert holds any of these honourable views he might be wise to keep them under his hat for the time being. Hasten slowly, as his family motto tells him. 

* An embarrassing typo on the front page of today’s FT released to Newsnight last night — Rupert Murdoch’s surname was spelt Murdock. The only other Murdock with a ‘k’ the Londoner can think of is Captain “Howling Mad” Murdock, the pilot from Eighties series The A-Team. Having seen action in Vietnam, Murdock was declared insane and had to be broken out of a mental institution by his mercenary mates. Is this how the FT regards the News Corp boss’s state of mind? 

Ken Livingstone has denounced Boris Johnson for having “had at least two meals with Rebekah Brooks, one dinner and one lunch with James Murdoch, and one dinner with Rupert Murdoch”. But when Livingstone was Mayor, City Hall records show he had lunch with James Murdoch and others on October 10, 2006, two months after Glenn Mulcaire and Clive Goodman had been arrested. He was also a regular attendee at Murdoch’s summer parties. Livingstone’s relationship with Matthew Freud, Murdoch’s son-in-law, has also been scrutinised in the past. As Mayor, he paid Freud £350,000 for public relations work to encourage investment in London. 

Lembit Opik's thirst for publicity knows no bounds. Opik, bidding for the Lib-Dem nomination for Mayor of London, will star in a piece of performance art later this month in Islington.

In the piece, Politics Suite, the former Lib-Dem MP will be exhibited on a raised stage in a Mexican "lucha libre" wrestling mask while the audience use him as a confessional device and tell him their stories. After that, he will be treated to a satirical song and dance performed in his honour before subjecting himself to a quasi-political-style interview.

He will then read a poem by one of the artists and one of his own compositions, before ending the evening by offering to arm-wrestle anyone in the audience brave enough to take him on.

"We had asked him first if he would leg-wrestle, but he said he couldn't because of a paragliding accident," says the evening's artistic curator, William Kherbek. 

Opik, who already knows a little about performance art after stepping out with Cheeky Girl Gabriela Irimia, lost his Montgomeryshire seat at the last election and is now one of only two Lib-Dem candidates offering to participate in the 2012 Mayoral elections. His performance at the George Orwell Tavern on July 21 may or may not boost his popularity. 

Meanwhile, Kherbek, part-time artist and PhD student, is being non-partisan about who stars in his work. "If any other politicians are interested in doing performance art, we would be happy to work with them," he says.

It hardly rivals Hackgate but Joanna Coles, editor of Marie Claire, has been regaling readers of the US glossy with dubious Fleet Street practices. Coles has Jennifer Aniston, star of the film Horrible Bosses, on her cover and she writes in her editor's note: "My own first horrible boss was quite grotesque in his bullying techniques, which he relished practising in front of other colleagues. He would repeatedly attack the same reporter, accusing him daily of smelling bad. Then he would demand another colleague, usually the same long-suffering girl, sniff his victim's armpits and agree out loud that he smelled bad, and when she refused, he would shout at her."

It got worse, she tells her readers: "The same bullying newsman would also insist the paper's cartoonist - who had to deliver his daily illustration by hand - regularly stand on a chair at the front of the office and declaim, 'I am the worst cartoonist in the world'. The cartoonist went on to become a huge success, and the persistent victim went on to marry his father's mistress - who, incidentally, owned a castle. The bully was eventually fired."

Coles once worked at the Guardian and Times. Who could she be talking about?

Many MPs continue to huff and chuff about the influence of Rupert Murdoch and his minions in Westminster. After all, both David Cameron and Ed Miliband have employed (or, in the case of Miliband, are still employing) Murdoch journalists as their press spokesmen. As did one other living saint of our political elite: the Speaker of the Commons himself, John Bercow. "Mister Squeaker" hired, at a cost to the taxpayer of some £100,000 per annum, the PR services of Tim Hames, one-time leader writer of Murdoch's Times. Left-leaning Hames was seen at Wapping as very much a go-between with the Blairites. Indeed, some feel that Bercow hired him specifically to obtain himself a better audience with the Murdoch press.

