Pandora: Boris forced to cough up over C-charge fine

It is comforting to know that Boris Johnson is not immune to the draconian measures ordinary Londoners are forced to suffer because of the capital's congestion charge.

The London Mayor has confessed that he forgot to pay the £8 toll 48 hours after he drove to light the Hanukkah menorah at a ceremony in Trafalgar Square last month. As any commuter will tell you, such an oversight automatically results in a £60 fine.

"I was a victim of this wretched system only the other day... I was done by my own system," the Mayor told listeners to Vanessa Feltz's phone-in show on LBC Radio yesterday. "I forgot to pay and then 'bing!' I got the £60 fine which I have just coughed up." The revelation came as Johnson was making the case for a new account-based system, which would make it easier for Londoners to pay the charge.

"That would get away from the crazy system whereby you suddenly get clobbered by these fines," he explained.

The Mayor, it should be said, has taken a somewhat laissez faire attitude towards traffic laws in the past, particularly when it comes to the famous bicycle he chooses to ride around town without wearing a helmet.

Last spring, a Sunday newspaper photographed him shooting through six red lights, then failing to stop at a zebra crossing before finally mounting the pavement.

Viva Vegas: Johnny's back on stage

Johnny Vegas is to make a dramatic return to stand-up, nearly eight months after he was accused of molesting a member of his audience. The lugubrious comic will perform later this month at a benefit gig for rugby league star Paul Sculthorpe, who plays for Vegas's beloved St Helens.

It will be Vegas's first time on stage since his notorious appearance at London's Bloomsbury Theatre last April, when his performance moved one audience member to pen an article.The piece contained accusations that Vegas had groped a female member of the audience's breasts.

"It is his first gig since the Bloomsbury, not because of what was printed – he's been busy filming and doesn't have the time to do stand-up any more," says a spokesman.

"Johnny has known Paul for quite a while. He is a big supporter of St Helens and has done a few testimonial gigs for the players over the years."

A match made in paradise

Recent pictures of Amy Winehouse canoodling with a well-scrubbed youth during her holiday in St Lucia are another feather in the cap for the Caribbean island's tourism industry.

The troubled singer, whose estranged husband, Blake Fielder-Civil, is serving time for assault and perverting the course of justice, has been spotted strolling with Joshua Bowman, a 21-year-old former pupil of Wellington College.

St Lucia, it appears, is becoming quite the hotspot for jilted divas looking for a bit of "posh". Charlotte Church fled there after a messy break-up in 2004, only to fall into the arms of a strapping young lad called Ed Foy, a contemporary of Bowman at the Berkshire public school.

Joanna down with the kids

Joanna Trollope, queen of the "Aga saga", jollified the sofa on the BBC's Breakfast show yesterday by declaring that she ventured to the Neighbourhood nightclub in west London to research her latest novel.

For those not familiar with the capital's more salubrious hotspots, it is a grimy boite in Ladbroke Grove which hosts such DJs as Mizz Fat Booty and a fellow styled Johnny Negro.

"Everyone was wonderful," Trollope said. "Not once was I asked what the granny was doing there."

TV execs steam up over sex book

Further to yesterday's story about In Bed With, an anthology of erotic tales written by the likes of Rachel Johnson and Jane Moore, it appears the book has caught the eye of television executives. The novelist Kathy Lette, whose writing also features in the tome, says two production houses are haggling over the rights to film the racy stories.

"There are discussions going on with two companies," she tells me. "It will be like Sex And The City. Except more sex, and less city."

The art of being a Cabinet minister

How do ministers while away all those long and (no doubt) often tedious hours being in government? The arts minister Barbara Follett, who studied painting at university in Cape Town, likes to doodle. "I draw small portraits of people when I'm in meetings," she tells the Art Newspaper. Does she prefer naturalistic portraits or caricatures? "That depends on how I feel about the person."

pandora@independent.co.uk