Britain still has a handful of tiny dependencies, the last outposts of a once great empire, to muck up. Paul Vallely looks at the latest upheavals in St Helena, once home to Napoleon

Britain has joined Australia in expressing its concerns to the Papua New Guinea government over its hiring of a London-based mercenary company in its war against secessionists on the tropical island of Bougainville.

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Perhaps it is only right, in this year of panic about our politicians' probity, that Parliament should close for Christmas with a final flurry of lies settling like so much fake snow. On Wednesday, Tony Blair told Des O'Connor about the time he absconded en route to school and boarded a plane. "I think it was to the Bahamas," he giggled. This impish lark by the boy Blair might have lent a likeable edge to the cheerless prude his advisers fear we're growing not to love - were it not for the Daily Mail's discovery that the airport in question did not run flights to the Bahamas at all. Its most exotic destination in 1968 was, gloated the Mail, the Isle of Man. Then came the Prime Minister's cosy disclosure to Good Housekeeping that, chez Major, Norma goes by the petname "Little Grub". This was news to the lady herself. "We don't have nicknames for each other," she said. "What rubbish." How we chuckled! The week's other deception, from the Tory whips' office - a kind of multiple share application for parliamentary pairs - was taken more seriously. Yet this lie had, at least, the distinction of a good reason behind it. The need by Messrs Blair and Major to make things up in order to sound like human beings is more troubling.

Politicians are made of the same clay as us; it's just that they almost always get found out

Tony Blair yesterday pictured on the Des O'Connor Show as part of a charm offensive to dispel his "smarmy" image. Added to an appearance on BBc Radio 4's Woman's Hour, he was trying to show that like other 14- year-old schoolboys, he was a bit of a teenage tearaway, writes Colin Brown.

Tim Holley, chief executive, Camelot Group: "I would learn Italian and then work as a chef in an Italian restaurant."

Hugo Barnacle re-visits an old political scandal Rinkagate: The Rise and Fall of Jeremy Thorpe by Simon Freeman and Barrie Penrose, Bloomsbury pounds 16.99

Today you have the chance to win what is probably the least appealing prize ever offered by a newspaper travel section. To celebrate 10 years of Independent travel, you can compete for a place on a writing assignment to East Berlin with me. It is offered on usual Independent terms for this sort of trip: strictly economy. And that, I believe, is the way it should be.

People & Business

Olympic yachtsmen were forced to flee from their regatta base in Savannah, Georgia, in the United States yesterday after warnings that Hurricane Bertha, which has claimed three lives as it passed through the Caribbean, could arrive there soon.

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He had already blown pounds 7m of his fortune on a drugs habit and sold a clutch of surplus manorial titles. Yesterday, the Marquess of Bristol sent the last of his family's silver, porcelain and furniture under the auctioneer's hammer to fund a new life in the Bahamas.

Was the Duke of Windsor responsible for framing an innocent man?