Obviously there are no hard feelings from Jenson Button over Prince Harry reportedly courting his ex, Florence Brudenell-Bruce. Harry was at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone yesterday hanging out with both Button and Lewis Hamilton, who came fourth in the race. Among those following the action were TV presenter Carol Vorderman and socialite Tamara Beckwith with her friend Tamara Ecclestone, daughter of Formula One boss Bernie.

That George Osborne must be a very forgiving chap. It was the Chancellor, you'll recall, who recruited former News of the World editor Andy Coulson to the Conservative Party in July 2007. It was only six months after he resigned from the newspaper, and only two years after Coulson featured on the front page an old photograph of Osborne with his arm around Natalie Rowe, a known prostitute, while a line of white powder - which Osborne denied was cocaine - sat on the table. No doubt Osborne, like Cameron, thought Coulson deserved a chance to make amends.

Watch out, there's a thief about the Parliamentary estate. Andre Walker, researcher to Tory MP David Morris, has been warning of a series of thefts. "What has been taken?" a concerned friend enquired. "Loads of stuff," Walker replied on Facebook. "The latest loss is my Order of Lenin medal." Best start looking in the Labour ranks.

Sunand Prasad has become president of the Architects Benevolent Society. As president of RIBA in 2009, Prasad was less than benevolent towards Prince Charles, when he described his intervention in the Chelsea Barracks row as "brazen and pernicious".

Spare a thought for the haves and have yachts. Author Kate Morris says she was suffering from "villa fatigue" as she researched her latest novel, Seven Days One Summer, about a holiday reunion. "I've actually had plenty of practice as I spent a lot of time in Mustique," she tells me. "One of the highlights was finding myself attending David Bowie's 40th birthday party. "It was an incredibly intimate dinner for six and we played charades. I'd never met him before, and the first thing he said to me was: 'What are you reading?' I thought God, what a fascinating man."

Sic Transit gloria gravadlax. Pomegranates is no more. The restaurant's colourful owner, Patrick Gwynn-Jones, was the first restaurateur to introduce gravadlax to the capital in around 1983. Clientele in the basement eaterie near Dolphin Square, opened in 1974, included Peter Sellers, Spike Milligan, Morecambe and Wise, Stephen Sondheim, Diana Ross, Henry Cooper and James Hunt - not to mention Princess Margaret and the Princess Royal. But the famous venue closed its massive oak doors for the last time in 2009 and, I can reveal, has just been sold to an anonymous developer. It could even be converted into a private flat. Gwynn-Jones himself, who illustrated a book on Acker Bilk in the 1960s, never regarded it as a "celebrity" restaurant, preferring to describe the cuisine - which included his famous goat curry - as "paupers' food".

A glorious fancy dress party at the Polish Club in Kensington at the weekend where banker and poet Benjie Fraser, 50, threw a birthday party, themed on Arabian Nights, for himself and two of his teenage children. Fraser was dressed as a bishop, while his uncle, Kevin Pakenham, wore a colourful Eastern panjandrum's hat.

But his mother, Dame Antonia Fraser took the biscuit with a twirly Salvador Dalí style moustache, apparently applied with a felt-tip pen. "I think it looks better on a woman than on a man, don't you?" she asked me. Clearly my reassurance was not enough as she then asked me to help her take it off. With a commentary from Paul Johnson's wife Marigold, the Londoner managed this with a napkin dipped in champagne. The Marquess of  Normanby said he was finishing his latest novel, while his wife, Nicola Shulman, was still basking in reviews of her latest book."Nicky's always in a good mood between books," he said. "But it won't be long before she's back to the grindstone."

Blood-curdling screams from The Oldie Magazine, where the old guard has received the order of the boot. Rosie Boycott, travel editor, and Malcolm Gluck, wine correspondent, have been given their marching orders by editor Richard Ingrams and proprietor James Pembroke.Let’s hope the Oldie isn’t being ageist in letting go of two of its most senior writers. Travel and wine both involve considerable amounts of back-scratching and lubricating of the wheels, which it is thought were not tolerated by the puritan standards of Ingrams and Pembroke.Boycott is currently travelling in Denmark and declined to talk about the matter when the Londoner caught up with her this morning.She apparently upset Pembroke at this year’s Oldie Travel Awards at the East India Club, where he happens to be a member, when she tactlessly accused the club of not allowing women members. “This is not the reason for her demise,” says a staffer. “None of us liked the club much.”Boycott, a lifelong feminist and editor of Spare Rib, The Independent, The Independent on Sunday and Daily Express, recently reached the age of 60, as she wrote in The Daily Telegraph. This has traditionally been the retirement age for ladies, whereas men such as Ingrams, 73, are allowed to carry on for longer.Ingrams is to be married on July 16 but no press is invited.

