Leak shows 'Deadly' Doug's staff get three hours sleep

* Crack! The shot of a whip reaches Pandora from the Department for International Development, where Douglas Alexander - Gordon Brown's second bestest friend, after Ed Balls - is building a power base to rival his Cabinet colleagues.

The bugle-playing Alexander, 39, sounds like a guy who pours Red Bull over his cornflakes. As well as being Development Secretary, he is Gordon's election lieutenant. He has already upset the Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, by making a speech distancing the UK from its "special relationship" with the US. The two are tipped as leadership rivals whenever Gordon goes.

Now Alexander wields the strap at his new civil servants. A top DfID mandarin has emailed staff to warn them that the eight-hour day is over, under Doug's plans to make DfID "a big hitter, in the middle of things". Policy director Andrew Steer adds, in the leaked memo, that staff must work harder and expect late-night calls to brief ministers for Newsnight - and that Alexander's private secretary, Howard Taylor, "has been getting by on three hours' sleep a night". Doug has been lent Shriti Vadera, Gordon's wide-eyed axe wielder from the Treasury, to effect the changes.

Steer warns colleagues: "These guys are highly decisive. They want quick, effective briefings, to make a decision. Don't be too thin-skinned." Doug's office denies Steer's claims that Doug will live at No 10 and not use a ministerial red box.

Steers reveals staff worries about setting "ground rules ... to protect work-balance and safeguard against higher stress". Good luck!

* Kevin Spacey had dusted off his trumpet to herald the return of Sam Mendes to the London stage in 10 months' time.

Mendes, the artistic director at the Donmar Warehouse for a decade before Hollywood and Kate Winslet (now his wife) called, set theatrical pulses racing in April when he announced his intention to bring productions of Hamlet and The Tempest to Spacey's Old Vic theatre in May 2008 - a venture that would reunite the pair after their 1999 Oscar-triumphing film American Beauty.

The fanfare will, unfortunately, be muffled a little longer. The two plays - the first part of a three-year transatlantic Bridge Project - have been cancelled after the withdrawal of actor Stephen Dillane because of family illness.

Audiences must now wait until spring 2009, when Mendes will direct Simon Russell Beale in The Winter's Tale and The Cherry Orchard.

* The sinister Holocaust denier David Irving appears to be plotting a comeback. Strangely, it will be set against the backdrop of one of our most esteemed centres for understanding international affairs.

Irving, who once rubbished the idea that Auschwitz existed to murder Jews - "It's baloney; it's a legend" - was spotted filming yesterday in one of the hallowed halls of Chatham House.

The institution prides itself on its independence, but might this be a bit much?

Over to Chatham House.

"It was a private booking, you don't need to give a name, you just pay the rental fee," says a spokesman. "We didn't know it would be him." Wonderful!

* The residents of Pimlico's Dolphin Square block of fancy riverside flats - among them the Olympics panjandrum Lord Coe, the former police chiefs Lord Stevens and Sir Ronnie Flanagan (they live separately) and dozens of MPs - awoke with a clatter yesterday as towers of scaffolding attached to the building plummeted to the ground. Readers will be relieved to hear that no one was squashed and MPs' holiday plans are unaffected.

* Health Secretary Alan Johnson held summer drinks on Tuesday. His Tory shadow, Andrew Lansley, has urged AJ to steal his clothes on NHS reform. Says sharp-suited Al: "No thank you. I'm not into Man at C&A." Ouch!

* I do hope the Labour MP Kevan Jones doesn't feel a muddy boot connecting with the seat of his trousers. He's been asking awkward questions about why our armed forces' top brass need cushy private residences and how much public money they spend on alcohol.

The MoD surrenders the modest details: the Chief of the General Staff, Gen Sir Richard Dannatt claimed just £521.33 last year. The Adjutant General, Lt Gen Sir Freddie Viggers (whose home had a £13,000 taxpayer makeover), spent a reasonable £394.83 on booze, including £22.70 on wining the private secretary to Princes Will and Harry, Mr Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, and £26.62 on plonk for Gen Sir Mike Jackson and "Gen" Sir Max Hastings. Bargain!

But Jones is wilier than that: "The armed forces are stretched and the budgets tightened - yet senior officials are given houses with servants. The reason for this, we're told, is that they need it for entertaining. So why bother when some are entertaining at home just 13 times a year?"

pandora@independent.co.uk