Pandora: Why Jack opted out of Africa to stay in Scotland

The former Scottish first minister Jack McConnell has finally piped up about why he spurned Gordon Brown's job offer to send him to sunny Malawi to become the British High Commissioner.

Jack would have lived a luxurious colonial lifestyle, had a diplomatic car, a staff of 40 and an opulent residence in the Malawi capital, Lilongwe – sporran flapping in the Rift Valley breeze. He was set for a happy life as part of New Labour's "Sunshine Set", which includes former Blairite ministers Helen "Stalin's granny" Liddell (sent to be Our Woman in Oz) and Paul Boateng (plum job, High Commissioner to South Africa).

But, with Labour falling faster in the polls than that "Tower of Terror" ride at the Disney-MGM studio in Florida, the PM is in no mood for a by-election. McConnell explains that there was, after all, "no pressing need" for him to head to Malawi.

"I changed my mind about resigning my seat," he tells Holyrood Magazine. "I am only 48 and that is a position I could take up at some other time." (Bit presumptious.)

Perhaps, in the end, it will turn out to be for the best – the Foreign Office recently announced that Boateng would return from his posting, after staff complained that they felt "bullied" by his wife.

Don't mess with Kristin's earrings

*Dazzling Kristin Scott Thomas (KST to her chums) has long enthralled men with her features and vaunted intelligence. Word reaches me from Cannes that the English starlet was brandishing an especial sparkle at movie mogul Harvey Weinstein's Quintessentially Party for Nowhere Boy (starring KST) at the film festival. A tall, foppish gentleman looked on. When my mole asked whether this toyboy was a new suitor, KST revealed he was from a luxury jewellery company. Why was he there? To keep watch on her diamond earrings.

A bid from the broom cupboard

*Yesterday, at the launch of England's World Cup bid for 2018, Nick Clegg undid a fortnight of good publicity. In a video clip intended to show cross-parliamentary support for the bid, pictures of David Cameron looking leaderlike in his office were juxtaposed with those of Clegg clutching a staircase in some dark corner of Westminster – reminiscent of Andi Peters in the BBC broom cupboard. The Lib Dem leader's babbling remarks had assorted dignitaries from the worlds of sport, government, and business audibly giggling. Taxi!

When Boris was past his shelf life

*It is well known that before he signed up to be a Max Hastings protégé at the Telegraph (where he worked with the future Evening Standard editor Veronica Wadley, who helped him become Mayor of London), Boris Johnson was sacked from The Times for fabricating a quote. And an earlier attempt to be a management consultant had lasted all of a week.

Now I learn, courtesy of Your M&S magazine, that Bozza also worked at Marks & Spencer in Marble Arch – a fact left out of Andrew Gimson's otherwise excellent biography. That's the M&S where fellow Tory modernisers David Cameron and Michael Gove get their check shirts today.

*Landscaper Thomas Hoblyn designed the Foreign and Commonwealth Investments garden at the Chelsea Flower Show. He won a gold medal last year for "Tempest in a Teapot", an urban garden inspired by the composer Rossini. I'm told the 45-year-old will next oversee plans for the "Guerrilla Gardeners" – the flower-power champions who cultivate rogue gardens as acts of political protest – to plant leftovers from this year's Chelsea on that celebrated patch of Heathrow owned by Emma Thompson, Alastair McGowan, Tory Zac Goldsmith and pals.