The guest list for Julian Assange’s 40th birthday party on Sunday in Norfolk looks a little fantastical — Hollywood couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, US Vogue editor Anna Wintour and fallen Republican politician Eliot Spitzer are among those invited — but the WikiLeaks team are indeed preparing for the A-list. Attendees have been sent instructions about how to get to Ellingham Hall, the 10-bedroomed farmhouse owned by Frontline Club directors Vaughan and Pranvera Smith. “You can charter a private plane to Norwich International Airport which has a private air strip and is a half-hour taxi journey from Ellingham Hall, or alternatively you can land helicopters on the Ellingham Hall property on the field in the north-west quadrant of this map.”Assange’s appeal against extradition to Sweden over allegations of sexual assault is due to begin on Tuesday next week. Meanwhile, the memoirs he agreed to write last December — apparently to alleviate financial difficulties, not least because of the legal bills he has accrued — have been ditched. Has he  found a new sugar daddy to bolster the bank balance?

When Sir David Hare returned to London this week after a trip to the US with his designer wife Nicole Farhi, right, he got a bit of a shock. The playwright picked up his copy of that day’s Guardian and found that it contained a reference to one of his wife’s designs in the diaries of Alastair Campbell, which the paper was serialising. In it, Campbell sneers at Tony Blair for wearing “some ghastly Nicole Farhi creation”. Even worse, Sir David read on to see a description of his writing as a “bit wooden” by Channel 4’s head of drama, Camilla Campbell, in the paper’s media section. But still, he took it all in his stride. According to a friend, he just smiled and looked at his wife and said: “Welcome home.”

Late-night passers-by at Claridge’s could have been forgiven for thinking the fire alarm had gone off as scores of people spilled out on the street in their pyjamas. In fact it was Tatler’s Pyjama party sponsored by Thomas Pink. Most guests arrived ready to go to bed — there were even a couple of double beds installed in the ballroom for them to recline on — and those who ignored the dress code were asked to change on arrival and provided with PJs. Most stylish guest of the night was Condé Nast managing director Nicholas Coleridge, who wore a specially personalised velvet smoking jacket from Thomas Pink with his initials embroidered on the chest pocket.

It was the party with the poshest address — Spencer House, just off St James’s — and with the most distinguished guest list. The 20th anniversary party last night of the Everyman Library was attended by Lord Owen, Dame Antonia Fraser, Sir Christopher Bland, Alan Yentob, Philip Pullman, David Lodge, Sir Norman Rosenthal and Charles Saumarez Smith. Much of the talk was about the events at News International. “It could give a whole new meaning to ‘News of the Screws’,” joked Private Eye editor Ian Hislop. “I think the whole thing has been got up by the press,” said Nobel laureate Sir Vidia Naipaul. Style guru Stephen Bayley told me: “I don’t read the NoW — I have people who read it for me.”

As part of the London Literature Festival, the Southbank Centre last night held an African Writers’ Evening exploring the role of the bar as a key location in fiction. “I see the bar as a place of coming together,” said Booker prize winner Ben Okri. “People go there to tell stories, they go there to spread rumours, they go there to invent tales, they go there to listen to all the facts about their neighbours that they’ll never get any other way. In fact the bar is a more serviceable community of information than the News of the World or the Mirror put together.”   To echo James Murdoch, let nothing diminish everything this great institution, the bar, has achieved. 

* Sebastian Faulks and Antony Beevor attended the London Library’s summer party last night hosted by its president Sir Tom Stoppard, who has overseen a huge refurbishment. “We’ll have a sliding roof over the reading rooms here by this time next year,” said Stoppard. “It’ll be like Centre Court.”

