REBECCA FOWLER

David Ashby, the Tory MP, paid over the odds for a flat in south-west London, after he separated from his wife, because he was so keen to live next door to a male friend, according to the woman who sold it to him.

REBECCA FOWLER

Andrew Neil, the combative former editor of the Sunday Times, has landed a major BBC chat show a year after his planned American prime time programme failed to materialise.

Ashby libel case: Court hears men fled as 'all hell broke loose'

David Ashby MP once had to lock himself and an elderly male friend in their rooms when his estranged wife began throwing knives and plates after accusing them of having an affair, the High Court heard yesterday.

The Tory MP David Ashby sued for libel yesterday over a newspaper report which he says claimed he was a homosexual, liar and hypocrite.

Britain's highest selling broadsheet, the Daily Telegraph, remained rudderless last night as a fourth deadline for the appointment of a new editor passed without a decision.

VOGUE words come and go. Fabulous is pretty well finished, and fascinating has been sent packing, to eke out its days among the second-rate blurb- writers. In the 1960s desperately was the in-word for very. Another 30 years back, the chatterers' expression for bad was wan, for good divine (today we'd think they meant pale or godlike).

The most splendid activity pursuable in sultry weather is not to exert oneself into a perspiring shambles in the name of "health" or "fitness", but to watch other people doing so. Hence the popularity of Wimbledon and Test cricket, and hence also the attraction of the BBC's admirable new Summer Dance season.

Bookmark Sat 8.05pm BBC2

"Take your ties off," a beaming Rupert Murdoch told his assembled News Corporation executives and VIP guests who had been flown to his eyrie in Aspen, Colorado, from every corner of the world.

The Agreeable World of Wallace Arnold

From Ms Carol Tongue, MEP