David Cameron will be forgiven a cackle at another's misfortune next week. The Conservative leader was publicly embarrassed last month by his Swedish deputy treasurer Johan Eliasch, who accused Dave of a "lurch to the right", and quit to enter Gordon Brown's big tent as a climate adviser.
Now it is the turn of Eliasch to hear uncomfortable words. An Amazonian Indian in full shaman regalia (head-dress, beads, teeth etc) is flying to London with Survival International to doorstep the sportswear tycoon over his rainforest conservation scheme.
Eliasch, who is worth £350m, has bought 400,000 acres of Amazonian rainforest to save it from loggers, soya farmers and cattle ranchers. He encourages others to do the same, paying £70 an acre at his foundation, Cool Earth. Supporters include Sir Nicholas Stern, Philip Pullman, Ricky Gervais and Ian Hislop.
But the UN prize-winner Davi Kopenawa Yanomami, claims Eliasch has "exaggerated" the benefits of his "useless" scheme. "You napëpë [whites]," says Kopenawa, "want to buy pieces of rainforest. This is useless. The forest cannot be bought; it is our life and we have always protected it. Give us back our lands and our health before it's too late for us and for you."
Eliasch's pal Matthew Owen, director of Cool Earth, praises Kopenawa but rejects the "very aggressive attack". He says: "We give rainforest back to communities and work to support them in sustaining their lifestyles." Someone could end up being fed to the piranhas here.
Publicists need to keep Sam's story under Control
Sam Riley is tipped for honours for his portrayal of the Joy Division singer Ian Curtis in the excellent biopic Control. Publicists may want to stop peddling the 27-year-old newcomer's rags-to-riches tale, however.
Riley, we are often told, was plucked from obscurity from a Leeds warehouse where he spent his days folding shirts to "pay the bills". Maybe. But his upbringing wasn't quite the stuff of Hovis adverts.
Riley was a pupil at Uppingham, the well-heeled private boarding school in Rutland which is alma mater to the likes of Stephen Fry (expelled for shoplifting), Johnny Vaughan (before his imprisonment for dealing cocaine), Boris Karloff (aka Frankenstein) and famous artists. The actor Hugh Jackman was a teaching assistant there at 19.
"Sam was a very good cricketer," says an old school chum. "The fees were over £20,000 a year, so no-one was exactly on the breadline."
Amy's fit for a Prince
So, no eating turkey sandwiches for days or interminable family games of charades for Amy Winehouse this year. The vagarious singer has apparently received a crackly transatlantic phone call from none other than the human hairball known as Prince, offering to help fill her Yuletide vacation.
Wino sang with the Purple One at an afterparty for one of his London shows in September. He wants more and has, I'm informed, invited Amy to his Minnesota pile to make sweet music together after Christmas.
The source adds that it would be a work trip, so Winehouse's manky druggie husband Blake Fielder-Civil has not been invited to attend.
Rat pack
Wahey! It's the fraud industry's annual shindig in the Warwickshire countryside, the Experian Fraud Forum. Delegates will be addressed on staff fraud, ID theft, open accounts, insurance scams and internet cheats.
The keynote speech will be made by Misterrrr... Jeffrey Archer! Cough. "How to Write a Bestseller," reads the programme. Organisers promise the ex-lag will also review Her Majesty's lodgings at Belmarsh.
* Revolutionary talk in the corridors of Westminster. The Serjeant at Arms has told MPs they can now push in front of staff and researchers in the queues for cafes, lifts, photocopiers, telephones, etc. Choice words are being prepared for the Serjeant should he attempt this himself.
Doug's pamper and a pint
Douglas Alexander, Gordon Brown's second-bestest friend, has been running around blowing his election bugle for weeks, telling everyone what a good idea an early general election would be.
As Labour's election co-ordinator, Alexander has worked staff at the party's Victoria Street headquarters "to the bone" in recent weeks. This follows my report three months ago that lifers at the Department for International Development had their sarongs in a twist over the hardline working practices of their new boss (D Alexander). Doug is feeling a bit sheepish about all this and so, on Friday night, once it became clear Brown had bottled it, he took admin staff out for a grovelling drink to say sorry. Clearly, there were still a few moping faces on Monday morning – so they were given the afternoon off as well.
Email pandora@independent.co.uk
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