* Charlie Brooks, husband of Rebekah, made a brief appearance at HarperCollins’ summer party last night at the Orangery. One absentee was agent Ed Victor, who now has his own publishing imprint. “We have a policy of not inviting rival publishers,” said HarperCollins CEO Vicky Barnsley.   “So Ed, you are sadly missed.”

Is Glenda Jackson hankering after a return to the big screen after revealing that she is to stand down from Parliament? The Hampstead and Kilburn MP usually shuns talk of her cinematic past. But she has agreed to make a special appearance at the Tricycle cinema this Sunday for a rare screening of her 1973 classic, A Touch of Class. Ms Jackson will discuss her Oscar-winning role as a divorced fashion designer, starring opposite George Segal, in a Q&A session.Glenda sparked a rush for her plum seat after announcing that she will not seek re-election in 2015 when she is 79.She is certain to have something to say about the cuts which forced Nicolas Kent, artistic director of the Tricycle theatre, to announce that he too is quitting after 27 years at the acclaimed Kilburn arts centre.  

Chancellor George Osborne rubbed shoulders with ex-call girl Helen Wood, below, at the Spectator’s summer party last night. However, David Cameron, normally a regular fixture, never showed up. The demise of the News of the World dominated conversation. Barry Humphries thought Rupert Murdoch would not greatly miss the first paper he bought in this country: “I think he was fed up with the News of the World. His son James doesn’t seem to care about papers at all.”Spectator editor Fraser Nelson is a victim of the telephone hacking scandal as he was a regular NoW columnist. “I have lost my column but hundreds of people have lost their jobs,” he told me.Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis, in a figure-hugging red dress, was sweet-talking Boris Johnson to agree to appear “on my show” .Former Spectator editor Boris, whose sister Rachel and brother Jo were also there, later met the president of Iceland, Olafur Grímsson. “You owe us a lot of money,” said the Mayor. He was reminded that Peter Ackroyd, when on The Spectator, was sent to interview the then woman president of Iceland and was invited into bed with her. A story the News of the World missed. 

One man who is in a unique position to uncover the truth about telephone hacking is the former Cabinet minister and Belmarsh inmate Jonathan Aitken. He has been a mentor to Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator who was imprisoned for his part in the News of the World saga.“Mentoring in this context is just a private arrangement,” says Aitken. “I usually have two or three such relationships with ex-offenders in a year.“There is no doubt that there is a bond between ex-prisoners. We see each other quite regularly and he has met my wife Elisabeth. He is genuinely repentant, apologetic and sincere about the things he has done wrong. The statement he has made was courageous and penitent.“I am so glad he has come out and said publicly the things he has been saying privately for years, that various top people at News International put him under horrendous pressure to do what he did.“Often he didn’t know the names of the people whose numbers he was asked to bug. The time has long passed when News International can pretend he was a rogue trader. He was part of a team.”So where does this place Rebekah Brooks, Andy Coulson and other Murdoch executives? “I couldn’t possibly say,” says Aitken. “Glenn never grasses under pressure of events. He is keeping well below the parapet.”Some say Aitken is in a similar position to the late Bill Deedes who was asked 50 years ago by Harold Macmillan to find out what his fellow Harrovian Jack Profumo was up to. In Aitken’s case, it’s not his old school but prison that is his bond with Mulcaire.

Some welcome dissent at last night’s award for the BBC Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, which was just won on the narrowest of margins by Mao’s Great Famine by Dutch academic Frank Dikötter. The chairman of the judges, author Ben Macintyre, confessed that there was “a terrible fight” in choosing the winner. One of the judges, the biographer Brenda Maddox, publicly dismissed one of the six books, Reprobates by John Stubbs, which is about Cavaliers. She found it boring and unreadable in what was a very unusual public mauling by the panel who normally like to give the impression of unity. In the end she was one of the two who went for the eventual runner-up, Liberty’s Exiles by Maya Jasanoff.There was also an embarrassing technical hiccup after guests including Ian Hislop, AC Grayling, Peter Snow and Antony Beevor had to sit through an hour of commentaries as the cameras rolled for coverage of the awards on BBC2. Just as Macintyre announced it was “crunch time” to hand over the prize, a production assistant stepped in to tell him he had to make up more time for the programme footage.“The judges were great, even the third time around,” joked Hislop.

