Cameron's brother the only flesh presser in the village

* If David Cameron thinks he has a tough task leading the Conservative Party to victory over Gordon Brown's invigorated Labour, he might spare a thought for his brother Alex, three years his senior.

Owing to a clerical cock-up, Alex Cameron QC - a connected criminal barrister who is married to the cousin of chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, and who represented Jeffrey Archer and Jonathan Aitken in their perjury trials - finds himself elected as the chairman, the secretary, the treasurer and the clerk of Peasemore Parish Council, near Newbury, Berkshire.

A "mix-up with the nomination forms" prevented three other candidates from submitting their applications on time - leaving Eton-educated Alex, above, (same manner of speech as his brother, just more grey hair) to run the village's high-octane affairs single-handed.

"It is difficult to find people who are willing to take on the role of parish councillor," he tells the local paper. "I think it is the responsibility of everyone to do their bit for the local community."

He adds: "I do not see that there is any comparison between the work that I do and the work my brother does." Overly modest.

Their father Ian, once the High Sheriff of Berkshire, said that his two sons have "completely separate roles".

It was Alex who advised young Dave, when uncertain about entering the Tory leadership race against battleaxe David Davis: "You've got to go for it." Alex also helps his sibling on legal matters. Time for Dave to lend him some interns?

* Talk about biting the hand that feeds you... Mid-speech, at Waterstone's "25 Authors for the Future" party in Piccadilly, the managing director Gerry Johnson, suddenly smashed through the safety barrier and went skiing off-piste, to the alarm of his public relations advisers.

Announcing that JK Rowling had won the Readers' Poll for her Harry Potter books, Johnson said: "There are books that are better written." (Sharp intake of breath from audience.) "There are books that have... um... a better plot." (Room temperature rises two degrees.) "Buuuut Harry Potter has brought millions of children to reading!"

The PR minders breathed on his neck for the rest of the night. "No, I wasn't playing to the audience," he told me afterwards. "I, er, I think people should read a range of books, written in different ways. JK's a wonderful author. They're great books."

* Alan Rickman, Tessa Jowell, Juliet Stevenson, Jon Snow and Grayson Perry were among the guests bumping into one another inside Antony Gormley's new steam-filled glass box, Blind Light, at the Hayward Gallery on Wednesday. Visitors to the sculpture become the unnerved/liberated subjects, unable to see their hands groping for the exit.

Pandora was surprised to find Gormley scrabbling about the floor upstairs. He was picking up pieces from his human hedgehog work Capacitor II which seemed to be falling apart before his eyes. "Oh, er, don't worry about that," he said, passing handfuls of metal rods to a gallery assistant. "It's fine."

Transvestite guerrilla potter Grayson Perry has returned from his show in Tokyo. "I felt quite ordinary there because it's such an extraordinary country."

* Last week I reported that the flaky Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett was faced with either resigning when Gordon arrives, or "taking the long caravan ride into the sunset".

The latest grand claim: the old dear will be Health Secretary. It must be true, because it's the talk of the car pool, and the drivers usually know what's going on before ministers do.

* Scottish would-be chancellor Alistair Darling sounded strangely like his ritzy Cabinet colleague Charlie Falconer on Today yesterday. Has the Trade and Industry Secretary been consumed by his own hungry eyebrows, requiring Falconer to stand in? Or is he toning down his accent to become more palatable to the English electorate? "Absolutely no!" giggles his special adviser.

* I do hope that Chelsea fans will behave themselves at tomorrow afternoon's FA Cup Final, the first at the stunning new Wembley Stadium. For in their midst will be the artist Nick Botting, balancing his palette and easel while working on a large painting to commemorate the occasion.

Botting, whom we last heard from in December, following his portrait of the Parliament Square anti-war protester Brian Haw, will complete a 12ft by 4ft triptych for the Football Association.

"The FA asked me to do it as they want a record of the first final here," he says. "Unlike a photograph, I can capture whatever I want about the day." (Let's hope his artistic licence extends to painting over the holes in the roof.) He adds: "I'll sit in the Chelsea stand but I won't take sides. I'll be too busy painting."

pandora@independent.co.uk