Pandora

No 10 was making some interesting noises this week apropos the ruckus over Mo Mowlam's diaries. When Alastair Campbell was asked if he thought it strange that a Cabinet minister could be so obviously pushing their memoirs, he merely replied, "It's New Labour", leaving those around him wondering whether the country was governed by politicians or publishers. As for Mo's future, the smart money says she will be pushed out of the Cabinet in next summer's reshuffle, so her memoirs will cause as little damage as possible to the following year's election campaign.

IT HAS been brought to Pandora's attention that Steve Norris has some charming soubriquets. The man most likely to head the list of Tory mayoral candidates has at least three unofficial middle names. First, there's "Shagger", as favoured by satirist Ian Hislop and Labour rival Ken Livingstone, who used the term at a press conference yesterday. Then there's the more refined "Ladykiller", Pandora's personal favourite. Completing the collection is "Nap-Hand", a lesser-known nickname used by the good folk of Epping Forest when Steve was their MP. Its meaning? To score five times.

Like the Scout movement, veteran photographer Lord Lichfield believes in being prepared. "I once was asked to do a shoot for Triumph motorbikes in Italy," he told Pandora at the launch of his latest project at London's Proud Galleries. "The shoot was to take place in a barn. When I arrived I found three girls in their underwear, one with a small front, one with a medium-sized front and another with a large front," said Lichfield, illustrating his point with the appropriate hand gestures. "I asked: `Where are the motorbikes?' But the girls shook their heads. `Wrong kind of Triumph,' they replied."

HAVE REPORTERS at The Sunday Times forgotten their editor John Witherow's diktat that all telephone interviews be recorded to ensure quotes are attributed correctly? In last Sunday's tired old "scoop" about human evolution it quotes Richard Dawkins, the Oxford University zoologist, as being a former professor at Sussex University. It also quotes Dawkins saying: "Our bodies are now eternally fixed in shape." Both these assertions are news to Dawkins.

Tuesday's launch of the Vogue Book of Twentieth-Century Fashion was attended by no one in particular. But that made it all the more easy to talk to author Linda Watson, a sort of Vivienne Westwood look-alike, albeit smaller and sexier. It took Watson "eight intensive months" to research a century of style, during which she looked through Vogue's entire back catalogue. "I was really struck by how intellectual the old issues were," she told Pandora, "but, like everything else, it has become dumbed- down." Despite this admission, Vogue shouldn't be striking Watson off its Christmas card-list just yet. "I wouldn't have done this for anyone else," she says. "Vogue is still the best."

WINONA RYDER wants to make a sequel to Heathers, the cult film that catapulted her to fame. And, if her recent comments are anything to go by, she certainly needs a confidence boost. "Sometimes I look like an alien," she said this week. "My ears stick out, I have an unusual face, I'm kind of weird-looking." The low opinion the actress has of herself stems from childhood when she "was very scrawny and got beat up by some kids who thought I was an effeminate boy". Poor love.

New York is a big town but is it really big enough for Hillary Clinton, Rudy Giuliani and Imelda Marcos? The footwear-crazed wife of the late dictator of the Philippines confirmed she is "seriously considering" joining the race to be New York's senator. "I was a First Lady, too, just like Hillary," says Imelda. Explaining why she is born to run, Imelda added: "At least I'd do a great thing for the shoe industry in New York."