At the launch of The Huffington Post in the UK at Millbank Towers last night, a discussion led by Richard Bacon with Kelly Osbourne (pictured), Alastair Campbell, Shami Chakrabarti, Celia Walden, and Jon Gaunt quickly turned to the phone hacking scandal. When Campbell was asked by Bacon whether he is friends with Rebekah Brooks, the former Labour spin doctor replied: “Was. I haven’t seen her in a year. Why? Because we lost power.“If she says she didn’t know about the hacking, then I take her word for it. But if it turns out that these allegations are true, then she has to go.” So what should News International do next? “If a story is in the news for 10 days, then it is a crisis. I don’t think this will go away unless the whole truth has been told.”

The opulent White Fairy Tale Love Ball may go down in folklore for its extraordinary costumes. Among the guests at the party held in the Château de Wideville outside Paris were Natalia Vodianova, who wore a Red Riding Hood-inspired gown by Valentino. The Russian model and founder of the Naked Heart Foundation for disadvantaged children in Russia, for which the evening raised money, was all smiles despite the announcement of her separation from her husband Justin Portman last month. 

Mervyn Peake’s son Sebastian helped launch the first publication of his father’s book, Titus Awakes, completed by Mervyn’s widow Maeve Gilmore, at Slightly Foxed on Gloucester Road .He told how his family lived in that part of Kensington when he was a child. “Dylan Thomas used to live with us and he often took me to school to pay the rent,” he said. “He would say, ‘you want to know about pirates, don’t you?’ He told me some astonishing stories.”Publisher John Murray and banker Kevin Pakenham discussed whether it should be Slightly Foxed on Gloucester Road, or in Gloucester Road.“On Gloucester Road may be an Americanism, but if you trace American terms back far enough, you often end up with Shakespeare’s language,” concluded Murray. 

* Happy birthday, Norman Crumb, 66 today. Never heard of him? He also goes by the name Michael Ancram, Marquess of Lothian. As a young man he arrived at a party and introduced himself as “Lord Ancram”. The slightly deaf butler in attendance misheard and announced to the room the arrival of “Mr Norman Crumb”.

* Denis MacShane MP yesterday told the Commons of a poem “doing the rounds” in Afghanistan about Speaker John Bercow’s proposed jaunt to the country. “From Kandahar to Kabul, the whispers grow and grow, stand by Pashtuns and Tajiks, here comes Mr Speaker Bercow.”

The Mayor of London had them rolling in the aisles the other day at a 200th anniversary dinner for Pop, the elite society of Eton prefects who wear spongebag trousers and brightly coloured waistcoats with their tailcoats. “The whole point of Pop is that you learn the art of greasing,” Boris Johnson told 790 fellow members of the Eton Society. The other speakers were Douglas Hurd, former captain of the school, and William Waldegrave, former president of Pop who is now provost of Eton. Greasing is the key to success in life, Boris told them, because until the head master started to interfere, members of Pop elected each other. Boris, I’m told, indulged in some flights of fancy playing to the home crowd telling them they should not apologise to ordinary members of the school who failed to distinguish themselves.This was taken as a sly reference to David Cameron, who never made it into Pop, although his older brother Alexander was at the dinner. Lord Vestey, Sir David Calvert-Smith, Philip Dunne MP, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, Simon Parker Bowles, Charlie Brooks and Sir William Gladstone were there.“I’d say Hurd’s speech scored five stars with gravitas, while Boris scored seven stars with jokes,” said Jonathan Aitken. “Lord Hurd made some moving comments about a recent family tragedy, saying Eton is a much kinder place than it was in his day.”

Was today’s Commons debate about the News of the World phone hacking row cooked up by Speaker John Bercow in a bid to cement his wobbly job security?The debate was called for yesterday by Labour MP Chris “Captain Underpants” Bryant. It so happens that he is Bercow’s greatest friend on the Labour benches. Westminster was awash with rumours yesterday morning that Bercow was going to greenlight the debate — even though such a decision would normally be kept secret. Bercow-watchers suggest that the Speaker (whose wife Sally has been royally teased by the Murdoch press) may have had extensive contact with Bryant in devising a high-profile clash between Parliament and the press.Not everything is going Bercow’s way, however. Today’s Daily Telegraph carries a stinging attack on him by backbench Tory MP Rob Wilson. Reading MP Wilson flays “Mr Squeaker” as self-important and nakedly biased.

