The feral beast: Coren will need an Ap for that

Splenetic Times columnist Giles Coren must be running out of things to get angry about – he has just signed up to write a new technology column for science mag T3.

"I can't believe a gadget magazine has asked me to write a column for them. It's like asking Gordon Brown to write about charm," he says. "Technology is truly the thing I know least about. I'm just going to have to bluff my way through it. Or get some teenage geek to write a computer programme that'll do it for me." Let's hope the T3 subs know what they're in for.

Coleridge declares his Bowie love

Condé Nast grand fromage Nicholas Coleridge has revealed he has a whopping man-crush on David Bowie writing a gushing eight-page tribute in the new issue of GQ. Pegged to nothing in particular, Coleridge recalls the highs and lows of a lifelong passion, including going to a gig with the satirist Craig Brown, who "had reservations, even dared mock. Well, some people exist on a less sensitive plane and just can't get it." It culminates with Coleridge meeting the man himself: "Nicholas Coleridge?" says Bowie, "Oh, yeah. Iman and I really enjoyed your last three books...." Who said GQ was just one big cosy love-in?

First sightings of August 'news'

Far be it from us to pour cold water on someone else's story, but weren't two of the supposedly biggest from last week rather old hat? The Guardian went into sanctimonious meltdown over the WikiLeaks files showing that there had been many civilian Afghan casualties, and that Pakistan had helped the Taliban. Well, yuh-ha. Then the BBC spent much of Thursday puffing Nick Robinson's documentary which told us that David Cameron had been prepared not to become PM while thrashing out the coalition deal. It must be August.

'Sixth-former' Robinson thrashed

And it's not just us wot thinks Nick Robinson's swagger is getting a bit much – writing in the New Statesman, comedian Chris Addison bemoans the newsman's infantilising form of delivery. "[His] style of failing to tell me the news straight makes me want to bite chunks out of my television in despair .... Do bear in mind, as he seems unwilling to do so, that he is not the sketch-writer for a sixth-form paper, but the BBC's political editor." Quite.

Joan's taste upsets advertiser

As if she weren't expensive enough (her wordage rate is famously eye-watering) Joan Collins may have just lost The Spectator a major advertiser. The manager of posh St James's restaurant Wiltons has written to complain that she puffed two of its competitors in a recent diary column and not Wiltons, even though for years they have had an ad on that page. "You could have been a bit more thoughtful," he moans. But hold on, since when did columnists have to puff the advertisers? To add insult to injury, Susan Hill writes in praise of another rival, Green's, in her diary this week. But the Wiltons langoustine is nowhere to be seen.