People: Going Dutch on LSD

ALLEGATIONS of youthful drug use have finally hit Dutch politics, but in the tolerant Netherlands they are more a credential than a concern. In Broadcasting Magazine, the columnist Arie Kleijwegt, recalled how he and the Culture Minister, Hedy d'Ancona, had taken LSD together in the 1960s.

'When Bill Clinton, halfway through the '60s, cautiously smoked his first joint - without inhaling, that is - you and I were already solidly on LSD,' Mr Kleijwegt recalled.

But he believes his friend has betrayed the revolutionary fervor she showed as a feminist leader at the University of Amsterdam. 'You, who were so busy back then blazing trails, don't seem to be so up on things in the austere years we're going through now,' he wrote in a piece criticising Ms d'Ancona for ordering the breakup of the country's public broadcasting company.

Ms d'Ancona's spokeswoman refused to comment, except to call Mr Kleijwegt an 'old bull elephant . . . waving his trunk'.

AS THE White House communications director, he is usually happy to take the heat from the press corps. But George Stephanopoulos is unhappy about being in the spotlight for his romance with Jennifer Grey, the actress who starred in the film Dirty Dancing. A White House insider said: 'He's very upset about all the publicity. He's a very private person. We're not supposed to talk about it.'

OPPONENTS of Felipe Gonzalez will no doubt see it as an attempt to capture the youth vote in next month's Spanish elections. But the Prime Minister's spokesman dismissed such cynicism about the meeting with Peter Gabriel. The two got together, he said, to discuss the British singer's proposal to set up an amusement park in Barcelona. Mr Gabriel himself, speaking before he saw Mr Gonzalez, was perhaps more straightforward: 'I think his kids want to meet me.'

WHO HAS big feet? Bill Clinton acknowledged that his were the largest of any US president since Woodrow Wilson left the White House in 1921. A Tennessee footwear firm offered to make shoes for Mr Clinton, as it has for every president since the 1850s, and gave him the news when he placed his order for a plain black pair. The good news for the First Fan of Elvis Presley is that the company also sent him some blue suede shoes.