You might have thought television presenter Claudia Winkleman, right, had a sunny disposition but it would seem not judging by a diatribe she has just written against summer. “I don’t really ‘get’ summer,” she writes in next month’s Tatler. “I’ve never been one of those girls who spends all year dreaming of wearing denim shorts. Let’s be frank: nobody over the age  of six should actually wear them ... I don’t like sitting outside, and I don’t want go to a park with a bottle of wine, a few bread rolls and some Boursin at three in the afternoon on a Sunday.” She says maxidresses are “awful”, that picnics are “the devil” and describes any item of clothing not “black, heather grey, white or navy” as “bad taste to another level”.  Roll on the autumn.

Noel Coward advised Mrs Worthington not to put her daughter on the stage. However, socialite Amanda Eliasch had no such compunction about making her son Charles (pictured with Amanda) tread the boards in her new play As I Like It, which premiered last night at the Chelsea Theatre. Friends and family turned out in force to watch the drama about a fortysomething unfaithful woman stuggling for love. Also in the house were Bob Geldof’s girlfriend Jeanne Marine, designer Dame Vivienne Westwood, artist Tracey Emin and Eliasch’s set designer Nicky Haslam. Eliasch has denied the play is based on her own life — she is divorced from sportswear tycoon Johnny Eliasch. “The character is brunette, petite, she has a different eating disorder from me,” she insists. 

Hats off to Marie Phillips, whose first novel Gods Behaving Badly is being turned into a Hollywood film. Sharon Stone is set to play Aphrodite and  Edie Falco of Nurse Jackie will play Artemis in the story about Greek gods coming down to play in modern London. “I only found out about it last month,” says Marie, whose father is Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, president of the Supreme Court. “With only a couple days until the film option on the book expired, I got an email out of the blue saying, ‘we’re making the film’. They must have been working on it for a year or two and I didn’t know.”   Marie’s next project is a play for Radio 4 with Robert Hudson entitled Warhorses of Letters, an exchange of correspondence between Wellington and Napoleon’s horses. 

Former Labour MP Bob Marshall-Andrews and novelist A.N. Wilson were both speakers at the Oldie lunch yesterday. Marshall-Andrews told how he was once summoned to the Whips Office after describing his party leader Tony Blair as the worst prime minister for 150 years. “So I told the Chief Whip Hilary Armstrong that Blair was even worse than that — the worst since the Duke of Wellington,” he said. It just so happens that Wilson is a great supporter of the Iron Duke, so Marshall-Andrews backed down immediately. “I only said it to annoy Hilary Armstrong because I knew she knew nothing about Wellington,” he confessed.

* Further to my story yesterday about culture minister  Ed Vaizey and James Murdoch chatting together at Matthew Freud’s weekend party in the Cotswolds, a mole tells me that  Education Secretary  Michael Gove was also in attendance, talking merrily with Rebekah Brooks. Guy Ritchie and Jeremy Clarkson were there too.

* Alastair Campbell  claimed on Newsnight that the power of the press was overstated. To which presenter  Jeremy Paxman replied: “This is an apology for a wasted life in your case ...”  

Theatrical history was made last night when Toby Stephens and Chris Larkin, both sons of Dame Maggie Smith, acted together in a reading of Simon Gray’s 1978 play The Rear Column held at Notting Hill space The Print Room. James Purefoy and Harry Hadden-Paton, fresh from duelling over Sienna Miller in the recent West End hit Flare Path, also participated in the reading of the play about five soldiers stranded in the Congo. Director Harry Burton told me, “I directed the 2008 revival of Quartermaine’s Terms, the last Simon Gray play staged in his lifetime, and just before he died we talked about doing The Rear Column. So I was honouring a commitment made to Simon three years ago.” A revival of Gray’s Butley, with Dominic West, is currently at the Duchess Theatre, and a retrospective of his TV work will be held at BFI Southbank in August.

