A quick brown fox jumps over Commons security

* A wild fox evaded Commons security yesterday and spent several hours pacing the corridors outside MPs' offices.

* A wild fox evaded Commons security yesterday and spent several hours pacing the corridors outside MPs' offices.

The cunning creature, who was discovered on the fifth floor of Portcullis House, managed to get past the through several security cordons - including doors which can only be opened with photo ID cards.

MPs wondered if the fox's appearance was an inside job by pro-hunt sympathisers who could have smuggled him into Parliament overnight - perhaps in a duffel bag.

His surprise appearance came as the House of Lords debated the hunting bill and argued to keep fox hunting legal. In September, pro-hunt protesters managed to get into the House of Commons chamber before they were dragged out by the ex-Army "men in tights."

A House of Commons spokeswoman said she was baffled by the creature's appearance, but an investigation had been launched. "Inquiries are being made about how he might have got in. We are all a bit foxed," she quipped.

Observers who saw the male fox being taken out in a cage said he looked "very frightened but quite plump and healthy."

He was taken to an RSPCA wildlife centre in Thurrock, Essex and will be released later this week on land where there is no hunting.

"It was a good thing he wasn't wandering around the House of Lords," said one observer yesterday. "He wouldn't have lasted long."

* NOBODY IS looking forward to Kate Beckinsale's reprisal of her role as a leather-clad vampire in Underworld more than her co-star Bill Nighy, left. He tells me that they're going to start filming in the new year.

"I'm really looking forward to reprising my role as a 5,000-year-old vampire," he said at the London Film Festival premiere of Enduring Love .

"It's going to be great fun. The only problem is that they make me dress up in latex - cover my face in it. I look great, but it means nobody would go out for lunch with me."

While that might sound a hard act to follow, Nighy is then planning to return to the genre that made him, in recent times, a star.

"Then I'm doing a romantic comedy written by Richard Curtis. We've just heard that Dan Yates has agreed to direct it, so it's going to be fantastic!"

* IMAGINE PANDORA'S excitement at receiving an e-mail purporting to be from the iconic game-show host William G Stewart, left.

"Heads turned on the concourse at Gatwick Airport last Friday," he writes, "when the tannoy asked, 'Will Mr William G Stewart please return to Caviar House?' He had left his credit card behind ... As he arrived he was greeted by a group of passengers with quiet but respectful applause. What pleased him most is that the name on his credit card is simply W Stewart!"

When I call to check the authenticity of this charming tale, Stuart has barely caught his breath.

"My family has teased me ever since," he beams, "but I've told them, 'Just wait till you see it in print.' They laugh, but I still think it's extremely classy."

* ALAN TITCHMARSH is adding to his reputation as a Renaissance man by compiling a book of poems to be published next Christmas.

Titchmarsh, the gardener, novelist and now presenter of BBC natural history programmes, has been working on the collection for two years and has just secured a publication date of Christmas 2005.

Titchmarsh's literary agent tells me the book will be published by BBC Books, but as yet has no title. "It will be a book for families," he adds.

This is quite a change from the author's first novel, Mr MacGregor , which was the runner-up in the 1998 Bad Sex Awards. "In the face of stiff opposition I'm glad I came," said Titchmarsh at the time. "In my part of Yorkshire sex is what posh people get their coal in."

* Throughout all the ups and downs of political life - and a somewhat tense relationship with his next-door neighbour - Chancellor Gordon Brown's supporters have always been able to stress his single greatest strength: prudence.

Now, however, even this is being called into question. For, according to a new biography by Tom Bower, his hands might not be so steady after all.

In the book, the New Labour apparatchik Derek Draper recalls a desperate message from Brown's secretary, Sue Nye, one day in 1993:

"Don't cash that cheque," she urged. "Gordon is temporarily overdrawn."

pandora@independent.co.uk