The feral beast: You just can't help some people

I hear of a distressing example of ingratitude towards the Daily Mail's vigilant determination to keep us alive.

The paper's "take no chances" attitude to cancer has provoked a piece of impertinence on Facebook (tinyurl.com/yeyh2s2), where the menaces are listed in full. Among the killers in our midst are, wait for it (and these are just from the B's): baby food, bacon, beef, being a black person, being a woman, being southern, biscuits, blow jobs – all complete with web references. Don't say you weren't warned.

Rubin's in no rush

US political hunk James Rubin landed at Heathrow airport at 10.45am on Monday. An hour and 15 mins later he sauntered into the BBC's Millbank studios for the Daily Politics – with 30 seconds to spare. A scary moment for the programme, but Rubin himself – nothing if not a cool dude – behaved as though he did it every day.

Cross words over crossword

One of our national newspapers was recently threatened with a libel action over a crossword clue. The puzzle invited solvers to name the current man of a young actress. One of London's top libel lawyers representing a young man, also an actor (apparently of the minor celeb variety – we don't know who) complaining that the number of letters in the answer was the same as those in his surname. Since he was adamant that he was NOT seeing the actress in question, he had been potentially libelled, So would the paper 1 Down: promise not to do it again; 5 Across: pay his costs and 17 Down: cough up damages?

'Shutters' risks wrath of Oxford

Libby Purves's appointment as theatre critic of The Times has elicited predictable harrumphs from the Critics' Circle, not least class warrior Ian Shuttleworth of the Financial Times. But "Shutters" should perhaps tread with caution. Feral Beast hears that Oxford-educated Purves is an acquaintance of the FT's Oxford-educated editor, Lionel Barber.

BBC flunks bluefin exposé

The risk-averse BBC TV still has its moments of robust journalism, and BBC3's lid-lifting Britain's Really Disgusting Food is among them. But Monday's programme, having painted a picture of the disgraceful over-fishing of bluefin tuna, pixellated the faces of diners going in and out of the ritzy Nobu restaurant in central London, which still serves it. If you're making a case, do it with conviction. Shame those shabby celebs.

Richard Bacon: a clarification

The Feral Beast last week reported Richard Bacon's glowing praise for, apparently, David Cameron, in The Sun. In fact – as we realised but didn't make clear – his comments were a joke description of himself not Cameron, whom he was interviewing. We were trying to compare the pair, and make a point about The Sun's esteem for Dave, but it was so elliptical as to make us look dim and Bacon look unprofessional. Apologies.