* Great disappointment at the the Biographers’ Club’s annual summer party at the Polish Hearth Club last night. Princess Michael of Kent, having accepted an invitation, failed to turn up. Yet her lady in waiting had rung the chairman Alan Brooke earlier to ask if someone could be there to “greet her” . PMK often attends Biographers’ Club events and once allowed the club to use her Kensington Palace garden for its summer party.

Good timing last night when 5x15 teamed up with the Independent for an evening of mini-talks on free speech and press freedom. Among those listening to speeches by Independent and Evening Standard chairman Evgeny Lebedev, Mishcon de Reya lawyer Charlotte Harris and Ruby Wax were philosopher AC Grayling, and actors Alan Rickman and Miranda Richardson (pictured). Also on stage was repentant Independent columnist Johann Hari, who called the recent Twitter storm over his journalism “a valuable lesson in free speech”. 

When he takes a break from presenting the BBC2’s Daily Politics and BBC1’s This Week, he’s also on Twitter and Facebook all day. Can Britain take any more of Andrew Neil? The Londoner hears that the BBC thinks so. The word within the Corporation is that Neil is being lined up to take over The Politics Show from Jon Sopel. The BBC1 programme, which includes analysis and big-name interviews, airs for an hour on Sunday lunchtimes and Sopel has presented the show for the past six years. If Neil were to take it on he would be on our screens for six days a week. The Scot has, over the past decade, carved out a comfortable niche in television. Since 2003, the former Sunday Times editor has co-hosted The Daily Politics on BBC2 and the irreverent late-night current affairs show This Week, with Michael Portillo as a regular on his sofa. The BBC has just lost its star political reporter Laura Kuenssberg to ITV and job cuts are expected within the news and current affairs department shortly, meaning a reshuffle is on the cards. The multi-media Neil, normally not shy to tell the Londoner what’s what, has been slow to respond to queries. 

Embarrassment for Alexander McCall Smith at the Southbank Centre’s London Literature Festival. The author was caught out by a young audience member who pointed out a continuity error in his No 1 Ladies Detective Agency series.The boy commented: “In Precious and the Monkeys you wrote that it was her first case but in the No 1 Ladies Detective Agency you said her first case was when she was working for her aunt’s husband’s bus service.”McCall Smith took the comment in good humour. “Well done. That was tremendous. Bull’s-eye.“I’d totally forgotten I’d done that. That’s what comes of writing too many books. Authors who just write one or two books have got no excuse but I would argue that I have. Actually, I’m going to blame my editors — yes, my editors should have picked it up.” He went on: “That’s the best question I’ve had in years. It was terrific, and I think I’m going to give  a richly deserved prize to that questioner.”McCall Smith called the boy to the stage and promptly gave him £20 — but he had to point out that as it was a Bank of Scotland banknote he may need to redeem it before he could spend it.

Has Nancy Dell’Olio lost her man? Two months ago, the Italian diva, pictured, was seen taking holidays with theatre director Sir Trevor Nunn in Cornwall and Italy as his wife, the actress Imogen Stubbs, confirmed the breakdown of their marriage. But Nunn and Stubbs were looking very much together again on Monday when they were seen joining a friend outside High Road House, the Chiswick offshoot of Soho House, for drinks. In fact, it very much seemed like they wanted to be seen together as they were sitting alfresco on the pavement and looking happy in each other’s company. Meanwhile, Dell’Olio, who  turns 50 in August, has continued her adventurous tours of the British social scene with a weekend in Glastonbury and an appearance at the Serpentine Gallery summer party in the past fortnight — both times without Nunn as escort. 

Finch’s Quarterly Review last night threw a July 4 party at the Serpentine lido, hosted by media entrepreneur Charles Finch. Mariella Frostrup cajoled guests to swim the fastest length of the lido, though she didn’t go in herself, sending in husband Jason McCue instead. Charles Finch led the way, helping to raise money for the clean water initiative, Charity: Water. While the BBC’s creative director Alan Yentob eagerly stripped off to his trunks, Hugh Grant sadly couldn’t be persuaded to model Finch’s Chucs luxury swimwear for the event. 

As a former aide to Princess Diana, Patrick Jephson made £2 million from his controversial 1999 book, Shadow of a Princess, in which he caused uproar at the Palace by writing about her mental instability, hypochondria and love of dirty jokes.But this hardly explains why he and his wife Mary Jo Jacobi Jephson were listed as sponsors of last night’s Ronald Reagan Centennial Banquet at the Guildhall. He may be rich, but surely not that rich.The answer is that Mary Jo, who he married in 2005, is wealthy in her own right. A former White House adviser to Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr, she has held high-powered posts with Royal Dutch Shell, Lehman Brothers and HSBC Holdings. So her husband may not need to write any more revealing tomes.

* There may have been no sign of any Coalition ministers at Sky’s summer party last Thursday on the day News Corporation was given the conditional green light to buy BSkyB but over the weekend it was a different story. Culture minister Ed Vaizey was at Matthew Freud’s party at his Cotswolds house  — and was seen in confab with James Murdoch. 

* Some surprise that The Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News International, led with the story on its front page today that its sister paper, The News of the World, has been charged with hacking Milly Dowler’s phone. Was this meant to lend credence to Murdoch’s promise that Sky News would be editorially independent of News Corp if he took over BSkyB? Or is the Times, also in theory independent, just trying to help the Government believe this?

Rocky waters over at the Chelsea Boatyard, where houseboat owners who include Damien Hirst, Yo Sushi founder Simon Woodroffe and Bob Geldof’s girlfriend Jeanne Marine are facing a hostile takeover. The Chelsea Reach Residents’ Association, of which Hirst and Woodroffe are members, has been trying to buy out the current owners, The Chelsea Boat and Yacht Company, and take control of its muddy stretch of the Thames for a price thought to be around £4.75 million. However, the association has been told that time is running out. It has to put down its deposit for the buyout within an absolute deadline of July 27, as there is another purchaser waiting in the wings, with his chequebook at the ready.Property entrepreneur Peter de Savary said in April that he had lost interest in the project but his name continues to be whispered in fear by the residents. They are anxious that an outside buyer will transform the Bohemian boatyard, which has been in existence since 1935 and housed in its time Lord Olivier and musician Nick Cave, into an exclusive marina development.  Tom Bouwens, who is leading the residents’ team,  said he couldn’t comment at the moment because of the commercial sensitivity of the project. “This is not the point when we can discuss it publicly,” he said. 

Prince Albert’s new wife may have been a bashful bride at the weekend but members of the International Olympic Committee were not so shy about clambering aboard the marital bandwagon. The IOC, which enjoys a reputation for high living, postponed important business so that scores of its members could attend the royal nuptials. Some 37 members of the IOC witnessed the Monaco wedding of Prince Albert — himself an IOC member — to former South African Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock. It meant that the IOC cabinet meeting in Durban, with issues around London 2012 on the agenda, had to be postponed from yesterday to today. It was also frustrating for cities bidding to host the 2018 Winter Games, who lost a vital day to lobby the IOC members ahead of this Wednesday’s vote. Prince Albert invited all 100-plus members of the IOC. Those who accepted included president Jacques Rogge. British members thought to have attended were Sir Craig Reedie and Adam Pengilly, but not Britain’s third IOC member Princess Anne.The IOC insists it will not make a habit of rearranging meetings for social functions. “These were quite exceptional circumstances and not all those who were invited went,” says a spokesman.

A cautionary tale from Gary Lineker as celebrities prepare for their summer holidays. “A memorable ‘celeb’ beach moment was back in 2000,” the former England football striker, pictured with his wife Danielle, tells an Orlebar Brown Q&A. “I was on holiday in Sardinia with family when I spotted two paps snapping away. After a while I approached one of them and said that surely they had taken enough pictures by now, to which he replied, ‘Sorry, we don’t know who you are — we’re taking pictures of Jon Bon Jovi, who’s sitting next to you’. Most embarrassing.”

Daniel Chatto, centre, lent a touch of class to the Goodwood Festival of Speed in West Sussex, making a pit stop at the Cartier Style and Luxury lunch. He was joined by his wife Lady Sarah, right, and Viscount Linley’s wife Serena, left. They turned out to see past Formula One champions John Surtees, Nigel Mansell and Damon Hill but the star of the show was Lewis Hamilton. “It’s great to be here again,” he said.” And to get back in one of my old cars. Normally we don’t get to do any doughnuts and stuff like that.”